Can Stress Raise Your Blood Sugar Levels?
According to the CDC, there is an estimate of 34.2 million people who are currently struggling with diabetes – that’s about 10.5% of the US population. When trying to comprehend these numbers, we might find ourselves in a mist of stress and anxiety. Without knowing, we might be unknowingly triggering our blood sugar levels. You might be thinking, can stress raise your blood sugar levels? Let’s see.
The CDC also estimated that around 7.3 million people may have diabetes but have not been diagnosed just yet. That’s almost twice the population of the island of Puerto Rico. Concerning numbers to keep in mind.
How Can Stress Raise Your Blood Sugar Levels?
In this modern-day era, we have stress running down our veins in our everyday lives. Most of us live a fast-paced life full of requirements and limitations. For those of us who struggle with diabetes, a busy and agitated day can end up being a battle between our bodies and mind.
Stress is a state of mind that develops as a result of how one interacts with specific events. It is the body’s ability to respond to an issue and prepare itself to face a challenging situation with emphasis, resilience, and mental clarity.
Stress happens when the body finds itself trapped in the fight-or-flight scenario, and it operates as if it was under attack.
Once your body has recognized the red flags of stress, it then starts sending signals throughout your entire system to produce more hormones. These hormones, that have been released into the bloodstream, are responsible for speeding up the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. With this, what the body is trying to do is to make fat, stored energy and glucose available to cells. That means that insulin isn’t always able to distribute additional energy into cells, therefore glucose builds up in the blood, making stress raise your blood sugar levels.
People who are stressed out may notice many of the symptoms listed below:
• Anxiety or panic attacks
• A sense of being continuously pressured, hassled, and rushed
• Mood swings
• Increase in depressive episodes
• Insomnia
• Alcohol abuse
• Overreacting
• Smoking
• And drug abuse
What Happens When Your Blood Sugar Is High?
When glucose levels are elevated, this is known as hyperglycemia. Stress may be a big player when it comes to hyperglycemia, but along with that comes other potential health factors. Sleep, diet, productivity, they’re all important in keeping a blood glucose level where it is supposed to be at. It’s okay if it’s not always on the number that you’re aiming for, we’re not perfect, but aiming to have those numbers as close as to what our doctors recommend, that is an essential key.
Hyperglycemia symptoms include:
• Blurred vision
• Dry mouth
• Excessive thirst
• Stomach pain
• Drowsiness
• Feeling sick
• Nausea
• Tiredness
• Being hungry or not wanting to eat anything at all
• Confusion
• Fruity breath
• Unconsciousness
If your blood sugar stays on an elevated level for an extended time, there can be dangerous outcomes such as a DKA which stands for diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a life-threatening problem for people who struggle with diabetes. Ketoacidosis can cause kidney failure, cardiac arrest and cerebral edema. The skin of the individual might also have a high, concentrated smell – almost toxic – of a fuel called ketones. Ketones are what the liver would normally turn into fat at a normal rate, but when ketoacidosis is in place, ketones start producing themselves too quickly, and they end up in the blood. In the blood, these ketones become toxic by making the blood acid, which oftentimes has a particular and toxic smell, as I stated before. This smell is alarming because you can feel it coming from the person suffering from this complication. Acid in the bloodstream is extremely dangerous because it can severely damage the internal organs and eventually cause death.
What To Do?
So, to answer the question of how can stress raise your blood sugar levels? I think we have an amplified idea of what stress is capable of doing to our bodies, right? But what can we do to give ourselves an extra boost to prevent those high blood sugar levels and manage our stress? Here are a few alternatives that can help.
• Blood Sugar Support – Natural, Gluten-free, and Non-GMO. This supplement is focused on 20 herbs (such as cinnamon, banaba leaf) along with multiple vitamin blends. It supports overall wellness besides helping you manage your blood glucose and keeping it at a recommended level.
• Glucocil – This supplement is said to reduce the liver’s sugar production along with reducing sugar absorption from food. It contains 14 clinically researched ingredients that are known to help support normal blood sugar and overall wellness.
• Anti Anxiety and Stress Relief Supplement – This supplement is said to be 100% natural. It helps reduce the feeling of anxiety and stress.
