Background: Insulin resistance (IR) is an alteration of the action of insulin in cells, which do not respond adequately to this action, leading to an increase in blood glucose levels. IR produces a very diverse clinical picture and increases the cardiometabolic risk of the population that suffers from it. Among the factors that influence IR are genetics, unhealthy lifestyle habits, overweight, and obesity. The objective of this work was to determine how different sociodemographic variables and healthy habits influence the values of different scales that assess the risk of presenting IR in a group of Spanish workers.
Methods: An observational, cross-sectional, descriptive study was carried out in 386,924 workers from different Spanish regions. Different sociodemographic variables and lifestyle habits were studied (age, social class, educational level, smoking, Mediterranean diet, physical exercise) along with their association with four scales to evaluate the risk of insulin resistance (TyG index, TyG-BMI, METS-IR, TG/HDL-c). To analyse the quantitative variables, Student's t test was used, while the Chi-squared test was used for the qualitative variables. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was performed, calculating the odds ratio with its 95% confidence intervals. The accepted level of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.
Results: In the multivariate analysis, all variables, except educational level, increased the risk of presenting high values on the IR risk scales, especially a sedentary lifestyle and low adherence to the Mediterranean diet.
Conclusions: Our results demonstrate an association between the practice of regular physical exercise and a reduction in the risk of IR; a strong role of the Mediterranean diet as a protective factor for IR; an association between aging and increased IR, which has also been suggested in other studies; and, finally, a relationship between a low socioeconomic level and an increase in IR.
Keywords: Mediterranean diet; insulin resistance; physical exercise; smoking; social class.