Study in China finds exposure to outdoor light increases risk of diabetes 

Hyderabad: New research held in China has found that exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) can affect metabolic function and the body’s mechanism to control sugar levels. Diabetes is caused due to various factors, with exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) being one of them. Lights emitted by cars, smartphones, tablets, and street […]

Hyderabad: New research held in China has found that exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) can affect metabolic function and the body’s mechanism to control sugar levels.

Diabetes is caused due to various factors, with exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) being one of them.

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Lights emitted by cars, smartphones, tablets, and street lights can have a harmful effect on human beings and may lead to diabetes.

The study, which was published on November 14, 2021, in the journal ‘Diabetologia’, by Dr. Yu Xu and colleagues at the Shanghai Institute of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, has shown that increased exposure to evening artificial light can raise the risk of diabetes by 28 per cent.

Dr. Yu Xu used data from the 2010 China Non-communicable Disease Surveillance study. According to the study, over 9 million people in China may have turned diabetic due to night light pollution. He considered different factors like height, body weight, and blood samples (both fasting and after meals) for analysis.

 “Despite over 80% of the world’s population being exposed to light pollution at night, this problem has gained limited attention from scientists until recent years,” study authors said.

The study, conducted on 98,658 adults in China, also found that the intensity of urban light is also affecting suburbs and forest parks which are located hundreds of kilometers away from the light source.

In the past, several such findings related to the effects of artificial light on humans were published and they all showed that LAN has a detrimental effect on the environment.