Can Stress Cause Diabetes?

can stress cause diabetes we know that stress can cause all sorts of health

problems but is it possible that it could contribute to the development of

diabetes today we're going to talk about what stresses what the stress response

is and we're going to talk about how all of this relates to the causative factors

of diabetes so before we're done today you're going to have a clear picture of

how it all works coming right up

I'm doctor Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if

you'd like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

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miss anything in the discussion about diabetes about cause and prevention we

often hear things about diet and we hear about weight and we hear about exercise

but very rarely do we hear about stress so let's talk about how that all works

together first of all we want to talk about what is stress because most people

have a very limited idea of what stress is we think of stress as feeling

overwhelmed feeling frustrated having more things to do than there is time in

the day then that causes a feeling of stress having multiple things going on

at once and yes absolutely that is stress but stress is much much more than

that those things we talk about usually

that's just the tip of the iceberg stress is anything that increases the

demand on the body anytime something happens that the body has to do

something extra that is stress when the body detects when your nervous system

detects any sore sort of threat or anything that it has to deal with

anything it has to pay attention anything it has to do something about it

creates a stress response so it's not the stress that really matters what

matters is the stress because that's a physiological reaction

that's something that happens in the body so let's say that we are having a

picnic and we're enjoying our food and then all of a sudden a grizzly bear

comes charging across the field heading straight for us

we are gonna have a pretty strong stress response at this point I would bet so

now our adrenals first your nervous system detects the danger then it starts

sending messages for your body to ramp up its defenses and now the adrenal

glands have to start working harder that's why adrenal glands are involved

with stress because adrenal glands make various hormones the primary stress the

acute stress hormone is called adrenaline it is a instantaneously

acting it is so important that it's fast that there are actually no synapses

between the brain and the adrenal gland so the adrenal gland is in a sense it's

an extension of your nervous system there are no connections in between it

has to happen that fast and now when we release some adrenaline then our heart

rate goes up because when the bear comes charging we're gonna have to have a lot

of extra resources we're gonna run we have to fight we need more oxygen more

fuel so the heart beats faster and the blood pressure goes up because we need

to move that blood faster and that's what higher blood pressure does we're

also going to get an increase in muscle tension so when we get ready to jump and

run we need some muscle tone so the body starts preparing that instantaneously

and it dominates the muscle tension in the flexors in the things that that bend

and protect us on the front of the body so we bend our arms kinda like in a

defensive posture we pull our shoulders up to the ears to protect the neck we

clench our jaw to protect the teeth and the jaw so all of these if

you've noticed people being tense when they're stressed these are all stress

responses and even though there is no even if there's no grizzly bear around

at the time if we have any form of significant stress we're gonna exhibit

those same behaviors because it's built in we're wired that way then we're gonna

also have some other things happening like we're gonna get an increase in LDL

the body is gonna up regulate the LDL production because low-density

lipoprotein cholesterol is necessary for repairs and if we have a fight if we

have a bear if we have some thorny bushes if we get injured during the

fight then the body wants to repair that as soon as possible so it up regulates

that LDL because LDL cholesterol is part of wound healing it's part of every

cell membrane so if we're going to repair those we need that stuff so we

don't really have a choice this happens instantaneously and why does the body do

that well it's to keep us alive obviously and stress and stress

responses are not a bad thing they help us survive the people who have lost this

ability people who have Addison's disease their adrenals are completely

shot they have they're sitting ducks they have no ability to respond to

stress and it is very very dangerous but for our purposes what we want to talk

about today is cortisol this kicks in in just a few seconds later the first stuff

happens in in milliseconds but a few seconds later the body also increases

cortisol production because when we have a fight when we have an increased need

whether it's real or imagined then we're going to want more energy which means

more blood sugar and cortisol the purpose of cortisol is to increase blood

sugar and why is that in for diabetes because we have in diabetes

it's about blood sugar it's about insulin and it becomes about cortisol

because cortisol raises blood sugar and therefore it also triggers insulin the

thing to understand about stress though is that like we said it's usually

underestimated what stress is we think of it as this emotional stress but

stress is when your physiology responds and you have something called a

sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system the sympathetic is your

stress response that's the fight flight and the other branch the other half of

that autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic which is your feed breed

