Can stress put any impact on blood sugar? While we typically associate stress with influencing our moods, it can also have significant negative consequences on our physiology, including our capacity to control blood sugar. Our insulin levels drop as stress hormones are released, which may increase blood sugar. For someone with diabetes or pre-diabetes, this could be especially dangerous.

Let’s examine the connection between stress and blood sugar, including how it affects blood sugar variations, potential drawbacks, and strategies for managing both.

Contents

1 Blood Sugar And Stress Relationship
2 Risk Elements
3 Issues with Stress And Blood Sugar
4 When To Visit A Physician

Blood Sugar And Stress Relationship

Most of us link blood sugar increases to dietary decisions like consuming excessive amounts of sugar or carbohydrates. Dehydration, exposure to heat and sunlight, skipping meals, and other factors can all have an impact on how well our systems control blood sugar levels. When it comes to regulating blood sugar, stress—which includes life circumstances, illness, and lack of sleep, also plays a role.

Your body’s “stress response” is activated while you are under stress. This causes the release of several hormones, including cortisol. Our bodies’ inflammatory response, immunological system, and metabolism can all be greatly impacted by cortisol.

High-stress levels can:

Increased cortisol levels affect how our bodies process sugar.
Increase our blood sugar (glucose) levels
Reduce the production of insulin, which controls blood sugar
Altering our body’s susceptibility to the release of insulin
Make our body more insulin resistant

Additionally, you are more likely to eat poorly, miss meals, and have poor sleep patterns when you are under a lot of stress, all of which can also lead to problems with uncontrolled blood sugar.

Risk Elements

You may be more likely to experience a blood sugar problem linked to stress if you have certain risk factors, including:

Being depressed previously
Having persistent work-related anxiety
Suffering hardship at a young age
Tending to respond to stress by choosing unhealthy foods, cutting back on exercise, and forgetting to take diabetic medication

Issues with Stress And Blood Sugar

A person’s health and well-being can be negatively impacted by both stress and variations in blood sugar.

Having diabetes can make distress:

Make it more challenging for you to control your blood pressure and may raise your chance of developing heart problems
Make it more difficult for you to carry out your regular activities that revolve around controlling your blood sugar and cause your body to deteriorate
Increase your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels

You may suffer signs like exhaustion or depression if your blood pressure rises as a result of stress. If your blood pressure drops too low, you could experience jitteriness, discontentment, and anxiety.

When To Visit A Physician

Blood sugar fluctuations are not merely uncomfortable; sometimes, they can be dangerous. If you have diabetes and you encounter any of the following symptoms, please contact your healthcare practitioner right once or go to the closest emergency room: