You may have heard that eating more calories than your body needs leads to problems like weight gain and blood sugar issues, but you might not realize how important stress hormones are in this process. A study published in Cell Metabolism found that when you consume too many calories, your body’s sympathetic nervous system (SNS) fires up, releasing larger amounts of hormones like norepinephrine.1
These hormones are part of your natural stress response, but they also work against you if they become too active for too long. Rather than blaming every case of obesity-related diabetes on malfunctioning insulin alone, this research highlights how stress hormones play a key role. By staying aware of these hormones and how you trigger them, you take charge of your own blood sugar control and reduce your risk of developing diabetes.
Understanding Stress Hormones and Their Role in Your Body
You might wonder what exactly these “stress hormones” are and why your body makes them in the first place. Stress hormones include norepinephrine and epinephrine, which come from your sympathetic nervous system. This system is always on the lookout for threats, real or imagined. When you feel afraid or surprised, your body floods your bloodstream with these hormones, speeding up your heart and sharpening your focus.
This built-in “fight-or-flight” response helps you handle sudden risks, like jumping out of the way of a speeding car. However, the study in Cell Metabolism warns that these same hormones cause trouble when they flow too freely for too long, contributing to health problems like diabetes.
Think of stress hormones as a quick jolt of energy that helps you make fast decisions. That’s helpful in a moment of danger, but it becomes less helpful if these hormones are always surging. They act like an alarm system that you absolutely need in emergencies, yet they become a problem if they never switch off. Picture a security alarm in a building that keeps ringing at the slightest touch or breeze.
It’s helpful at first, but it quickly becomes a headache for everyone inside. In your body, too much norepinephrine or epinephrine raise your blood pressure and heart rate on a regular basis, putting extra strain on your system.
You might face many daily stressors, such as a busy job or a tense family situation, that send stress hormones soaring. In small bursts, these hormone spikes usually settle down after the crisis passes. But if you face constant pressures — like financial worries, ongoing health issues or even an unhealthy diet — your stress hormones stay elevated. The study points out that chronic activation of this system is a key link between overnutrition and diabetes.2
Many people blame insulin problems for high blood sugar, but they often forget that stress hormones raise blood sugar, too. These hormones make your liver pump out more glucose and your fat cells release more fatty acids, both of which interfere with healthy metabolism.
The study underscores how important it is to keep track of both insulin and the balance of your stress hormones. If you manage your stress levels, you’re also giving yourself a better chance of keeping diabetes at bay.
Overnutrition and Stress Hormones — The Tipping Point
You may hear people talk about “overnutrition,” which is a steady pattern of eating more calories than your body uses. When you do this day after day, you create a surplus of energy that ends up stored as fat. According to the study in Cell Metabolism, even a short-term calorie surplus shifts your hormonal balance. Your body responds to those extra calories by ramping up stress hormones like norepinephrine.
These hormones signal that something is off and prepare your system as if it needs to deal with an ongoing challenge. You don’t have to gain a lot of weight for this to happen. The extra hormone release occurs well before you notice major changes on the scale.
You might think that if you just eat a little more on occasion, it’s not a big deal. However, the sympathetic nervous system becomes overly active even with moderate calorie excess, especially if those calories come from foods loaded with refined sugar or unhealthy fats.
It’s similar to pressing down on the gas pedal in your car and leaving it there. You don’t allow the engine to rest, so you create wear and tear far sooner than you’d expect. In your body, this “wear and tear” shows up as higher blood sugar levels and more stress on your heart and other organs.
You could compare the relationship between stress hormones and overnutrition to a domino effect. One small push sets off a chain of events that’s tough to stop once it starts. According to the same study, these changes occur before there’s any real breakdown of insulin signaling in your cells, which means stress hormones act as a major force driving the problem.
It’s like a dance where one partner, representing stress hormones, keeps stomping on the feet of the other partner, representing insulin. The dance becomes choppy, and soon everything is out of rhythm.
You might believe you can fix this easily, but once your sympathetic nervous system stays on high alert for too long, it’s more challenging to calm it down. To slow this progression, recognize the role of diet and stress early on. By focusing on nutrient-rich options, limiting highly processed foods and reducing stress, you give your body the best chance to stay balanced. This approach reduces the chance of riding a constant wave of stress hormones that chip away at your metabolism.
