The Effect of Stress on Blood Sugar and How To Cope With Unavoidable Burdens
You’ve probably heard that stress negatively affects the heart (and lifespan), but did you know that stress also impacts blood sugar?
How? The liver reacts to cortisol and adrenaline by releasing glucose into the blood, while at the same time, insulin levels drop and cannot control the spike in blood glucose.
The three main types of stress are:
- Daily stressors- usually unavoidable (i.e. never ending laundry, in-laws, global pandemics).
- Major life events- don’t have to be current (i.e. the trauma of losing someone close can have long lasting effects on your blood sugar (and life).
- Physiological stress- largely ignored but extremely impactful (i.e. constant headaches, insomnia, high blood pressure, aches, irritable bowl syndrome).
Stress effect on blood sugar is practically unavoidable, and every type of stress can raise blood sugar. So, what the heck should you do, because, like… isn’t everybody stressed these days?
The key is to eliminate any possible stressors that you can, and try to find balance with the stressors that will never go away, such as the morning commute (pre-covid) or the neighbor’s dogs who go out at 5am every day and bark until 6, completely disrupting your circadian rhythm and making the start to every single day a living nightmare.
The commute could be filled with an interesting or informative podcast, and the dogs could be sho-… and when you first hear the dogs, you could put on headphones with a positive morning meditation or binaural beats for sleep, depending on when you have to get out of bed. Other unavoidable stressors like picking up the kids from school could be cut back if you find a neighbor parent to take turns with.
Balancing the inescapable nuisances of life can be done through other activities like prayer, meditation, walking, writing, taking a (sea salt!) bath, eating chocolate very slowly… whatever gives you a little bit of peace and calm in your day. If you have a busy schedule but you love baths, you could make it a once or twice a week routine, and do something like a 5 minute “meditation” (aka just sit in silence) each day.
Every 5–10 minutes of peace and calm that you can achieve greatly reduces your total amount of stress in life, making your blood sugar and your heart that much happier.
