Stress and Blood Sugar Levels

How Stress Affects Your Blood Sugar Levels

Have you posed questions to your doctor regarding blood-sugar-level fluctuations only to be quizzed about the stress in your life instead of medications? Does stress have a huge impact on diabetes? The answer is a roaring yes. Stress can have a massive impact on diabetes because essentially stress is sort of equivalent to sugar. Let’s delve deeper into the association between stress and blood sugar levels.

Blood Sugar Levels And Stress

When your body is undergoing stress, the adrenal glands trigger the release of glucose that is stored in different organs, which often causes elevated blood sugar levels in your bloodstream. Thus, stress increases blood sugar levels. For individuals with diabetes, this can be specifically problematic because they find it much harder to regain normal blood sugar levels post bouts of stress in comparison with those who do not have diabetes.

What Is Stress?

A common misconception about stress is that it is solely an emotional problem, primarily disguised as anxiety, worries, tension, and depression. However, when it comes to reality, stress can also be physical, chemical, and nutritional.

For instance, stress can be experienced as illness or physical pain. What’s more, it can be triggered by life situations such as an accident, passing away of a friend or loved one, or confrontations with people.

In broader terms, stress is anything that has the tendency to alter the control you possess over your body as well as your emotions.

The Adrenal Glands

The adrenal glands, which are located above your kidneys, are primarily responsible for releasing stress hormones. The brain’s hypothalamus transmits a signal to the adrenal glands, which become enlarged and release two hormones: epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) and norepinephrine. These two hormones are eventually released into the blood to help the body prepare for the fight or flight response, which is central to most stressful situations.

They speed up the heart rate and widen blood vessels and airways, leading to a rise in blood pressure and tension in the muscles. Whereas the predominant role of norepinephrine is to prevent a dip in blood pressure, epinephrine is a vital hormone that also regulates blood sugar levels.

Epinephrine is also responsible for the conversion of glycogen (glucose that is stored in the liver and muscle cells) into glucose if there is a drop in blood sugar levels, thus ensuring normal blood sugar levels.

A rise in blood glucose levels is crucial during stressful situations because the body receives a signal to up its levels of fuel (glucose) in preparation for immense physical and mental activity that accompany stress. The release of epinephrine helps in achieving this goal, and together with a rise in blood pressure, ensures oxygen and glucose supply to various parts of the body.

Stress And High Blood Sugar Levels

It is necessary to be aware of the fact that repeated episodes of stressful events can cause severe changes in blood sugar levels, making it much harder for diabetics to successfully manage their condition and to deal with hypoglycaemia (or low blood sugar). Chronic stress may also lead to fatigue of the adrenal glands (eventually causing adrenal failure), which play a crucial role in eliminating stress from your life, more so if you have diabetes.

The Final Word:

Clearly, blood sugar levels and stress are associated because the latter’s impact on diabetes outcomes is immense. However, this does not mean that the medications you are taking are not playing a significant role in controlling glucose fluctuations. If your medications are not properly matched to your intake of food, the result could be blood-sugar-level fluctuations.

At the same time, remember that stress in your body has the identical impact as sugar. Its impact needs to be successfully recognised, acknowledged, and dealt with, especially in the present 21st-century world, which is characterised by new stressors.

Reference Links:

1. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/stress-and-blood-glucose-levels.html
2. https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/ask-dmine-diabetes-and-stress-monster#How-to-combat-stress