Living with diabetes can cause stress, which can sometimes be a barrier to effective glucose control. Stress hormones can directly affect glucose levels. You feel stress – you feel threatened – your body reacts (wants to defend itself or run away) and this raises hormone levels and triggers nerve cells. During this reaction, adrenaline and cortisol are released into the bloodstream and the respiratory rate increases, and if you are diabetic, your body accumulates glucose in the bloodstream. Constant stress from blood glucose problems tires you out mentally and physically, and this certainly makes it harder to treat diabetes. Stress affects people differently; their mental and physical response. People with type 2 diabetes most often have their glucose levels rise under mental stress. People with type 1 diabetes experience an increase or decrease in blood glucose. When you experience physical stress most often glucose levels rise for both types of diabetes. You can try to determine whether stress affects glucose levels. Check what situations trigger stress (for example, are you more stressed on Monday morning). You need to record the amount of blood sugar in moments of stress for a period of time, assess the level of stress and keep records. Maybe such monitoring will help reduce stressful situations.
Stress has a negative impact on mental and emotional well-being as well as physical health. Recognizing its symptoms will help identify stress and take steps to manage it. A stressed person may experience symptoms such as headache, muscle tension and pain, desire to sleep all the time, insomnia, permanent fatigue, unexplained feeling of sickness. Such a person feels unmotivated, irritable, depressed, anxious. It often happens that stressed people begin to behave differently: they withdraw from family and friendships, eat too much or too little, abuse alcohol, smoke more, act in anger. How to lower stress levels. Meditation can help remove negative thoughts and relax. Consider starting your morning with a 15-minute meditation. You’ll do it for your benefit. Sit in a chair with your feet firmly planted on the floor and your eyes closed (or in a Turkish position on the carpet). Recite a mantra that makes sense to you (e.g., I’m going to have a good day, I feel at peace with the world, bad is over, etc.) Push away all thoughts and be alone with yourself. If you find yourself in an uncomfortable emotional state, take five minutes to be alone. Find a quiet place to focus on your breathing. Place your hand on your abdomen and feel it rise and fall. Inhale deeply and exhale slowly and loudly. This will slow your heartbeat and help bring you back to a stable emotional state. It only takes five minutes. If you feel stressed about your diabetes, know that you are not alone.
You can connect with people online or in your community for solidarity and support
These short meditation sessions and breathing exercises are worth incorporating into your daily routine, because although diabetes is a broad set of challenges, it is possible to manage it effectively. And such a short, active but daily approach to stress can help ease the tension in your life. Good luck. Image: Jill Wellington from Pixabay
