How Stress Messes with Your Blood Sugar (and How to Fix It)

Did you know that when you're stressed, it affects more than just your mood? It can actually mess with your blood sugar! Let’s break it down in a way that's easy to understand.

What Happens When You Eat?

When you eat food, your body turns it into sugar (called glucose) that travels through your blood. This sugar is used as energy by your cells so you can run, think, and even sleep. But to get the sugar into your cells, you need a helper called insulin. Insulin is like a key that unlocks the door to your cells so the sugar can get inside.

Normally, when you eat, your body is in "rest mode" (the fancy term is parasympathetic mode), which means it’s calm and focusing on digesting food, storing energy, and keeping things in balance. Insulin is working just fine, letting sugar into your cells for energy.

How Stress Changes Everything

When you're stressed, your body goes into "fight-or-flight mode" (the sympathetic mode). This is like a survival mode that kicks in when you’re in danger, even if the danger is just an argument or too much traffic. Your body thinks it needs a lot of energy right now to deal with the stress, so it:

1. Releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.

2. Pumps more sugar into your blood to give you the energy to fight or run.

3. Stops using insulin well because it needs the sugar to stay in the blood, ready for action.

But if you're stressed all the time—whether it's from work, home, or even emotional worries—your body keeps releasing too much sugar into your blood, even when you don’t need it. This can cause a problem called glucose dysregulation, which means your body can’t control its sugar levels well.

Why Is This a Problem?

If there’s too much sugar in your blood for too long, your body becomes insulin resistant—this means your cells stop listening to insulin and refuse to let the sugar in. As a result, the sugar builds up in your blood instead of being used for energy. Over time, this can lead to problems like weight gain, feeling tired all the time, or even diabetes.

How Reducing Stress Can Help

The good news is, if stress causes the problem, calming down can help fix it! When you lower your stress, your body can switch back to "rest mode." Here’s what happens:

• Less stress hormone: Your body stops pumping out so much cortisol, so it doesn't need to keep extra sugar in your blood.

• Better insulin response: Your cells start listening to insulin again, which means they can take in sugar and use it for energy, just like they should.

How Resonate Wellness Can Help

At Resonate Wellness Chiropractic, special techniques are used to help your body handle stress better. Here's how they work:

• Neuro Emotional Technique (NET): This helps you deal with emotional stress by finding and releasing the stress your body holds onto. Once that stress is gone, your body can go back to being calm, which helps control blood sugar.

• Body Code: This technique finds out what’s causing imbalances in your body, like trapped emotions or energy blocks, and releases them. By doing this, it helps reduce the stress load on your body, so it can regulate blood sugar better.

• Quantum Neurology (QN): This helps repair and balance your nervous system, which is in charge of your stress response. When your nervous system is working well, your body doesn’t overreact to stress, helping keep your blood sugar balanced.

Stress can make it hard for your body to control blood sugar, but the great news is that reducing stress can help. With the right techniques, you can train your body to handle stress better, which can make a huge difference in keeping your energy steady and preventing long-term problems with blood sugar.

Want a deeper dive? Keep reading… Glucose Dysregulation and Stress: A Detailed Overview