“Sickness or damage can set off the physique’s pure stress hormone response that’s meant to maintain you alive, battle an infection, and promote therapeutic. And one a part of that response is elevating blood sugar,” says Dr. Isaacs.
However in individuals with diabetes (recognized or not), this stress response can overshoot and result in probably harmful elevated blood sugar ranges.
It might probably additionally complicate day-to-day administration for people who find themselves already acutely aware about managing blood sugar, says Lisal J. Folsom, MD, an endocrinologist and the medical director of the grownup endocrinology division of the Wendy Novak Diabetes Institute in Louisville, Kentucky. “The issue arises in insulin resistance, the place the physique both doesn’t make insulin or can’t make sufficient insulin to fulfill the elevated demand,” she says. “This can lead to persistently excessive blood sugars, which really impede the therapeutic response.”