Struggle Bus

This last week or two has been a challenge. Between final papers, oral presentations and looming final examinations, I’ve been catching up with my friends before we go our separate ways and travelling to job interview.  What’s missing in this description of life??? Three major things: 1) exercise 2) food 3) diabetes.  Result??? Bad diet, no exercise, ear infection = bad blood sugar.

Struggle bus.

Ever remember Ms Frizzle and the magic school bus??? My absolute favorite is when the kid eats the bus like a Cheeto and the class learns about inside the body.  Well, along the same lines, when on the stressed out, sleep and exercise deprived and carb loaded struggle bus, there are lots of bodily changes too. Lets take a look.

1)      Stress: increased cortico steroids in your system (adrenaline) cause your body to increase glycogen production from your liver to help your body survive the stress. Result? Higher blood sugar.

2)      Sleep deprivation: leads to more time to eat, as well as increased stress hormones. Also puts me in a bad mood and takes me straight to the nearest coffeepot.  Caffeine= higher blood sugar.

3)      Lack of exercise:  I try and get out regularly, so not getting out and working out makes my body less sensitive to insulin and increases my insulin need, or if I don’t increase that it just raises blood sugars.

All of this is not boding well for my next A1c draw.  Besides that, increased blood sugars has been tied to decreased memory and cognition, making all that hard work you are doing less relevant.

Thank you Ms Frizzle.  How is this going to change what I’m doing??

So in order to turn around the last two weeks of my semester, I’m going to focus on getting at least 30 minutes of exercise every day, try to eat identifiable meals (and count the carbs) instead of mindlessly grazing on whatever is sitting around (or being handed out for free). And try to limit the caffeine and drink more water.

I challenge all of you out there to take a second and evaluate how stress affects your blood sugar control and come up with 2 or 3 concrete ways to manage your diabetes in the midst of the end of semester stress…

 -J