Stress!!!! and Diabetes.
Do your blood sugars respond to food? Of course. How about to insulin? And exercise? A big “hell yes” to those, too. Food, insulin, and exercise have tangible influence on my blood sugar levels. But one influencer that I don’t often take into account is stress … which is a ridiculous variable for me to ignore because stress can make my blood sugars leap over tall basal rates in a single bound.
Oh look – a video!
How does stress change the mapping of your blood sugars?
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Stress Definitely affects my BGs. When my mom was alive, and we would speak on the phone, I would see my BGs soar. Once off the phone, they gradually came down on their own. I have to take a deep breath and wait before bolusing for these moments. The occasions when I have bolused because of a stress high (didn’t know that was why at the time), my BG would drop to a dangerously low range. It’s hard to wait those stress highs out. Then am I getting stressed more because I am already stressed?
Thank you for posting about this.
Having Diabetes IS a cause of stress
that’s my story and I’m sticking to it !
I know that story! 🙂
As I swerved to avoid a deer on the road today (I made it!) I drove off thinking… I wonder what I need to bolus for that? If only we had a I:S ratio we could use (insulin to stress). I guess pre-bolusing for these sorts of events is a bit out of the question unless you happen to have a psychic side kick.
Thanks for the great take on this challenging aspect of D management. As always, Kerri, you make me realize i’m not alone in these struggles.
Yes! Being stressed makes me more stressed because of the I:S ratio. Managing stress is a full time job along with a full time (paying) job on top of the full time job of being T1. That’s a lot of jobs! Blah!
I’m glad you wrote this because I feel like less of an idiot for only having recently realized the impact of stress, even though I’ve had diabetes since forever. A few years ago, I had a nightmare afternoon with my kids that upset me to the point where I spent an hour in my car weeping and wailing before heading back to work. At one point I believe I yelled at a parking attendant who was on the verge of ticketing me for not having paid to park while I sat there crying my eyes out, but that’s another story. My blood sugar soared into the 400’s and parked there for a while and it was like a lightning bolt hit me…oh yeah…remember all those times you read the lists of all the things that could affect your blood sugar? Wasn’t stress one of them? This seems to me to be the hardest variable of all because how do you measure the damn thing and doesn’t it hit you just when you need to be at your best? Not fair.