Stress raises blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood fats and interferes with good diabetes management.Stress isn't healthy for anybody, however it has particular ramifications for people with diabetes. Whether physical (illness or injury) or mental (feeling underneath the gun at work, fretting on the sick child, etc.), stress increases your heartbeat and raises your blood pressure, which could put you at and the higher chances for heart disease.
It also stimulates appetite, interferes with sleep, causes sexual dysfunctions, and triggers anxiety, depression, and fatigue. All this takes its toll on your body and your diabetes management. Chronic stress may even suppress your immunity and cause bone loss.
Perhaps the most surprising news, however, is that stress directly affects blood sugar levels. Richard S. Surwit, PhD, vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and chief of the Division of Medical Psychology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, has studied the impact of stress on diabetes for more than twenty years. Surwit says that in individuals with diabetes, stress, depression, and general psychological state greatly influence blood sugar levels. The good news? Learning to control stress can actually have a positive impact on blood sugar.
Stress tricks your body into thinking it's under attack, therefore it goes into action preparing for combat or escape. This really is commonly referred to as "fight or flight." In the days of our distant ancestors, whenever a hunter faced a saber-tooth tiger lurking in the woods, his body released stress hormones that induced an appropriate rush of energy to enable him either to fight the tiger or run away.
The body still respond in this in an identical way, but now it takes place when we're stuck in traffic, concerned about creating a presentation at work, as well as under chronic stress from going through a divorce.
During a fightor-flight scenario, blood pressure level, heartbeat, breathing rate, muscle tension, and blood circulation to the muscles all increase. Stress hormones for example epinephrine (sometimes known as adrenaline) and cortisol are released to raise blood sugar levels in order to quickly boost the body's degree of energy, so sugar starts flooding the blood stream. In people without diabetes, the pancreas recognizes this surge in blood sugar levels and responds by secreting more insulin, which shuttles the sugar into the cells, where it's used as energy.
However when you have diabetes, you either lack insulin (as in type 1) or aren't able to produce enough for your needs (as in type 2). Thus, during stressful situations, your blood sugar remains high. Stress hormones may also suppress the pancreas's ability to secrete insulin, further undermining your capability to blunt the rise in glucose.
Relaxation techniques can lower stress, and blood sugar levels Imagine that you can protect yourself from starting fight-orflight mode, that is from having a surge of stress hormones elevate your blood sugar. Dr. Surwit's quarter-century of research on the mind-body connection, along with numerous studies conducted by universities round the world, proposes exactly this.
Just as our brain can trigger the fight-or-flight response, it can also reverse the effect; the body's parasympathetic nervous system can slow heartbeat, decrease blood pressure level, and increase insulin secretion. "We now know," says Surwit, "that we are able to use the power of our mind to influence the body, including normalizing blood sugar levels." In a Surwit study, 108 patients with type 2 diabetes learned specific way to relax to help them cope with stress. After one year, people who continued the relaxation technique had a 0.5 percent improvement in their A1C (average blood sugar over the past two or three months).
Although that seems a little improvement, Surwit says it's enough to lessen the risk for diabetes-related complications such as eye and kidney disease, and nearly another of the people in the study experienced improvements in their A1C of 1 percent or more. Most compelling, says Surwit, the technique worked for everybody, including people who initially didn't report that stress was a major factor in their lives.
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