International Diabetes Center > Diabetes Self-care > Emotional Health > Stress and Diabetes

Stress and diabetes

Unmanaged stress can harm a person's emotional and physical health.

Diabetes can add stress to your life. Monitoring your blood glucose, ensuring you eat and exercise on time and taking medications can be time-consuming and irritating.

It also works the other way around – stress can affect diabetes, making blood glucose levels difficult to control. Stress triggers emotional changes that can cause blood glucose to rise. In people with diabetes, these stress hormones may contribute to poor blood glucose control. This is not universal; however, some people experience lower blood glucose levels when they are under stress.

The best way to find out how stress affects your diabetes is to test your blood glucose level to see what happens. Because stress can change your level, you especially need to take care of your diabetes during stressful times. It is important to:

• eat healthily
• exercise regularly
• stay on your schedule of blood glucose monitoring and medications

Eating well and exercising helps keep your blood glucose levels in target; and it can help relieve stress, too. It is also important to find other healthy ways to manage stress to keep your blood glucose – and your life – in balance.

Find out more about ways to beat stress.