it's your healing side so today though we're just going to talk about the

sympathetic and to understand that you don't have to feel it to have a stress

response that anytime that your sympathetic nervous system kicks in

anytime that you have an increase in heart rate increase in blood pressure

increase in muscle tension you are having a stress response whether you

think you do whether you're aware of it or not and this could be an acute

stressor it could be something that you have experienced recently or it could be

a past trauma it could be something that was very very significant very severe

very enduring that even though you got past it it's sort of lodged in the body

it became a habit that it lasted so long it became sort of like your default

baseline and these traumas could be of a physical nature it could be a physical

trauma could be an emotional trauma or it could be a chemical trauma could be a

poisoning could be chemotherapy could be a long-standing exposure to something

toxic so any of these things can cause a sympathetic reaction a fight/flight

response it could cause a stress response and again

most of these were not aware of probably 80% of these stress responses that

change physiology that changed these things they go by completely unnoticed

either because we're not paying attention or because it just so familiar

to us that it's just been that way for so long that that's just the way it is

and when we have these chronic stresses when we develop a chronic stress pattern

also called a sympathetic dominance we tend to produce cortisol at a higher

level for longer periods of time like a higher baseline activity and they've

done some studies where they give healthy people who are not insulin

resistant they're very insulin sensitive they inject cortisol into their bodies

also the medical version of that the drug version is called cortisone and

within days two weeks they have measurable changes in insulin resistance

and they start gaining weight even if they never had a problem with that

before and there's probably thousands of you watching who have been on cortisone

you had some sort of pain or inflammation and they gave you cortisone

or prednisone or one of those zones and that's just a synthetic version of

cortisol and it will raise blood sugar even though the purpose of it is to

control inflammation it will raise blood sugar it will increase insulin

resistance and it will increase weight so a lot of you probably recognize that

pattern even if you didn't know it before that your blood sugar went crazy

you gained weight and you might even have become diabetic or pre-diabetic as

a result so this is very well documented but it's it's rarely given the attention

that it deserves so that's what stress is that's what a stress response is it's

a sympathetic activation it's an activation of the sympathetic portion of

your nervous system whether you're aware of it or not now what are the cause

positive factors of diabetes well diabetes is the late stage result it's

the far-gone version of insulin resistance and insulin resistance is

when the cells of your body resist insulin why would they do that because

you've had too much insulin for a long period of time trying to put blood sugar

out of the bloodstream and into the cell and the cell doesn't want it and that's

been going on for a while the cells start resisting so the variables the

causative factors for diabetes are blood sugar when blood sugar goes up insulin

goes up if that happens a lot the cells become resistant eventually and so blood

sugar and insulin go together and now we understand based on what we talked about

that cortisol because it the purpose of cortisol is to raise blood sugar it will

stimulate insulin it will increase insulin resistance those are the basic

causative factors the variables involved and very very often in the discussion we

hear that oh well you know you just need to control your calories and you just

need to lose weight and you need to eat low fat and all these things but they

have it backwards because dietary fat we we've been scared that's been demonized

we have a fat phobia because we see the fat on the body so we think that the fat

on the body is the cause and we think that it's about calories but dietary fat

does not trigger insulin it is almost a zero insulin response it's like 1% of

what a carbohydrate would be so dietary fat does not cause this and what about

body fat we see that the fat on the body and we associate overweight people have

more diabetes that's called a correlation and then they say that well

you know you should lose some weight and then typically diabetes gets better

because they see thinner people have less diabetes but again they get it

backwards it's not the cause it's the effect body fat is not the cause of

insulin resistance it's the result of insulin resistance so we have to start

understanding it's not all that complicated that's very very basic

physiological principles blood sugar goes up insulin goes up cells start

resisting so the things that increased blood sugar are the ones to avoid so

then back to the question can stress cause diabetes because we know cortisol

raises blood sugar which can drive insulin resistance but can it really

cause diabetes in and of itself so I think it is unlikely that if that was

the only problem that that would cause diabetes but with everything else that's

going on with the majority of the population already having some degree of

insulin resistance now stress becomes a very very significant

factor so we want to look at the lifestyle factors and diet is huge

genetics is huge but we don't really have much influence over what we got we

can express it differently through diet activity and stress but these are the

things that we have to work with diet activity and stress levels so one by

itself they're all important and if you already have sort of a tendency then any

one of these will push you over the edge so if you're pre-diabetic and you keep

eating lots of carbohydrates and you have a sedentary lifestyle and you have

a lot of stress then it's very very likely that you will become diabetic and

if you just change one of them you're not doing as much for yourself as if you

improved all three of them and then the question of course is how do you reduce

stress how do you reduce is all and that's a huge big topic I'm

not going to get into a lot of details so let's just very briefly mention that

a stable blood sugar is key because anytime your blood sugar is low if

you're hypoglycemic if you are depending on a carbohydrate metabolism and you

skip a meal now your cortisol is gonna have to kick in and raise that blood

sugar and now you're having that stress if you are fat adapted it's not a

problem to miss a meal because you don't rely on blood sugar to the same degree

so stable blood sugar being fat adapted having a low carb lifestyle is key in

controlling this and then of course reducing stress so regular sleep

meditation relaxation breathing exercises all of those are fantastic

things and we'll talk more about them in in other videos but it's just too big a

topic for this one here breathing exercises are very powerful I've done a

couple of videos on that specifically to explain how that works the key with a

breathing exercise to reduce stress is to make the in-breath and the out-breath

about the same length they should be about four to five seconds and the

out-breath should be if anything just a little bit longer than the in-breath but

most people breathe 18 to 20 times per second and when we need to relax when we

do a therapeutic relaxation we need to slow that down to about 6 breaths a

minute to get this effect and then of course any other lifestyle changes if

you have a job that's really really stressful then you either need to do

more of this or you need to figure out maybe if you can find another job or

another situation in life so we can do certain things to change our our

environment and our adaptation and then the rest of it becomes to improve the

bodies health so that it can deal with this we have

done some other videos on brain and stress and I'll do some more on on that

specifically if you enjoy this information and you like to learn more

about how the body really works and how to get as healthy as possible make sure

that you check out our other videos on insulin resistance and I will see you in

the next video thanks for watching