The Stress/Blood Sugar Connection

Oh stress.

You evil doer.

The shadow lurking around every corner of your life so it seems, affecting everything from your sleep, to your gut function, to your emotional health and......... your blood sugar.

There's so much to talk about when it comes to blood sugar. But for todays post, I'm going to focus on the stress connection because it's something we can ALL relate to, can't escape AND, I don't think it's something that comes to mind when we're talking about blood sugar. 

Blood Sugar, A Review

Just to bring you up to speed here's a little review of how it all works inside that beautiful body of yours......

Blood sugar in the body is a balancing act of many parts. Your hormones are designed to work as a team with each other. When you eat, food enters the digestive tract and the pancreas is signaled to release insulin to get the cells ready to receive all of the sugar as it gets digested and processed. Next the pancreas sends out a signal to glucagon to tell your cells to stop taking in sugar so levels don't get scarce. This is no bueno.

If your system slows to a crawl and your cells don't get that sugar, then it sits in your blood stream. Uh oh.

Enter Insulin resistance. This is what happens when the signal is flashing, but the cells are ignoring it.  In your body this is inflammation. There becomes soooo much of it blocking the cells that the important stuff can't get in. Oh there's insulin hanging out for sure, but nothing happens when its released. Result? A butt load of sugar and insulin in your blood stream.

Insulin resistance is the creeper who slowly over time hides in the shadows until one day he's at your front door. It happens slowly over time and you don't have a clue until he arrives.

Aside from cells from the liver, fat tissue and muscles (they take the hits because they are the major stars of energy usage and storage.), your brain is affected. You see you've got these very sensitive cells that love and need insulin. They depend on blood sugar to keep on a truckin. So if now the brain is insulin resistant- food intake, body weight, reproduction, learning, memory are all affected. 

And here's how you'll feel: Foggy, unfocused and scatterbrained. Like a bad hangover without the fun of indulging in your fave beverage.

• Your cup of jo won't work
• You crave sugar like a vampire craves blood in the afternoon and evenings and it is ferocious!

If not addressed, you're looking at type 2 diabetes and possibly metabolic syndrome if you don't get to it and take care of it. And PLEASE know ........this is not just those who are over weight. Even slim folks can become insulin resistant. 

So now let's talk stress and it's role in this horror movie.

Stress and Blood Sugar

So if you've been reading my blog for a while, I've talked about hormones and cortisol. If you haven't, read here to get a bit more intel on cortisol.

So in these crazy lives we live with all the stress, cortisol is gettin released on fricken repeat. The increase in cortisol has a direct influence on insulin and our fat cells.

If you've got too much insulin, then you've got even more cortisol, which then causes more insulin resistance and more insulin production, which then gets cortisol even more revved up. It's vicious folks.

So you're stressed, chronically stressed and cortisol is high. The fatty tissue releases inflammatory proteins. Those proteins make the skeletal muscle and liver cells less sensitive to insulin. And to make matters worse, the high levels of cortisol also make you want to shove more food in. Yikes!

This leads to  "central fat" or abdominal fat to increase over time which then leads to more insulin resistance. It's a serious hamster wheel we need to get off of .......like yesterday.

So like I have said a gazillion times before, you have got to find ways to manage your stress. I don't care what you choose. Find ways to chill that works for you. But you've got to do it. Don't make plans in your head to do it. DO IT.

For ways to reduce stress read here where I give you a nice list of ideas.

Now stop reading and go get your chill on. Like now.

xoxo

Shannon