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We have written often on the importance of managing diabetes in the workplace. Clearly, a strong program design includes methods to help employees maintain the right habits to avoid diabetes — and maintain the right practices if they have diabetes. As the American Diabetes Association notes, helping employees identify “healthful habits at work and beyond” can help mean “fewer sick days and higher productivity. For others, it means looking and feeling better.”

One area where employers can directly help — and where an effective wellness program design can make a difference: Stress.

Writes the American Diabetes Association: “Many long-term sources of stress are mental. Your mind sometimes reacts to a harmless event as if it were a real threat. Like physical stress, mental stress can be short term: from taking a test to getting stuck in a traffic jam. It can also be long term: from working for a demanding boss to taking care of an aging parent.”

The post continues: “In people with diabetes, stress can alter blood glucose levels in two ways:”

• “People under stress may not take good care of themselves. They may drink more alcohol or exercise less. They may forget, or not have time, to check their glucose levels or plan good meals.”
• “Stress hormones may also alter blood glucose levels directly.”

An recent Reuters piece provides interesting insights for workplaces seeking new ways to help employees with diabetes: Self-compassion.

Writes Reuters: “Learning to be less harsh or judgmental and more compassionate to oneself may help people with diabetes manage their disease and stave off depression, a recent study suggests.”

The piece continues: “This is the first randomized controlled trial of a self-compassion intervention among people with diabetes, lead author Anna Friis told Reuters Health by email.”

“'Self-compassion-based treatments are founded on the notion that our tendency to be harshly self-critical or judgmental when we feel we have ‘failed’ or done something wrong makes our stress and distress worse,' said Friss, a psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.”