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Stress, whether physical stress or mental stress, has been proven to instigate changes in blood sugar levels.

 

Stress is a major contributor to diabetes, but most people don’t understand what stress is or what to do about it. Here’s how stress works, and some things you can do about it.

 

Say you’re walking down the street, and you bump into a hungry, man-eating lion. (Don’t you hate it when that happens?) You would sense a dangerous threat, and your body would automatically respond. Your adrenal glands would pump out a number of hormones. Chief among these is cortisol, which tells your liver and other cells to pour all their stored sugar (glucose) into your bloodstream. They do this so that your leg and arm muscles can use the glucose as fuel for running away, fighting, or maybe climbing a tree or a fire escape.

 

At the same time, your other cells would become “insulin-resistant.” Insulin’s job is to get glucose into our cells to be used as fuel. In a crisis situation, most of your cells resist insulin, so the muscles involved in fighting or fleeing will have more energy. This reaction is called “stress.” In nature, the stress response is vital to survival. The antelope senses the lion (a threat) and runs. It either gets away or the lion eats it. In running, the antelope uses up the extra sugar and restores its hormonal balance. The whole thing is over in ten minutes, and the antelope can rest.

 

But in our society, threat isn’t usually physical. When you’re threatened with job loss or eviction or the breakup of your marriage or a child’s drug problem or the thousands of other potential threats in modern society, you can’t fight, and you can’t run. You just sit there and worry. And the stress isn’t over in ten minutes either; modern stresses often act on us 24/7, week after week. Over time, insulin resistance builds up. It is a major cause of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, overweight, and many chronic illnesses.

 

How does stress cause illness?
Since, under stress, most of your cells become insulin-resistant, some of that extra glucose stays in the blood and causes damage to nerves and blood vessels. The rest of it gets converted to abdominal fat, and your LDL (“bad cholesterol”) level goes up. Stress also raises your blood pressure and heart rate to pump blood to the leg muscles for the running away that we’re not doing. This is a combination likely to cause all kinds of problems.

 

Stress also causes diabetes through behaviors, because the easiest way to treat stress is with food high in sugar or saturated fat. These “comfort foods” raise our levels of endorphins and serotonin, our bodies’ natural “feel-good” chemicals. They make us feel more calm and more in control. But the good feelings don’t last long. Our blood sugars drop again when our insulin response catches up to them, and pretty soon you feel worse than before. You need another “fix.” Meanwhile, you will have added to your insulin resistance and your abdominal fat.

 

Another way stress hurts us is by depressing the immune system, the body’s natural repair and defense program. Stress doesn’t care about long-term health, because there will be no long-term unless we survive the immediate crisis. Repair can wait until the crisis is over.

 

But for people with less power  —  less money, less education, less social support, less self-confidence, lower self-esteem, a minority skin color or disapproved body type  —  the crisis is never over. The economic, emotional, and sometimes physical threats are always there. The immune system stays suppressed. So over time, chronic stress is like endlessly deferring maintenance on your car. Like your car, your body will tend to break down.

 

How does stress affect my diabetes?

It is widely recognised that people with diabetes are who regularly stressed are more likely to have poor blood glucose control.

One of the reasons for this is that stress hormones such as cortisol increase the amount of sugar in our blood. High levels of cortisol can lead to conditions such as Cushing’s syndrome, which is one of the lesser known causes of diabetes.

Constant stress and frustration caused by long term problems with blood glucose regulation can also wear people down and cause them to neglect their diabetes care. 

 

For example, they may start to ignore their blood sugar levels or simply forget to check them, or they may adopt poor lifestyle habits, such as exercising less, eating more 'junk' and processed foods, drinking more alcohol, and smoking. This is known as diabetes burnout.

 

While stress alters blood sugar levels, the extent of its impact varies from person to person. Studies into the effects of stress on glucose levels in humans have shown that mental or psychological stress causes a rise in glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes and in most type 1 diabetics, although levels can drop in some individuals with type 1.