Last Updated on December 11, 2024
There could be a new indicator for warning sides for type 2 diabetes. Aside from the traditional diabetes signs like weight, activity, and age, a new study could show another way to determine if someone is likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. The results showed that low grip strength could be a sign of having undiagnosed diabetes.
The University of Florida looked at data from almost 1,500 people all with an average body-mass index, between 18.5 to 24.9.The participants in the study were all in between 20 and 64 years old, none of them had any cardiovascular disease. Each participant had his or her grip strength measured using a dynamometer.
The difference in grip strength could show a difference in muscle strength. The study showed that the people with high blood pressure or diabetes had weaker hand strength than those who didn’t. The average grip strength of those without diabetes was 154 pounds, which is drastically higher than those with diabetes. Those that did not have diabetes had average grip strength of 136 pounds. Lower muscle mass and muscle quality have been linked to decreasing insulin resistance.
While the exact reason for the reduced hand strength isn’t fully understood, it reinforces the idea of “diabetic hand syndrome”. The diabetic hand syndrome is limited hand movement, especially in the fingers. People with diabetes are also much more likely to have carpal tunnel, trigger finger, and Dupoytren’s disease, all of which would drastically limit hand movement and strength. The longer that you’ve had diabetes, the greater chance you have of contracting one of these ailments.
Carpal tunnel is a common condition and often thought of with “office workers”. Carpal tunnel does not excessively restrict hand movement but does create a numbness or tingling feeling in your hand. These feelings are created by a constriction of the central nerve by a ligament in the hand. Trigger finger is a condition that prevents a finger from straightening smoothly. In most cases the finger will snap, or pop when being straightened. Dupuytren’s disease is a little different than other common hand complications for diabetics. This disease occurs in the tissue beneath the hand. The tissue thickens and resembles scarring tissue, and in severe cases, the disease can prevent someone from driving or even using an eating utensil.
These results are important for diagnosing diabetes as early as possible. The grip strength indicator is especially useful for those people that don’t have other diabetes symptoms. It’s also easy for a doctor to test a patient’s grip strength and it doesn’t require any tests or blood being drawn. While doctors won’t ever diagnose diabetes based on hand strength, this is excellent for patient’s that are inside the average BMI range, often called “skinny fat”.
“Skinny fat” is used to describe patients that are inside of the healthy BMI range but have a high fat to lean muscle ratio. These patients aren’t typically screened for diabetes because they aren’t overweight, or carrying extra fat in the abdomen. The doctors can compare the grip strength of the patient to the averages of their sex, age, and race.
For many people, the correlation between diabetes and grip strength may seem insignificant, but anyone that has been diagnosed with diabetes understands the importance of being diagnosed as early as possible.
