Each of us sometimes goes through some difficult times: stress at work, family quarrels, breakup or just a difficult period in your life. Of course, if you have diabetes, it also has an impact on day-to-day life and can affect your mental health. There are multiple factors that affect our mood and make you experience the whole range of emotions from small anxiety to being extremely angry. You should understand that experiencing negative emotions is absolutely ok and you should accept them and not be afraid of them. So, first, let’s figure out what happens in our body when something strongly affects our emotional state. The body responds to stressful conditions by releasing stress hormones –cortisol and adrenaline. In turn, these hormones cause the release of glucose from the liver (in order to have the strength to run away from danger or beat the enemy) and an increase in blood glucose levels. 

In this case, people with diabetes need to inject additional insulin to reduce blood glucose level. But most often, during strong emotional experiences, we simply forget to measure our blood sugar, eat on time, and, frankly, when feeling stress, there is simply no emotional strength for this. Managing emotions is not easy but it’s necessary to find the right mood management strategies for you because your mental health is as important as physical.

Read about ways to cope with strong emotions and maintain good mental health in our next post!