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Diabetes and Stress

Our life’s stress is usually received from one of two places. The first is external like our careers, our marriages and family life problems and often financial or health problems. The second source of stress in most people’s lifes is internal such as how we perceive and respond to those external events. If you are a diabetic you have a metabolic disease that can if not cure you at least allow you to live a normal and comfortable life. That being said three things need to be monitored to keep your blood sugars in control and they are diet, exercise and supplementations or medications.

Most people who have diabetes tend to concentrate on the three things above but there is another important aspect that must also be considered and that is stress. Although often the health-care individuals who assist people who are diabetic…they often fail to consider the importance of stress on blood sugar levels. This can often be a fatal error for in the long run the treatment plan and medications may still fail to work if stress levels are not reduced or eliminated if possible.

People under stress tend to be unable to cope with a normal routine and day to day routines. Medications are often forgotten or just ignored as unimportant in the overall scheme of things. Often under stress individuals tend to smoke more and drink more and both are detrimental to controlling blood sugar levels. Another thing that is often neglected when people are seriously stressed is exercise and activity which also is unwise for diabetic patients.

If an individual is stressed the body must work harder to cope and one way it does this is to release hormones. These released hormones can have a direct effect on the levels of blood glucose in your body. The effect on blood glucose levels in stressed patients is more mixed than those in type 2 where the stress often increases the blood glucose levels dangerously. Also the stress hormones could play a part in blocking release of insulin to the blood. Diabetics and health care professionals have to take notice of stress and eliminate, avoid or lessen stress around them if the insulin and medications, diet and exercise are going to be beneficial in the long run.

There are two type of stress as will acute which is sudden often unavoidable such as getting dumped by your girlfriend and chronic that can go on and last for long periods of time and even reoccur. This is especially troublesome to a diabetic for it continuously pumps extra insulin into the bloodstream at a rate that the body cannot cope with.

Although we cannot totally eliminate stress in our life there are some things we can do to control and keep stress to a manageable level. Instead of worrying about things we have little control over we can focus more on how we can respond to these problems or events. The ability to control attitude, calm bodily reactions and functions to stress and make the best possible rational choice in any circumstance is in all of us. Our ultimate goal as a diabetic should be to mobilize all the resources available to help deal with stress in a positive manner.

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