Does Stress increases Blood Sugar | डायबिटीज में तनाव कैसे कम करें

Does Stress Increases Blood Sugar Level?

Change in daily diet to low glycemic load food decreases the blood sugar level in diabetic individuals but in some individuals having the same diet daily fluctuates the blood glucose levels. In this blog, we will find the reason behind fluctuating blood glucose levels and the effect of stress and emotion on our blood glucose levels.

There are 2 aspects of blood sugar level

• Physiological
• Psychological

Physiological aspect:

It depends on diet and body system. Whereas the psychological aspect depends on our emotional and analytical perspective. 

As the physiological aspect is connected to diet, the intake of carbohydrates is broken down to sugar in our body and increases blood sugar levels. In response insulin then carries the sugar to the cell and cells utilize the sugar to produce energy. In some cases when there is an enormous amount of sugar in the cell, the cell develops insulin resistance. 

Psychological Aspect:

Coming to the psychological aspect, does the emotional shift influence the blood sugar level? Emotion can be divided into 2 types, 

• Fire: Fight & flight response (Anger)
• Ice: Rest & digest response (Peace)

Fight & flight response:

The fight and flight response can be better understood by a story. Suppose a man who lives in an apartment needs to go to the market to buy some groceries. He came out of his apartment and walked toward the grocery shop; he was walking slowly as his foot was injured. As he was about to reach the shop, he saw a tiger walking towards him. He was shocked for a moment. In that situation, various responses started to develop in his body. 

1. Tunnel vision: He could only see the tiger, all his focus was on the tiger, and his eyes were pointed towards the tiger only.
2. Heart rate: His heart rate increased as soon as he saw the tiger in front. 
3. Respiration: His rate of respiration increased as he saw the danger in the form of a tiger in front. 
4. Muscle contraction: Muscle became tight, as a response of flight or fight.

Other systems in the body like the digestive system, reproductive system, and filtration system stop its activity for a while. The flow of blood in those organs decreases until the fight and flight response continues. During flight and flight response cortisol hormone is released by the body, which signals the liver to produce more amount of glucose which can be used by the cell to produce energy as a defective response to escape the situation. At that moment the person will forget all his injury, hunger, and thirst and will escape the situation as soon as possible. When the situation gets normalized, the fight and flight response triggered in the body will come down and after some time his body will come down to a normal state.  

The sugar is also released by the liver when a person takes stress. For example, think of a person whose monthly salary is 50k and bought a house which EMI is 40k. Suddenly lockdown is announced and he thinks that he might lose his job. Thinking of the situation and coming household expenses and EMIs he started to take stress all the time. Brain cannot differentiate the physical and mental stress. So, as of normal process, it will send a signal to the liver to release more amount of glucose in the blood and ultimately his blood glucose level will increase.

In the same when most patients come to know that they were diagnosed with diabetes, initially they get scared and start to take unnecessary stress.

As mentioned above the Physiological aspect is very different from the psychological aspect of an increase in blood glucose level. In the former diet is responsible for the increase in blood sugar level and later stress is responsible for the increase in blood sugar level. 

Can stress responses be reversed or managed?

• When we take stress, we tend to visualize the situation and scenario. The chain of events that is playing like a movie in our mind persists for a long time. Whenever we come across the same situation or the same type of situation the dots are connected from the previous events and the chain of visualizing the events starts again.
• This chain of events drastically increases the blood glucose level. This increase in blood glucose cannot be countered with a change in diet because diet plays no role in increasing the blood glucose level over here. 
• The only way to counter the issue is to avoid overthinking and taking unnecessary stress. This can be achieved by meditation, spending some quality time with family or friends, working on personal hobbies, etc. 
• You should be doing things that make you happy and stress-free. 

Diabexy stands with you in every step of diabetes reversal. Our expert team of doctors and dieticians will guide you on the path of diabetes reversal. We also provide free consultation, if you have any quarry or want to know more about diabetes, feel free to contact us. We also manufacture and sell a wide range of food products specially designed for diabetics and pre-diabetic individuals with low glycemic load to ensure an effective alternative in diabetes management and reversal.