Stress on

DIABETES MANAGEMENT

Stress can influence your blood sugar and affect your diabetes in adverse ways. EVELYN BOON, senior psychologist, Singapore General Hospital, shows you how not to lose sleep over stress with a healthy dose of practical strategies.

Stress is a word heard very frequently these days. even from young children. We all get stressed from time to time. Sometimes. stress is not a bad thing as it may help motivate us to succeed but sometimes stress can affect us negatively.

Stress can influence our blood sugar control in two ways:

It can cause hyperglycaemia and subsequently interfere with our self-care, sleep, appetite, treatment, as well as dietary and exercise programme. When you are under a lot of stress, your sleep may be disrupted and you wake up feeling tired. You may also turn to "quick fix" ways to relieve your stress, such as smoking or excessive drinking. You may not bother to adhere to your treatment regime or do your regular exercises. Some may resort to comfort eating. All these attitudes may produce a significantly negative impact on your diabetes management. When you are stressed, your blood sugars may increase and when your blood sugar level is not under control, you may feel even less able to cope.

For some of us, the management of diabetes can be a huge cause of stress. When diagnosed with diabetes, you may not be able to accept the fact and this can cause emotional distress. The changes to lifestyle (exercise, diet, quit smoking and drinking) that you have to make to better manage your diabetes can be most stressful. To better manage this stress, you should increase your knowledge of diabetes and its management and to allow it to be a part of your new routine.

The other type of stress that we experience can also be managed by proper stress management strategies. These strategies can help reduce your stress levels and even if you are not stressed. serve as a stress prevention kit.

Some of these strategies include:
 

1. Good sleep habits
   

   • regular sleeping and waking times
   

   • limit caffeine intake to once a day and before 6 pm
   

   • warm shower to help relax
  

   • do not play very stimulating games just before bedtime
 

   • do not go to bed worried, sad or angry. Try to resolve arguments before bedtime or only bring things (that you are unhappy with) up in the day
 

    • Set aside a time for worries

2. Regular exercise

3. Proper nutrition

4. Relaxation exercises
 

    • deep breathing exercises
 

    • muscle relaxation exercises
 

    • relaxing imagery exercise (you can purchase a CD from the Health Promotion Board)
 

    • quiet meditation

5. Positive thinking
 

    • for each negative thought you have. try to replace it with something positive
 

    • Finding that silver lining in everything helps make things seem more hopeful

As you can see, most of the strategies for stress management also benefit your diabetes management. So it is worth your while to adopt these strategies as you can have "two (benefits) for the price of one (action)". Sounds like a good bargain, doesn't it?

One common cause of these cutaneous lesions appears to be poor glycaemic control. Other skin manifestations associated with uncontrolled diabetes include neuropathy, immunopathy, angiopathy and nephropathy, among others.