How stress could be messing with your blood glucose levels
in Blogs

We all experience stress when we try to balance the demands of work and home life, struggle to achieve financial stability, go for a job interview, speak in front of a large audience, get stuck in traffic, visit the dentist or doctor, pick up an injury in training or even watch a scary movie. These situations elicit a stress hormone response that causes a sharp rise in blood glucose levels, among other things.

As Ian points out in his blog post on the 3 Ps of stress, stress is not just an emotional/psychological problem that is often disguised as anxiety and depression, it can also be physical and physiological. And these three types of stress are often interlinked. Therefore, it is common to see stressed-out business people who are constantly anxious and worrying about work (psychological stress) gain weight easily (physical stress), which leads to physiological responses such as hormonal imbalances and inflammation (physiological stress).

When we’re stressed, stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline are released by the adrenal glands which, in turn, trigger the liver (our storehouse of glucose) to release glucose into the bloodstream.

This was typically the response of our ancestors when chased by predators, such as lions – the ‘fight or flight’ response. These stress hormones were produced because their bodies needed a rapid influx of glucose into the bloodstream to be taken up by the working muscles.

Lions rarely chase us nowadays. Now we have to contend with the ‘threats’ of the modern world and don’t really use the glucose released from our liver to run away from them. Instead, we keep doing our sedentary jobs and our blood glucose levels rise sharply and remain temporarily elevated before returning to healthy levels. If this situation persists with non-managed stress, sedentary living and poor nutrition, we can reach a point at which the increase in blood glucose is sharper and more prolonged. This is exactly what happens in type II diabetes since insulin is so longer working properly to bring blood glucose down to healthy levels again.

Clearly, this ‘fight or flight’ response has morphed into a system that constantly burdens our daily lives instead of being a system for short-term emergencies as originally intended.

What can you do to de-stress?

Stress is inevitable in the modern world and exists in each of our lives in varying degrees. But there are ways we can manage stress, so it doesn’t harm our health. Here are some of my tips:

  1. Don’t overcommit; create a balanced schedule instead.
  2. Avoid people who stress you out and connect face-to-face with friends and family.
  3. Express your feelings instead of bottling them up.
  4. When you’re in a stressful situation, practise gratitude and look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself if it’s all worthwhile in the long run.
  5. Get moving, do outdoor pursuits, and something active that you enjoy.
  6. Make time for fun and consider practising a relaxation technique such as yoga or mindfulness.
  7. Eat balanced, nutritious meals and make sure you’re well-hydrated.
  8. Get enough sleep!