Breaking Down the Connection Between Stress Hormones and Diabetes
You might know mainly for the jolt it gives you in a frightening situation. In the Cell Metabolism study, researchers paid special attention to how norepinephrine boosts the breakdown of fat, known as lipolysis, and also increases blood sugar.3 When you break down fat, you release fatty acids into your bloodstream. While fatty acids serve as an energy source, too many of them build up and hurt your body’s ability to use insulin properly.
Over time, these high levels of circulating fats move you closer to insulin resistance, which is a stepping-stone to diabetes. Your sympathetic nervous system also affects glucagon levels, adding more fuel to the fire. Glucagon is a hormone that signals your liver to release glucose.
The study notes that obesity often goes hand in hand with hyperglucagonemia, which means too much glucagon in your bloodstream. When that happens alongside high stress hormone levels, your blood sugar climbs quickly and stays up for longer than it should.
You may wonder why insulin doesn’t simply solve this problem. Conventional explanations put the blame on the cells’ inability to respond to insulin. However, new findings reveal that your cells still react normally to insulin signals, but they’re overwhelmed by all the stress hormones.
If insulin is like a skilled firefighter, stress hormones are like sparks flying around the building. One firefighter handles a few small fires, but if stress hormones keep creating more sparks, it becomes impossible to put out every flame. Eventually, the rising smoke (or blood sugar) leads to widespread damage.
Therefore, the key to preventing diabetes lies not only in fixing insulin pathways but in lowering stress hormone output. By reducing how much norepinephrine and other stress hormones are released, researchers managed to protect mice from metabolic problems like fatty liver disease and high glucagon levels. This shows how targeting excess stress hormone activity plays a large role in stopping diabetes. If you know you’re at risk for diabetes, keep an eye on your stress levels closely.
Does Chronic Stress Lead to Diabetes?
Stress does more than just affect your mood; it also pushes you closer to Type 2 diabetes if you’re already at risk. In the video “The Stress Test: Can Chronic Stress Lead to Diabetes,” several doctors explained that when you live under constant pressure — whether it’s emotional strain, financial worries or simply not getting enough rest — your body releases higher levels of stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine.4 These hormones have actions that work against insulin.
Instead of letting insulin maintain a steady blood sugar level, they drive your sugar up, force your fat cells to release more fatty acids and make it harder for insulin to keep things under control. If you already have a family history of diabetes or other health risks, this stress-related hormone surge is often the tipping point that leads to a diagnosis.
You might think stress alone is the problem, but the experts highlighted how stress often ties into poor eating habits. When you’re overwhelmed, you’re more likely to grab whatever food is quickest or most comforting, often high in refined sugar or unhealthy fats like linoleic acid (LA).
You might also skip exercise because you’re too busy or mentally drained. This combination of less movement and more processed foods creates the perfect storm for weight gain, higher insulin needs and hormone imbalances.
If stress continues unchecked, you end up in a cycle where higher blood sugar and the worry about managing it only add more tension to your life. The doctors also mention diabetes-related distress (DRD), which is a specific kind of stress that happens when you feel frustrated or anxious about managing diabetes.
This anxiety makes you feel trapped, lowering your motivation to follow a healthy eating plan or stay active. Over time, constant worry affects your sleep and mood, raising your stress hormones further and making it even more challenging to keep blood sugar stable. You don’t have to feel helpless in this situation.
By learning to manage stress — whether through regular exercise, mindful eating or structured relaxation techniques — you lower your levels of harmful stress hormones and protect your insulin function. Even small changes, like setting consistent meal times or trying short breathing exercises during hectic parts of your day, make a meaningful difference.
When you make stress management as much a priority as your diet, you stand a better chance of preventing the cycle that links chronic stress to Type 2 diabetes.
How Stress Hormones Disrupt Blood Sugar in Diabetes
Your body has a built-in alarm system called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which becomes active whenever you feel pressured or threatened. According to a study published in the African Journal of Diabetes Medicine, this axis turns on the release of several hormones — chief among them cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline — to help you handle intense or unexpected situations.5
As mentioned, that burst of energy and heightened awareness is beneficial in the short term. However, if you have diabetes, the constant release of these hormones turns daily life into a balancing act for your blood sugar. You may have heard of cortisol in passing, but you might not know that it does more than cause short-term feelings of anxiety.
Cortisol directly raises blood sugar by prompting your liver to release stored glucose. It also encourages your liver to create new glucose from sources like amino acids.
