Stress is a normal part of life, but one that can make it harder to control your blood glucose. There are several ways to fight stress and make your diabetes control easier.
What Is Stress?
Stress results when something causes your body to behave as if it were under attack. Sources of stress can be physical, like injury or illness. Or they can be mental, like problems in your marriage, job, health, or finances.
When stress occurs, the body gears up to take action. This preparation is called the fight-or-flight response. In the fight-or-flight response, levels of many hormones shoot up.
Their net effect is to make a lot of stored energy, glucose and fat, available to cells. These cells are then primed to help the body get away from danger.
In people who have diabetes, the fight-or-flight response does not work well. Insulin is not always able to let the extra energy into the cells, so glucose piles up in the blood.
Making things worse, many sources of stress are not short-term threats. For example, it can take many months to recover from surgery. Stress hormones that are designed to deal with short-term danger stay turned on for a long time. As a result, long-term stress can cause long-term high glucose levels.
Many long-term sources of stress are mental. Your mind sometimes reacts to a non-dangerous event as if it were a real threat. Like physical stress, mental stress can be short term from taking a test to getting stuck in a traffic jam.
It can also be long term from working for a demanding boss to taking care of an aging parent.
In mental stress, the body pumps out hormones to no avail. Neither fighting nor fleeing is any help when the "enemy" is your own mind.
How Stress Affects Diabetes
In people who have diabetes, stress can alter blood glucose levels. It does this in two ways.
First, people under stress may not take good care of themselves. They may drink more alcohol or exercise less. They may forget, or not have time, to test their glucose levels or plan good meals.
Second, stress hormones may also alter glucose levels directly.
Scientists have studied the effects of stress on glucose levels in animals and people. Diabetic mice under physical or mental stress have elevated glucose levels.
The effects in people with insulin-dependent (type 1) diabetes are more mixed. Some people's glucose levels go up with mental stress. Other people's levels go down. In people with non-insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes, mental stress often raises blood glucose levels.
Physical stress, such as illness or injury, causes higher blood glucose levels in people with either type of diabetes.
For some people with diabetes, controlling stress with relaxation therapy seems to help. It is more likely to help people with type 2 diabetes than people with type 1 diabetes. This difference makes sense.
Stress blocks the body from releasing insulin in people with type 2 diabetes, so cutting stress may be more helpful for these people. People with type 1 diabetes don't make insulin, so stress reduction doesn't have an effect.
Some people with type 2 diabetes may also be more sensitive to some of the stress hormones. Relaxing can help by blunting this sensitivity.
It's easy to find out whether mental stress affects your glucose control. Before testing your glucose levels, write down a number rating your mental stress level on a scale of 1 to 10. Then write down your glucose level next to it.
After a week or two, look for a pattern. Drawing a graph may help you see trends better. Do high stress levels often occur with high glucose levels, and low stress levels with low glucose levels? If so, stress may affect your glucose control.
Provoking Diabetes
A stressful lifestyle can't cause diabetes, but it can bring on symptoms in someone already headed for diabetes.
In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly destroys beta cells of the pancreas. It takes months or years of attack before enough cells are lost that diabetes starts. During this time, the number of beta cells is dropping, until the person has very little ability left to make insulin.
Stress increases the need for insulin. But in a person on the way to getting type 1 diabetes, less insulin is made. The demands of stress overwhelm the body's ability to secrete insulin and the symptoms of diabetes appear.
Stress might also bring on type 2 diabetes. In people with this disease, the body stops responding normally to insulin. As it does, the ability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin falls. In a person already close to the onset of symptoms, the added demands of stress on the body could bring on the first symptoms.
Stress and Personality
You have some control over your reaction to stress. You can learn to relax and reverse the body's hormonal response to stress. And, of course, you can often change your life to heal what's wrong.
One factor that affects how people with diabetes react to stress is personality. People with "type A" personalities may have higher glucose levels when under stress. (Type A people are those who tend to be hostile and angry.)
In the same situation, people with "type B" personalities may have decreases in glucose levels. (Type B people are more easygoing than type As.)
