World Health Day: How stress increases your chances of diabetes

Stress is a major part of everyone's life. However, learning how to deal with stress is important in order to take better care of your health.

While numerous studies reveal how stress has an emotional and psychological impact, it also affects our bodies and is a contributing factor to diabetes. "I have seen so many people who developed diabetes in the year that they lost their spouse, when they were going through a divorce, after a major financial loss or suffered a very stressful phase at their workplace," says Dr Roshani Sanghani, a Consultant Endocrinologist and Founder of the Diabetes Self-Management Clinic at PD Hinduja National Hospital in Mumbai.

According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), "Stress hormones that are designed to deal with short-term danger stay turned on for a long time. As a result, long-term stress can cause long-term high blood glucose levels."

Learning strategies to deal with stress will help you cope with stress more effectively and lessen the effect it has on your body. Sanghani's patients use their glucometer to see how high stress raises their blood sugar on a daily basis. She says taking steps to reduce stress will help improve how you deal with diabetes.
 
Diabetes New Zealand shares some simple tips to get you started with handling stress, benefit your mental health and take you off the path to diabetes:

- Take the time out to do breathing exercises. 

- Undergo relaxation therapy to help you cope with stress 

- Get regular exercise

- Consciously replace bad thoughts with good ones