“Wow! That was close!” Your heart is pounding, your breathing is rapid, sweat covers your skin, your blood pressure is through the roof, your alertness is sky-high, and you feel like you could lift a bus.

Stress triggers a cascade of events in your body so you can respond to a threat almost faster than you consciously realize there is a threat. Stress can come from anywhere at any time. It can occur in a brief episode (called acute stress), like before an interview, or over the long term (called chronic stress), like worrying about paying the bills month after month.

Regardless of its cause, when stress occurs the body considers it to be an emergency. Like in other emergencies, mundane tasks are set aside, and only critical and relevant activities are given importance – you don’t worry about the laundry when the house catches fire.

In the body, this response, often called the fight-or-flight response, stimulates the brain and muscles to respond to the emergency. It ramps up glucose processing and availability to fuel these activities, especially for the brain and muscles. To conserve energy for these critical response systems, stress also suppresses the body systems that are non-essential in a crisis – digestion, immune function, and reproductive function, for example. 

Cortisol and stress 

The stress response is complex; it involves several parts of the brain, as well as hormones from the adrenal glands. Together, these coordinate a response that impacts the entire body. When your stress levels increase, so do major hormones like cortisol and DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), which change how your systems operate. First let’s talk about cortisol.

As one of the major stress-response hormones produced by the adrenal glands, cortisol goes hand-in-hand with stress. The hormone helps regulate blood pressure and sleep and suppresses inflammation.  During a stressful event, extra cortisol is produced. This extra cortisol mobilizes energy resources, increasing blood sugar levels and appetite to help replenish those spent resources.

Cortisol levels naturally fluctuate during the day; they are generally the highest in the morning. But when cortisol levels are continuously high, which occurs with chronic stress, the increased appetite can lead to over-eating and unnecessary weight gain. Click here to read more on cortisol and stress.

What is DHEA?

DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) is another hormone produced by the adrenal glands. It is most well recognized as a precursor to the production of sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone), but DHEA is also produced in larger quantities in response to stress.1

Evidence suggests that DHEA acts to moderate the stress response.2

Specifically, the DHEA-to-cortisol ratio has been correlated with tolerance for stress. An individual who has a higher ratio (more DHEA than cortisol) seems to experience less negative effects from the same stressors than a person who has a lower ratio (less DHEA than cortisol).

Can stress affect blood sugar levels? 

Yes, it absolutely can. The hormones activated by higher stress levels increase blood sugar so plenty of glucose is available for energy to support your muscles and brain while they handle the stressful situation.3 In acute stress, this can be a good thing and importantly, the reaction is temporary – your body brings glucose levels back under control quickly after the stressful event is over.  But, with chronic stress, blood glucose levels stay higher than they should. This can lead to insulin resistance and, potentially, to type 2 diabetes.4 

Does stress cause high cholesterol levels? 

It could. Higher stress levels can increase bad cholesterol levels, but this pathway is more indirect than the glucose pathway. The hormones that drive your blood sugar higher, plus other substances associated with chronic stress, can cause your liver to make more “bad” cholesterol (LDL).  Chronic stress can also lead to unhealthy behaviors like overeating, eating higher calorie but less nutritious food, and being less physically active, leading to higher LDL and lower healthy cholesterol levels (HDL). 

Why is stress management important?

Stress is unavoidable. In the short term, like when you aren’t sure if an oncoming car is going to hit you, stress is beneficial in concentrating body resources where they are needed to make you more alert, focused, and able to respond quickly. In general, acute stress like this is self-limiting – the response lasts only as long as the danger persists and then the body quickly returns to normal.

During long-term, chronic stress, however, which can occur when dealing with daily stress at work or school, the stress response is triggered but it does not end. The body can’t return to normal because your stress level stays high. Over time, this pattern of activation and deactivation of body systems that accompany the stress response throws off the body’s natural balance.

This is why chronic stress is devastating to your health, and why stress management is so important.

Body systems that are perpetually hyper-activated, like the cardiovascular system, can begin to collapse, while body systems that are perpetually suppressed, like the immune system, leave you vulnerable to disease because they can’t function fully. Other effects, like constantly elevated blood sugar, can cause additional harm, impacting your overall health. 

Therefore, managing stress is critical for good health. Avoiding stress when you can, eating nutritional foods, drinking lots of water, and getting regular exercise and restful sleep are valuable strategies to reduce and cope with stress.

How do you know if your stress-management strategies are working?

Thorne's Stress Test gives you the knowledge to find out from the comfort of your own home. It measures the two primary markers of stress – cortisol and DHEA.

Knowing your levels of these two stress hormones will help you and your health-care practitioner determine what your best stress-management strategies should be, and to confirm whether the changes you implement are having the desired effects. 

For tips on managing stress and supplements that can support your efforts, check out these articles: Easy Ways to Decrease Stress at Work, The 8 Best Supplements to Manage Stress, Mayo Clinic: Stress Relief Tips for Winter.

References

  1. Morgan CA, Southwick S, Hazlett G, et al. Relationships among plasma dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and cortisol levels, symptoms of dissociation, and objective performance in humans exposed to acute stress. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004;61(8):819-825. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.61.8.819
  2. 2. Lennartsson AK, Kushnir MM, Bergquist J, Jonsdottir IH. DHEA and DHEA-S response to acute psychosocial stress in healthy men and women. Biol Psychol. 2012;90(2):143-149. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.03.003
  3. Kuo T, McQueen A, Chen TC, Wang JC. Regulation of glucose homeostasis by glucocorticoids. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2015;872:99-126. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-2895-8_5
  4. Sharma K, Akre S, Chakole S, Wanjari MB. Stress-induced diabetes: a review. Cureus. 14(9):e29142. doi:10.7759/cureus.29142