how does emotional stress affect blood glucose levels
If you are one of those people who suffer from stress and anxiety. If you always have anxiety and worry, if you have a lot of mental and emotional stress, know that your stress can lead to high blood sugar. Doctors say that mental and emotional stress will be accompanied by high blood sugar by raising certain hormones (especially cortisol) in your body.
What is the effect of long-term mental and emotional stress on blood sugar levels?
We recommend that the following article be read by all stressful people and people who are frequently exposed to psychological and occupational stress.
What changes occur in the body during stress and anxiety?
Is our blood sugar associated with psychological and emotional stress?
What happens during stress?
Doctors say that during situations when your body and mind are stressed and anxious, hormones are released in the body that prepare your body for war and possible escape from stress and anxiety. Stress hormone or cortisol raises your blood sugar and raises your blood pressure. It also increases your energy and ability to escape stressful situations and deal with threatening situations
In short, with cortisol and other stress hormones, there will be an increase in energy following a rise in blood sugar.
Frequent high blood sugar, especially in diabetics whose cells do not function properly in response to insulin, causes a chronic rise in blood glucose levels.
During mental and emotional stress, people's desire to eat carbohydrate-rich foods also increases. In other words, increased eating following emotional stress and chronic anxiety can be another reason for your blood sugar to rise.
Emotional stress makes people indifferent to managing their own health This is what will happen by overeating and reducing physical activity and increasing the adverse effects of high blood sugar in people with recurrent emotional and psychological stress.
What is stress?
This is how doctors define stress. Stress is a natural response of our body to conditions that will put us at risk.
We said that following stress, the secretion of cortisol and other stress hormones raises blood sugar levels, which provides the body with the necessary energy and energy to fight and escape from a dangerous situation. This increase in blood sugar will occur in the body of all people with stress.
If a person does not have diabetes, their body can moderate and control high blood sugar in a short time by secreting enough insulin, but this increase in blood sugar in people with diabetes or people with history of type 2 diabetes, people with syndromes Metabolism and insulin resistance will not be easily controlled.
The cells of these people have abnormal resistance to insulin, meaning that blood sugar or glucose cannot enter the cells due to insulin, so for a long time, their blood glucose levels will remain high.
Following the emotional and physical stress, the secretion of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and growth hormone in the body will increase sharply and will release the sugars stored in your liver tissue.
High blood sugar, especially the persistence of high blood glucose, is very harmful.
Inflammation and damage to every cell in your body is the result of high blood sugar
This inflammation and the first injury in the cells of the vascular wall occurs little by little with the injury
And inflammation of the walls of the arteries will interfere with the blood supply to the cells in your body.
High blood sugar causes cells to burn out. Aging of the skin, aging of brain cells and etc. are the known disorders of elevated blood sugar
So in order to stay healthy, you need to learn how to manage and control your emotional stress.
Anxiety and emotional stress and blood sugar
As a result of stress and anxiety, stress hormones increase and as a result, blood sugar rises to prepare our body for war and escape from our dangerous and threatening conditions.
So if you have recurrent anxiety and frequent and chronic emotional stress, these hormones, especially cortisol, will stay in your bloodstream longer, and the persistence of this hormone is associated with high blood sugar, which in the long run is more from the normal level.
Under such conditions, insulin, which causes glucose to enter the cells of your body, cannot carry sugar from the blood into your cells like normal conditions, so sugar does not reach the cells and this factor exposes the body to another physical stress and again cortisol and stress hormones. Their secretion will increase and they will increase the amount of blood sugar.
People with diabetes are twice as likely as normal people to have these problems, so controlling mental stress is essential for all people, and diabetics will need it more.
So it is better to learn stress management strategies to have a healthy mind and body.
Stress management strategies
The following strategies are recommended by diabetic physicians. These strategies will help you cope with your stresses and adjust and control them.
Of course, following these principles is more important for diabetics, but they should also be observed by healthy and non-diabetic people:
- Do not invest your whole life in one person or one particular event
- Do not think that you should always be doing something
- Do not feel guilty about losing contact with harmful people
- Be sure to take a break from your work and responsibilities
- Stay away from your comparisons with others
- Just compare yourself to the previous week
- Be sure to exercise
- Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce emotional stress. Include thirty to sixty minutes of walking a day.
- Avoid unhealthy foods when you are stressed
- Replace destructive and negative thoughts with positive and constructive thoughts
- Manage your time
- Value yourself
- Take care of yourself
- Feel good about yourself
- Use deep breathing, rest, sleep, relaxation, yoga and exercise in anxious situations.
- Life is always full of problems. Do not think that others have no sorrow and problems. So know that there is no life without problems and we will enjoy life by solving problems.