How Stressful is Diabetes?

Whether you’re newly diagnosed with diabetes, or have been managing diabetes for years, stress is part of this condition. The constant need to think about diabetes, to make adjustments to your food, insulin, and activities, can lead to chronic stress, diabetes burnout, and what clinicians call “diabetes distress.”

Support for mental health is a critical part of taking care of diabetes. When you look at how diabetes impacts your life, the evidence is undeniable.

When it comes to mental health, all kinds of diabetes can cause significant stress. Fear, anxiety, grief, and feelings of overwhelm, are all common emotions with LADA diabetes, pre-diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. If you are misdiagnosed with the wrong type of diabetes (which is common with LADA), that causes additional stress too.

Measuring the Stress of Diabetes

Above is an except from the Holmes and Rahe stress scale which scores stressful events on a mathematical scale. This scale clearly shows the impact of diabetes. To determine how much stress you experienced, add up all the events that happened to you recently! The Holmes and Rahe stress scale was used to research how stress can cause physical illness. That’s right, you can get sick from too much stress.

Adding up the Stress

The stress of “Dealing with Diabetes” can be added up like this:

Life Event	Life Change Units
Personal injury or illness	53
Revision of personal habits	24
Change in eating habits	15
Total	92

Do any of these other life events also apply?

Diabetes is expensive. Is the cost of insulin and diabetic supplies causing financial stress? Add 38 points.

Are you waking up in the middle of the night from low blood sugar or insulin pump alarms? Add 16 points for this change in your sleeping habits.

Did you change your social activities due to diabetes? Add 18 points. Did you change what you do for fun because of diabetes? Add 19 points.

Life Event	Life Change Units
Change in financial state	38
Change in social activities	18
Change in sleeping habits	16
Change in recreation	19

Stress Experienced by Family Members

The stress of diabetes is not just stressing out the person with diabetes, but also often adds significant stress on spouses, parents, and other family members. “Change in health of family member” is rated at 44 points.

Stress Coping is an important part of Diabetes Self Care

Now only does diabetes cause stress, but being stressed actually makes managing diabetes harder! This is because stress increases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which work against the action of insulin. These counterregulatory hormones cause insulin resistance!

💡 Taking care of your mind IS taking care of your diabetes.

How to Reduce Stress

In episode #10 of my LADA Life Podcast, I shared my best tips on how to cope with diabetes distress. I discuss activities like journaling, forest bathing, and meditation. I also explain how exercise can help both mental health and diabetes! I also touch on the psychology of it all. Self-compassion, and forgiveness are important.

What is your self talk like?

Diabetes can sometimes cause negative self talk. Are you saying “no” to yourself”? Is that hurting your mood? See if you can flip it around! What does saying yes to yourself look like? Yes to your best health, yes to your happiness, yes to your wonderful future.

The words we use make a big difference on how we see our situation. Consider saying “manage” instead of “control.” We don’t “control” our blood sugar. We manage it. Despite my best efforts, my very hard work, my blood sugar sometimes goes too high or too low. This happens, just like sometimes it rains. I can’t control the weather and I can’t control my blood sugar. All I can do is my very best job to manage. I make adjustments. When it rains, I put on a raincoat. When my blood sugar goes low, I have something with fast-acting sugar (fruit gummies, candy, juice, etc). I take care of the problem.