STRESS AND DIABETES
Another effect of chronic workplace stress for a claim adjuster to think about is stress and diabetes. Is your
blood sugar under control?
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a condition where the blood sugar level is higher than normal.
The pancreas lies at the back of the abdomen and has two main functions:
• to produce a juice that flows into the digestive system
to help us digest food.
• to produce the hormone called insulin.
Insulin is the key hormone that controls the flow of glucose
(sugar) in and out of the cells of the body.
There are two main types of diabetes disease.
Type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes) is caused by:
• a lack of insulin output because of damage to the
pancreas gland.
• Insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed by
cells that normally defend us from invading organisms.
This is called an ‘auto-immune’ process, referring to the fact the body appears to turn against itself.
Type 1 diabetes comprises only between 5 – 10 percent of all diabetes cases and one risk factor is thought to be genetic.
Type 2 diabetes (non insulin-dependent diabetes) is caused by:
• insufficient production of insulin in the pancreas.
• a resistance to the action of insulin in the body's
cells - especially in muscle, fat and liver cells.
Insulin resistance means that the receptor sites on the cell walls that are supposed to have an attraction to insulin to
allow glucose to enter the cells are now resistant to the
insulin.
Type 2 diabetes is strongly associated with being overweight, but it's less clear what causes it, compared to the Type 1
disease.
Type 2 diabetes makes up the other 90 – 95 percent of diabetes. Nearly 6 percent of Americans have this type of diabetes, and there is an average of 798,000 new cases each year. Being resistant to your own insulin is about the same as not producing insulin. Either way, you cannot effectively utilize glucose. However, in Type 2 diabetes, high levels of insulin are produced to circulate in the blood because the pancreas can still produce the hormone and while this doesn’t help in glucose utilization, it does seriously raise the level of triglycerides in your
system, thereby increasing the risk of heart disease. Then the insulin signals the liver to make more cholesterol, so as the pancreas keeps secreting more insulin in response to your resistance, your cholesterol levels keep rising.
When a claim adjuster gets stressed, your blood sugar levels rise. Stress hormones like epinephrine and cortisol kick in since one of their major functions is to raise blood sugar to help boost energy when it’s needed most. The cortisol is to counteract the effects of insulin, because in fight-or-flight stress you don’t want to store energy; you need to mobilize energy immediately to meet life-threatening demands. One of the ways cortisol accomplishes this is by making your cells resistant to insulin, which for short term stress management is
appropriate. When the cortisol level of a claim adjuster remains chronically elevated, however, it can become a factor in non-insulin-independent diabetes mellitus (type 2), as long-term insulin resistance sets in and the pancreas struggles to produce ever-escalating quantities of insulin. Both physical and emotional stress can prompt an increase in these hormones, resulting in an increase in blood sugar and it makes blood sugar control harder. So stress and diabetes definitely has a connection.
In addition, if you're under a lot of stress, you may not take care of yourself as well and this can impact your diabetes. For example, you may not check sugar levels or attend properly to your diet and we all know that being a claim adjuster, there have been many times where we have skipped a meal.
Diabetes prevention consists of weight loss, regular exercise, quit smoking, eliminating stress, learning the relaxation reponse to stress, eating healthy balanced diet with fibre, carbs and not too much fat and pay attention to how much cholesterol is in your blood. The above preventions are not all inclusive, check with your doctor.
Remember, chronic
stress and diabetes
if left untreated will cause long term effects.
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