Impact of Trauma and Stress on Blood Glucose Levels

Trauma and stress are your body’s natural response to distressing and demanding pressures to protect itself. The two have important differences, but both can impact blood sugar. If the thought of blood sugar management makes you stressed, take a deep breath and know you’re not alone. Stress is something everyone experiences, but there are ways to manage it. This article will help you understand how trauma and stress affect blood glucose and give you tools to manage the three.

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Stress vs. Trauma

While stress and trauma can refer to physical damage to your body, like a broken bone, in this article, we’ll focus on the effects of psychological stress and trauma. The difference between stress and trauma lies primarily in the severity and duration of the effects.

What Is Stress?

Psychological stress is how your body responds to new and difficult situations. It’s a normal response to emotional strain or pressure that can enhance and inhibit performance depending on the situation. Here are three main types of psychological stress:

• Acute Stress: This is an immediate and short-lived response to specific situations. You might experience this type of stress the night before a presentation you have to give at work, walking into a networking event, or your kid’s first time driving alone. Acute stress can be motivating but eventually detrimental if experienced too frequently.
• Chronic Stress: In today’s world, we are experiencing an increasing amount of chronic stress, usually defined as persistent stress that occurs over a long period. A stressful environment at home, a difficult boss at work, or concerns about money, health, or relationships can cause chronic stress. 
• Eustress: The opposite of distress, eustress is positive pressure that motivates and excites us to overcome challenges and strive towards goals. You might experience eustress while traveling to a new place, starting a new job, or preparing for a competition.

What Is Trauma?

Trauma is not a part of everyday stress, but extreme stress can lead to it. Trauma is defined as an experience of extreme stress or shock. Trauma has effects on the brain and nervous system, which can linger for years after the event. Extremely distressing events like violence, the death of loved ones, or natural disasters can cause mental health problems and trauma. 

How Can Trauma and Stress Impact Blood Glucose?

The relationship between blood glucose levels, trauma, and stress is complex and multifaceted. Stress can directly impact blood glucose levels by activating the body's stress response system, which releases hormones that can elevate blood glucose. Let’s dive into how this process works.

Stress Response Activation

The human body is designed to adjust its energy usage and storage in response to changing environmental demands, a process called glucose allostasis, which maintains internal homeostasis of glucose levels. When your body experiences external stressors, internal physiologic processes are triggered to prepare your body to meet the anticipated demands. This means glucose metabolism is altered in anticipation of a higher glucose need. 

The first step of this “fight or flight” survival mechanism is the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones increase heart rate, respiration, and glucose production in the liver. Cortisol, in particular, is key in stimulating the liver to produce glucose through gluconeogenesis. This leads to elevated blood glucose and lipid levels as the body prepares to provide extra energy for stressful situations.

This primal survival mechanism can be useful when you need an extra boost of energy to confront a stressful situation. However, chronic activation of the stress response in response to psychological stress causes an imbalance of energy availability in comparison to cellular energy demand. An overabundance of glucose and lipids in the bloodstream puts metabolic stress on the body, which can have a variety of negative health effects.

Cortisol & Metabolic Health

Cortisol is a crucial hormone for many physiological functions, including metabolism, immune response, blood sugar levels, and blood pressure. It can also cause problems with health if chronically elevated. Prolonged or chronic stress can lead to insulin resistance, where the body's cells become less responsive to insulin's effects. Insulin is necessary for glucose uptake by cells, so insulin resistance can increase blood glucose levels and worsen the cycle of metabolic stress.

Cortisol also significantly affects sleep quality, a key factor in maintaining balanced blood sugar. In normal hormone cycles, cortisol spikes in the morning to kickstart our day and then slowly decreases throughout the day until we sleep at night. When chronic stress is involved, though, cortisol is higher than normal throughout the day, interfering with sleep at night. Abnormal sleep patterns lead to dysregulated blood sugar, making us tired, hungry, and even more stressed!

Biological and behavioral responses to stress differ between individuals. Several factors like genetics, personal perception of stressors, and coping resources can influence how strong your physiologic stress response might be and how quickly you recover. But overall, the research shows us that stress has real effects on health, causing dysregulated glucose metabolism, neuroendocrine function, and chronic low grade inflammation. These factors significantly influence the development and progression of disease. Research has identified depression, chronic work stress, and early life adversity as risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

Trauma, Stress, and Healthy Habits

The direct effect of cortisol isn’t the only way trauma, stress, and blood glucose are connected. Stress and trauma can significantly alter how we take care of ourselves, which can make it harder to manage blood glucose. Here are some of the ways that stress and trauma can have an indirect effect on blood glucose by altering health behaviors:

Emotional Eating

Stress is associated with increased food intake in some individuals. Some individuals may cope with trauma or stress by engaging in emotional eating, which is when they consume comfort foods that are often high in sugar and carbohydrates. This can lead to spikes in blood glucose levels.

Self-Medicating

Sometimes, the negative emotions caused by stress and trauma can cause individuals to turn to substances like caffeine, sugar, drugs, and alcohol to find relief. These substances can strongly affect blood glucose levels, especially alcohol.

When you drink, your liver prioritizes processing the alcohol over releasing glucose, which causes hypoglycemia. This sharp drop in glucose can temporarily cause large swings in blood glucose levels. Frequent overconsumption of alcohol can have more serious effects on your body’s blood sugar regulation.

Disrupted Lifestyle Factors

Trauma or stress can also disrupt lifestyle factors such as sleep patterns, physical activity, and dietary habits, all of which can influence blood glucose levels. For example, lack of sleep and poor dietary choices can increase blood glucose levels.

Compromised Self-Care

Individuals experiencing trauma or high levels of stress may struggle to prioritize self-care activities, including monitoring and managing blood glucose levels effectively. This can exacerbate fluctuations in blood glucose levels.

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Managing Stress for Balanced Blood Sugar

Stress and trauma can seem impossible at times, but there are tried and true methods for managing them. That said, each person reacts to trauma and stressful situations differently and it’s important to find what management strategies work for you. Here are some strategies for coping with daily and traumatic stress.

• Remove Stressful Pressures: We often accept stressful conditions voluntarily because they allow us to reach our goals or live in alignment with our values. But sometimes, we don’t evaluate the necessity of these stressors, and they become a negative but normal part of our lives. Consider what stressors you might be able to remove from your day-to-day. It could involve restructuring your daily routine, work environment, or social life. It could be simply saying “no” to responsibility more often.
• Practice Self-Care: Healthy habits can sometimes take a backseat when we are dealing with stress or trauma. However taking the time to care for our body and mind can help us feel better and manage the stress. Eat healthy meals, sleep enough, exercise, and you’ll likely start to feel more in control of your stress.
• Follow a Routine as Much as Possible: Falling into a normal routine can stabilize your mental state and let your body know what to expect. Set consistent times for eating, going to bed, and waking up. Try to engage in activities you normally would, like working, exercising, and spending time with friends and family.
• Seek Help: Often, letting others help you manage stress or trauma is an essential part of improving your mental health and feeling better. Getting help from a trained professional can help you work through challenges that are too much to overcome on your own. Sharing your struggles with loved ones can also help you feel supported.

Learn to Manage Your Blood Glucose With Signos’ Expert Advice

Our blood glucose levels help us understand our metabolic health, a fundamental aspect of overall health and well-being. With Signos, continuous glucose monitoring is paired with expert advice to give personalized strategies for better metabolic health. Discover how Signos works and learn about the link between nutrition, blood glucose, and overall health on Signos’ blog. Not sure if Signos is right for you? Find out by taking a quick quiz.

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