Something else that affects people's responses to stress is coping style. Coping style is how a person deals with stress. For example, some people have a problem-solving attitude. They say to themselves, "What can I do about this problem?" They try to change their situation to get rid of the stress.
Other people talk themselves into accepting the problem as okay. They say to themselves, "This problem really isn't so bad after all."
These two methods of coping are usually helpful. People who use them tend to have less glucose elevation in response to mental stress.
Learning to Relax
There are many ways to help yourself relax:
Whatever method you choose to relax, practice it. Just as it takes weeks or months of practice to learn a new sport, it takes practice to learn relaxation.
Other Ways to Reduce Mental Stress
You can get rid of or avoid many stresses of life. If traffic upsets you, for example, maybe you can find a new route to work or leave home early enough to miss the traffic jams.
If your job drives you crazy, you can put in for a promotion or transfer, you can discuss with your boss how to improve things, or you can look for another job.
If you are at odds with a friend or relative, you can make the first move to patch things up. For such problems, feeling stressed may be a sign that you need to improve your life.
Some stresses are never going to go away, no matter what you do. Having diabetes is one of those. Support groups exist to help with these major stresses. Knowing other people in the same situation helps you feel less alone.
You can also learn other people's hints for coping with problems. Making friends in a support group can lighten the burden of these kinds of stresses.
Another way to fight stress is to distract yourself. The world is full of fun things to learn and do. You can start an exercise program or join a sports team.
You can take dance lessons or join a dancing club. You can start a new hobby or learn a new craft. You can volunteer to help at a hospital or charity.
Psychotherapy is another option. Talking with a therapist may help you come to grips with your problems. You may learn new ways of coping or new ways of changing your behaviour.
What Is Stress?
Stress results when something causes your body to behave as if it were under attack. Sources of stress can be physical, like injury or illness. Or they can be mental, like problems in your marriage, job, health, or finances.
When stress occurs, the body gears up to take action. This preparation is called the fight-or-flight response. In the fight-or-flight response, levels of many hormones shoot up.
Their net effect is to make a lot of stored energy, glucose and fat, available to cells. These cells are then primed to help the body get away from danger.
In people who have diabetes, the fight-or-flight response does not work well. Insulin is not always able to let the extra energy into the cells, so glucose piles up in the blood.
Making things worse, many sources of stress are not short-term threats. For example, it can take many months to recover from surgery. Stress hormones that are designed to deal with short-term danger stay turned on for a long time. As a result, long-term stress can cause long-term high glucose levels.
Many long-term sources of stress are mental. Your mind sometimes reacts to a non-dangerous event as if it were a real threat. Like physical stress, mental stress can be short term from taking a test to getting stuck in a traffic jam.
It can also be long term from working for a demanding boss to taking care of an aging parent.
In mental stress, the body pumps out hormones to no avail. Neither fighting nor fleeing is any help when the "enemy" is your own mind.
How Stress Affects Diabetes
In people who have diabetes, stress can alter blood glucose levels. It does this in two ways.
First, people under stress may not take good care of themselves. They may drink more alcohol or exercise less. They may forget, or not have time, to test their glucose levels or plan good meals.
Second, stress hormones may also alter glucose levels directly.
Scientists have studied the effects of stress on glucose levels in animals and people. Diabetic mice under physical or mental stress have elevated glucose levels.
The effects in people with insulin-dependent (type 1) diabetes are more mixed. Some people's glucose levels go up with mental stress. Other people's levels go down. In people with non-insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes, mental stress often raises blood glucose levels.
Physical stress, such as illness or injury, causes higher blood glucose levels in people with either type of diabetes.
For some people with diabetes, controlling stress with relaxation therapy seems to help. It is more likely to help people with type 2 diabetes than people with type 1 diabetes. This difference makes sense.
Stress blocks the body from releasing insulin in people with type 2 diabetes, so cutting stress may be more helpful for these people. People with type 1 diabetes don't make insulin, so stress reduction doesn't have an effect.
Some people with type 2 diabetes may also be more sensitive to some of the stress hormones. Relaxing can help by blunting this sensitivity.
It's easy to find out whether mental stress affects your glucose control. Before testing your glucose levels, write down a number rating your mental stress level on a scale of 1 to 10. Then write down your glucose level next to it.
