Short-heighted people at greater risk of developing diabetes

A new study has brought to light how height is related to the chances of developing type-2 diabetes. As published in the journal Diabetologia, it mentioned that for an increase of every 10 cms in height, the risk for the disease went down by 41 per cent in men, and 33 per cent in women.

The researchers pointed out that this might be possible because of high higher liver fat content in shorter people. Also, with respect to cardio-metabolic risk factors, their profile turned out to be less favourable.

One of the study researchers from the German Institute of Human Nutrition said, “Our findings suggest that short people might present with higher cardio-metabolic risk factor levels and have higher diabetes risk compared with tall people.”

The research team considered a sample of 2,500 middle-aged German men and women. They were selected from a total of 26,000 people on the basis of factors like age, lifestyle, education and waist circumference.

The link between height and diabetes risk was stronger for normal weight people. For every 10 cm increase in height, the risk for developing diabetes went down by 86 per cent in men and 67 per cent in women. For obese people, the chances for developing diabetes went down by 36 per cent and 30 per cent in men and women respectively.

This implies that a larger waist circumference doesn’t give any added benefits for tall people. This is true for whatever the reason behind large waist circumference is, from high consumption of calories to growth.

“Our study also suggests that early interventions to reduce height-related metabolic risk throughout life likely need to focus on determinants of growth in sensitive periods during pregnancy, early childhood, puberty and early adulthood, and should take potential sex-differences into account,” the researchers said. “We found an inverse association between height and risk of type-2 diabetes among men and women, which was largely related to leg length among men,” they added.