Type II Diabetes? Why Stress Might be the Culprit.
November is Diabetes Awareness Month.
According to the CDC, 95% of people with diabetes (roughly 37 million people) have type II diabetes. Onset of type 11 diabetes can occur due to numerous lifestyle factors, including stress.
When your body is under stress, your nervous system enters fight-or-flight which sends a signal to the brain to produce cortisol. Cortisol’s job is to prepare the body for battle and one of the ways it does so is by increasing the amount of sugar in your blood. If you are truly face-to-face with a threat, this is a good thing! Your body will use this sugar to meet the physical demands associated with fight-or-flight. However, if you are not actually under threat and there is no physical response needed, this sugar just hangs around in your blood with no place to go. Overtime this hyperactive stress response can cause a build up of blood sugar, leading to diabetes. This might help explain why routine exercise is particularly helpful in managing diabetes. When you exercise, your muscles experience metabolic change and need more energy-so they will use up the extra sugar floating in your bloodstream.
Additional lifestyle factors to consider are ones that help reduce the production of cortisol such as adequate sleep, decreased caffeine intake and a balanced diet…all of which I am sure you’ve heard before and maybe even tried to implement. However, knowing you need to restful sleep and actually HAVING restful sleep are two very different things.
Unless you are properly managing your stress, it is going to be almost impossible to implement these lifestyle factors in a meaningful way. When our bodies are chronically stressed, our physiological state does not allow for restful sleep as our nervous system is on high alert. And what do we need to function after a bad night’s sleep? Caffeine. Except, excessive caffeine intake continues to simulate the fight-or-flight response, contributing to elevated stress levels. When it’s time to eat, the stressed out body seeks fatty, sugary comfort foods as this is our body trying to keep us save with extra calories in case we need to fight-or-flight. By now, I hope the picture I am painting is coming together…stress management is imperative to chronic disease management. Without proper stress management, you may just be temporarily masking symptoms of diabetes NOT managing the symptoms of diabetes.
Tools like biofeedback and other stress management techniques act as the emergency brake your nervous system needs to stop this unproductive cycle that very well may be contributing to diabetes or other health related diseases.
*Signs and symptoms of diabetes may not be as obvious as you might think. If you are experiencing any of the following or suspect you may have diabetes, you should immediately consult with your doctor. This includes but is not limited to: poor wound healing (check the bottom of your feet and in between your toes), fatigue, pins and needles, blurry vision, frequent urination (especially at night), and unquenchable thirst.