After a week or two, look for a pattern. Drawing a graph may help you see trends better. Do high stress levels often occur with high glucose levels, and low stress levels with low glucose levels? If so, stress may affect your glucose control.
Provoking Diabetes
A stressful lifestyle can't cause diabetes, but it can bring on symptoms in someone already headed for diabetes.
In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly destroys beta cells of the pancreas. It takes months or years of attack before enough cells are lost that diabetes starts. During this time, the number of beta cells is dropping, until the person has very little ability left to make insulin.
Stress increases the need for insulin. But in a person on the way to getting type 1 diabetes, less insulin is made. The demands of stress overwhelm the body's ability to secrete insulin and the symptoms of diabetes appear.
Stress might also bring on type 2 diabetes. In people with this disease, the body stops responding normally to insulin. As it does, the ability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin falls. In a person already close to the onset of symptoms, the added demands of stress on the body could bring on the first symptoms.
Stress and Personality
You have some control over your reaction to stress. You can learn to relax and reverse the body's hormonal response to stress. And, of course, you can often change your life to heal what's wrong.
One factor that affects how people with diabetes react to stress is personality. People with "type A" personalities may have higher glucose levels when under stress. (Type A people are those who tend to be hostile and angry.)
In the same situation, people with "type B" personalities may have decreases in glucose levels. (Type B people are more easygoing than type As.)
Something else that affects people's responses to stress is coping style. Coping style is how a person deals with stress. For example, some people have a problem-solving attitude. They say to themselves, "What can I do about this problem?" They try to change their situation to get rid of the stress.
Other people talk themselves into accepting the problem as okay. They say to themselves, "This problem really isn't so bad after all."
These two methods of coping are usually helpful. People who use them tend to have less glucose elevation in response to mental stress.
Learning to Relax
There are many ways to help yourself relax:
- Breathing exercises. Sit or lie down and uncross your legs and arms. Take in a deep, deep breath. Then push out as much air as you can. Breathe in and out again, this time relaxing your muscles on purpose while breathing out. Keep breathing and relaxing for 5 to 20 minutes at a time. Do the breathing exercises at least once a day.
- Progressive relaxation therapy. In this technique, which you can learn in a clinic or from an audio tape, you tense muscles, then relax them.
- Exercise. Another way to relax your body is by moving it through a wide range of motion. Three ways to loosen up through movement are circling, stretching, and shaking parts of your body. To make this exercise more fun, move with music.
- Banish bad thoughts. If certain thoughts make you sad, angry, or nervous, don't think them! Of course, that may be easier said than done. One way to train yourself not to think bad thoughts is to put a rubber band on your wrist. When you catch yourself thinking thoughts that upset you, snap the rubber band.
- Replace bad thoughts with good ones. Each time you notice a bad thought, purposefully think of something that makes you happy or proud. Or memorize a poem, prayer, or quote and use it to replace a bad thought.
Whatever method you choose to relax, practice it. Just as it takes weeks or months of practice to learn a new sport, it takes practice to learn relaxation.
Other Ways to Reduce Mental Stress
You can get rid of or avoid many stresses of life. If traffic upsets you, for example, maybe you can find a new route to work or leave home early enough to miss the traffic jams.
If your job drives you crazy, you can put in for a promotion or transfer, you can discuss with your boss how to improve things, or you can look for another job.
If you are at odds with a friend or relative, you can make the first move to patch things up. For such problems, feeling stressed may be a sign that you need to improve your life.
Some stresses are never going to go away, no matter what you do. Having diabetes is one of those. Support groups exist to help with these major stresses. Knowing other people in the same situation helps you feel less alone.
You can also learn other people's hints for coping with problems. Making friends in a support group can lighten the burden of these kinds of stresses.
Another way to fight stress is to distract yourself. The world is full of fun things to learn and do. You can start an exercise program or join a sports team.
You can take dance lessons or join a dancing club. You can start a new hobby or learn a new craft. You can volunteer to help at a hospital or charity.
Psychotherapy is another option. Talking with a therapist may help you come to grips with your problems. You may learn new ways of coping or new ways of changing your behaviour.