• Glucose Meter – Keep up with your sugar levels. Highly important.
• Ketone Strips – Important to know if there’s any ketones in your urine. Ketones are toxic.
If you need to talk with a certified therapist about your stress or any other mental health feeling that is uncommon in your life, please visit Online-Therapy right now to match with a certified therapist that will be able to help you throughout this journey.
I have been discovering with my own experience how stress can cause hyperglycemia. It’s definitely something to be careful of. I will try to avoid my body from sending the red flags of stress to my system to produce more hormones. That’s not easy to avoid, but I will try my best. Thanks for calling my attention to this.
I hope this was, somehow, a good source of information and precaution if you’re dealing with diabetes, or to simply manage your stress so it doesn’t target your sugar levels even if you’re not diabetic.
Yes, I believe that stress can cause blood sugar levels to rise.
I don’t have diabetes, but I have had to fight a battle between my body and my mind.
As humans, we are occasionally confronted with unfamiliar situations that can cause stress.My main concern is how much stress might harm one’s mental health in terms of our body’s ability to respond to an issue and prepare for a difficult situation.
Thankfully, my stress drove me to become hooked on drinking and smoking, but I was able to overcome all of these obstacles.
I believe I have overcome by positive thinking and today I am no longer bound by drinking and smoking.Furthermore, I believe I would use Glucocil to limit sugar absorption because I consume a lot of sugar, despite the fact that I dislike it. I also don’t want to get sick from sugar. And, of course, the glucose meter will be of great use to me.
Thank you very much.
Hi Lionel!
Thank you very much for sharing your story. Stress is a powerful method that can be strongly used against our mind and bodies. Stress can lead to skin breakouts, high blood pressure, weight gain, and so on. It’s important to keep ourselves in check, just in case we start noticing the uncommon. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing conditions around our population so it’s always a good idea to monitor our glucose from time to time, even if you don’t have diabetes.
Wow, I didn’t know that there is actually a link between stress and higher blood sugar levels. I thought that our blood sugar levels are based on how much sugar we take into our bodies. Thank you for going into detail about how stress affects our blood sugar levels. I learned something new from reading this article.
Yes, stress can raise our blood sugar levels and so can many things besides sugar. The type 1 diabetic body does not produce any type of insulin so there’s no way of it to control blood glucose.
thank you for this article, i use to think of increase in sugar as a result of wrong diet and probably hereditary. I never attributed stress as one of the causes. But it is obvious that I must take cognizance of the stress level of my body, I must appreciate the blood sugar supports you highlighted. Top of it is that they are organically based substances
Stress changes your whole system, but yes it’s important to keep your blood sugar in check.
Hello – I have been a victim of stress and I completely agree with the information included throughout the post and that it can lead to other symptoms as a result. It is best to deal with it effectively before it can get out of hand.
Stress can happen anytime and to anyone so I’m glad that you mentioned taking natural supplements which can be effective and even breathing exercises too which helped me a lot:) Many thanks.
So glad that I can be able to help in any way that I can. Stress is inevitable but there are many ways in which we can learn to handle it.
In this modern age, there are so many ways in which our blood sugar levels can go up. But one of the most dangerous for me is stress. I have arrived to the conclusion that I need to take an anti anxiety and stress relief supplement. It’s really a must for those of us that have been trying to make ends meet during this pandemic.
Taking care of our health is crucial. Hope you’re doing alright.
Thank you for this well written article about stress and its consequences. I learned a lot about how it impacts our health and how bad it is. Nowadays stress is a real problem as well as sugar because we consume more sugar than ever before. Now on top of that I discovered that stress raises our blood sugar levels too! I will be much more attentive to the red flags and try to avoid stress in my life.
After reading your post, the first thing I will do is to buy a Glucose Meter. It’s vital to keep up with my sugar levels. I didn’t know that stress had such a direct impact on blood sugar levels. But now that I know it, I will be careful. Thankfully I haven’t experienced most of the symptoms of high blood sugar.
It’s always great to keep an eye out for our blood glucose levels. We may not even put one and one together as to how we might be feeling, but having something to discard any possible episodes of high blood sugar is a good alternative just to be cautious.