Everyone reacts differently to physical and mental stress. Often, individuals dealing with stress are able to deal with it in a heathy way and stay calm or use various techniques to keep stress from escalating. Often it simply involves thinking things through and/or “talking themselves down” especially in situations where there is no immediate solution for the stress. But managing stress is particularly important to people with diabetes, since the body’s reaction to stress can trigger a dramatic change in blood glucose levels.
Anyone who is dealing with diabetes has at least some knowledge – hopefully more, rather than less – regarding the issues that blood glucose going up and down can do to your body and how you feel.
According to the American Diabetes Association, a diabetic’s “fight-or-flight” response to stress doesn’t work properly. In people with type 2 diabetes, this can trigger a dangerous increase in blood glucose. Stressed people with type 1 diabetes, however, may experience either a rise or fall in blood glucose.
In addition, people under stress often forget to take care of themselves. They may forget to exercise, eat the wrong foods, or drink too much alcohol. All of these habits can significantly affect blood sugar. On top of that, they can forget their medicine, not get enough sleep and various other things that can make things worse with their diabetes, their general health and just the way they feel while this stress and imbalance continues.
The ADA advises that you can learn to help control your reaction to stress. Performing relaxation techniques can help keep you calmer during stressful times, and making lifestyle changes can help avoid sources of stress altogether, the association says. to find information go onto any of the main search engines and look up stress – and there are a lot of pages that discuss stress, stress and heath plus dealing with stress.
Though stress can increase problem – be it diabetes or other health problems – the more we research and the more we are able to do, the better we will will be able to control our stress and the heathier we will be.
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