Tight Glucose Control May Hurt Diabetes Quality of Life — SkimNews
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- Researchers studying 400 people with diabetes (72% type 1, 28% type 2, mean age 47) found that more time spent in the normal blood sugar range on one day was significantly associated with better quality of life the following day.
- The counterintuitive finding: greater glucose variability on the previous day was also linked to higher next-day quality of life, while time above or below the safe range was not significantly associated with well-being.
- Professor Dominic Ehrmann of FIDAM and colleagues suggest that people working hard to minimize every glucose fluctuation may impose lifestyle restrictions making everyday activities harder to enjoy safely.
- The PRO-MENTAL study, funded by the German Center for Diabetes Research, paired 14 days of continuous glucose monitoring data with daily ecological momentary assessments using the WHO-5 well-being questionnaire.
- Better sleep during the preceding night and higher self-reported energy levels the previous day were also linked to improved next-day well-being, though same-day glucose measurements showed no association with same-day quality of life.
- The findings will be presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes Annual Meeting in Milan, running September 28 to October 2.
Why it matters: For the roughly 400 million people worldwide living with diabetes, the study challenges the assumption that tighter is always better—suggesting clinicians should weigh quality-of-life tradeoffs when counseling patients on glucose management, not just HbA1c numbers.
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