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According to Natalie Rasgon (MD, PhD, and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences), those with insulin resistance have double the risk of developing a major depressive disorder in comparison with those who are not insulin resistant. This is true even if the individual has never experienced depression before.
What is Major Depressive Disorder?
Nearly 1 in every 5 Americans experiences some form of major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. Symptoms of major depressive disorder include despair, unremitting sadness, sleep disturbances, sluggishness, and loss of appetite. Certain factors that contribute to this deeply debilitating disease include traumas experienced during childhood, loss of a loved one, or the stresses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which cannot be prevented.
However, insulin resistance is preventable. It can be eliminated or reduced by consuming a balanced diet, exercising, and intake of certain medications.
Insulin Resistance: A Common, Silent Condition
Studies have shown that 1 in every 3 of us has insulin resistance, often without even knowing it. The condition arises because of the diminished ability of cells of the body to successfully follow the commands of insulin.
An increasing proportion of the population in the world is insulin resistant for diverse reasons, including excessive intake of calories, lack of physical activity, stress, insufficient sleep. In such individuals, insulin receptors fail to successfully bind to insulin. Ultimately, their blood glucose levels become chronically high. If these levels of blood glucose stay high for a specific threshold, Type 2 diabetes occurs.
Association between insulin resistance and several psychological disorders have already been established. For instance, it has been shown that nearly 40% of those with mood disorders are insulin resistant.
The Study Conducted
Scientists procured data from an ongoing longitudinal study that is successfully monitoring more than 3,000 participants in a meticulous manner to learn about the causes and results of depression: The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety.
The team at Stanford analysed data from 601 men and women who were control subjects for the Dutch study. At the time of enrolment, they had never experienced depression or anxiety. Their average age was 41 years.
The team efficiently measures 3 proxies of insulin resistance: fasting blood sugar levels, a circumference of the waist, and the ratio of circulating levels of triglycerides to those of circulating HDL (high-density lipoprotein).
Determining Major Depressive Disorder
Researchers probed the data to verify if the participants that were insulin-resistant had an elevated 9-year risk of developing major depressive disorder. By all 3 measures, the answer was “yes.”
They discovered that a moderate spike in insulin resistance (as successfully measured by the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio) was linked to an increased risk of 89% in the rate of newer cases of major depressive disorder. In a similar manner, every 5-centimetre increase in abdominal fat was linked to an 11% higher rate of depression. Lastly, an increase of 18 milligrams per decilitre of fasting plasma glucose in the blood was eventually associated with a 37% higher occurrence of depression.
Some participants were already insulin resistant at the commencement of the study. Hence, there was no way to find out why they had first become insulin resistant. So, the researchers during the next phase of their analysis restricted the number of participants to 400 subjects, who, besides never having experienced depression, showed no signs of insulin resistance at the onset of the study.
During the first 2 years of the study, 100 of these participants developed insulin resistance. Researchers compared the likelihood of this group developing major depressive disorder in the next 7 years with participants who had not yet developed insulin resistance at the 2-year mark.
Those who developed prediabetes during the first two years of the study had 2.66 times the risk of developing major depressive disorder by the 9-year follow-up milepost in comparison with those who demonstrated normal fasting-glucose results at the 2-year point.
Solution To The Problem
It is time for physicians to take into consideration the metabolic status of those with mood disorders and vice versa. This can be done by assessing mood in those with metabolic diseases such as hypertension and obesity. To prevent major depressive disorder, physicians need to check their patients’ insulin sensitivity through tests that are readily available in labs throughout the world, which are not very expensive. This can help in mitigating the development of lifelong debilitating diseases.
On A Final Note
The bottom line is clear: insulin resistance is an extremely strong risk factor for developing complex problems such as major depressive disorder and Type 2 diabetes.
