Hamburg: A new study suggests that working in a windowless office can make type 2 diabetes worse.
In one small study, 13 retired people with diabetes were asked to spend about five days in an office-like environment. There was a window in this office that let the sunlight into the room.
The men also spent the same amount of time in an office with no windows and only artificial electric LED lights.
When these people worked in an office with a window, their blood sugar levels remained normal 59 percent of the time. But under electric light this amount remained normal 51 percent of the time.
The study’s senior author, Professor Joris Hoeks, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said the findings suggest that people should not live in an office with no windows. It has positive effects on the body’s clock, which is important for body functions such as controlling blood sugar.
In research presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Hamburg, people were fed the same food and kept in dim light in the evening, but exposed from 8am to 5pm. The type of lighting was changed.
