How Stress Contributes to High Blood Sugar

Everyone is affected by stress at one time or another. Evolutionarily, humans experienced stress as brief, intense events, such as running from predictors such as a lion. Stress, as the fight-or-flight response, would kick in to help save our lives, but once we reached safety, we returned to our normal state. However, today very few of us are running from lions, rather our boss, our neighbor, or the upcoming interview are the stress that permeate our lives, and for some, never quite seems to go away. It is important to understand that stress is subjective; it starts in the head, and it doesn’t matter whether other people understand it or not. Prolonged stress, of any kind, can negatively impact our health.

For humans in the wild or in the modern day, an acute stressful event triggers a cascade of hormones. This cascade ensures there is enough sugar available in the blood stream for muscles to utilize in case we need to run away.

During stress, insulin levels fall (the hormone that pulls glucose out of the blood), while adrenaline and cortisol levels rise (the hormones that make us alert and awake) in order to release more glucose (sugar) into the blood stream. Whenever adrenaline rises, so too does glucose levels. Cortisol releases the storage form of glucose, called glycogen, into the blood stream. Over time, if cortisol is released too often it leads to down regulation of glucose uptake into muscle cells (from insulin resistance), which over time, can also lead to a reduction in muscle mass. This excess sugar that keeps getting forced into the blood stream from stress hormones is forced to get taken up into fat cells, to be stored as energy for later, causing us to gain weight.

It is indeed evident that prolonged, chronic stress can contribute to metabolic dysfunction, in the form of weight gain and insulin resistance.  In some situations, stress can lead to weight loss mainly due to a loss of appetite.

This is why it is important to implement ways to reduce stress in your day if you want to experience optimal health. Although stress is helpful in small bouts, and we don’t want it to go away completely, if left to run rampant it can be harmful. 

By Melanie Luther, CHN, MS