In the midst of the ongoing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, new concerns about war and inflation are pushing stress to higher levels, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2022 “Stress in America” survey. Add this to the usual demands of running our daily lives, and it is easy to understand how things can become overwhelming.
The stress-health link
While stress in itself doesn’t cause diabetes, research shows there may be a link between stress and the risk of developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Although stress is a natural part of life, it becomes problematic when your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to recover from it. This is partly due to the way our bodies respond to stress.
In the 1920s, American physiologist Walter Cannon was the first to describe and name the body’s initial reaction to stress, which he called the “fight-or-flight response.” He noticed that the presence of physical or emotional stress started a cascade of physiological events:
