How’s your stress level? Mine’s actually a little high right now. Anyway, stress has a big effect on blood glucose. There’s a long, drawn out scientific explanation for why stress tends to raise the blood glucose level, and it mostly has to do with hormones that are released during stress. At any rate, the typical effect of stress on blood glucose is that it causes it to go up.
Stress can be emotional (you get in an argument with someone, you lose a loved one, you get fired from your job, etc.). Stress can be physical (pain, infection, illness, surgery). Stress can be hormonal (a cortisone injection, PMS, menopause, pregnancy).
Because stress has an effect on blood glucose, the first step is to manage stress. This really is considered one of the four aspects of diabetes management: exercise, nutrition, medication, and stress management. Managing stress is very easy for some people – usually the ones with little stress in their lives. For others it’s much more challenging. The first thing to do is to figure out if you are stressed out or not. If things tend to roll off of you – you don’t let things bother you – chances are you are a low-stress person. If you get pretty worked up about just about everything, you are probably a high-stress person. And from time to time low-stress people get hit with a major stress.
Managing stress means different things to different people. It could be going for a walk or calling a friend. Perhaps you like to listen to music or write in a journal. Notice none of these suggestions include eating. Stress triggers eating binges for many people. Since stress alone tends to raise the blood glucose, eating will just raise it more, so it’s a good idea to avoid managing stressful situations with food. Exercising is a great alternative since it not only relieves stress, but gets your mind off eating (it also lowers blood glucose and blood pressure).
How do you manage stress?
PS It’s important to know how stress affects your blood glucose. Pay attention next time you are experiencing stress. Check your blood glucose more frequently, if possible, and see if you notice any trends. Occasionally I meet someone whose blood glucose actually goes low from stress, so it is possible.