In short bursts, this helps you power through a stressful moment. Over extended periods, though, it leaves you wrestling with high readings that are tough to control. You might also experience the effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline, which the HPA axis releases alongside cortisol. These hormones raise your heart rate and blood pressure, preparing you to move quickly if necessary.
They also stimulate your liver to produce more glucose, adding another layer of challenge if you are trying to keep your numbers steady. While this natural surge is often life-saving in a genuine crisis, ongoing stress means you never fully return to a calm baseline. This constant state of high alert gradually wears down your ability to keep blood sugar where you want it.
If chronic stress further drives you to skip workouts, eat poorly or not get enough sleep, these behaviors add to the strain on your blood sugar control. The longer you remain in this pattern, the greater your risk for complications linked to diabetes.
For many people, it becomes a cycle: stress triggers higher blood sugar, which causes more worry and, in turn, more stress. Recognizing how the HPA axis and these hormones work can be the first step toward breaking that loop and regaining a sense of stability in your day-to-day life.
How to Reduce Your Cortisol Levels
Consuming more carbs is recommended for lowering cortisol, but it’s important to be mindful of the type of carbs you consume. You should avoid processed foods because these junk carbs contain ingredients like LA and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). These disrupt your gut microbiome and contribute to endotoxin production, which is a major driver of increased cortisol and inflammation.
However, many people have lost the ability to maintain a high enough concentration of beneficial bacteria in their gut that digest the healthy fibers in healthy carbs like fruit, vegetables and grain. Then, when you do eat those types of foods, you feel worse, as you have a buildup of pathogenic bacteria that produce toxic endotoxin, one of several factors that destroys mitochondrial function.
If you’re unable to tolerate healthy carbs, try pure glucose — which is more commonly called dextrose — for a few weeks. This is especially useful for those who are seriously damaged, who don’t have the capacity to eat virtually any carbohydrates — go on a high-dextrose diet until your gut starts to heal. You save more cellular energy, which allows you to introduce more carbs back in to your diet, helping to restore your mitochondrial function.
For a severely compromised gut, use dextrose water. This must be sipped slowly over time. Next, try introducing fruit juice with pulp, whole fruit or white rice. Then, once your gut health improves, you’ll be able to incorporate more fiber-rich fruits, vegetables and starches.
Aside from switching to a high-carb diet, you should also address your stress levels to keep your body from producing excessive cortisol, and consider taking progesterone, which has an anti-cortisol function.
Progesterone Is a Safe and Inexpensive Cortisol Blocker
One of the most powerful and accessible strategies to lower cortisol levels is through the use of natural progesterone, as opposed to its synthetic counterparts known as progestins. This endogenous hormone is celebrated for its robust anti-cortisol and anti-adrenaline effects, and is a hormone that nearly every adult should be on.
Progesterone operates on multiple fronts to mitigate stress impacts. Primarily, it neutralizes cortisol’s influence by reducing its concentration in your bloodstream. This direct antagonism not only diminishes the physical manifestations of stress but also fosters a sense of enhanced well-being and resilience.
Moreover, progesterone amplifies the function of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), your brain’s chief inhibitory neurotransmitter. By boosting GABA activity, progesterone induces a calming effect, effectively easing anxiety and promoting mental tranquility.
Another critical mechanism by which progesterone combats stress is through the regulation of adrenal gland activity. It meticulously balances the secretion of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, ensuring a more stable and controlled stress response. Additionally, progesterone plays a pivotal role in improving sleep quality, which is essential for maintaining optimal cortisol cycles and effective stress management.
The advantages of incorporating progesterone into your health regimen are extensive. Users often report a noticeable decline in anxiety and irritability, greater mood stability and better sleep patterns. Physical stress symptoms, including muscle tension and headaches, frequently lessen. Furthermore, optimized progesterone levels enhance cognitive performance during stressful periods, contributing to clearer thinking and improved focus.
However, it’s important to approach hormone therapy with caution. Progesterone supplementation should always be supervised by a health care professional to ensure appropriate dosing. Individual needs vary greatly, making personalized medical guidance indispensable for achieving the best outcomes.
Additionally, progesterone should be integrated into a holistic health strategy to reduce cortisol levels for maximum effectiveness. Combining progesterone with regular physical activity like daily walks, a nutritious diet and stress-reduction practices like meditation significantly enhance your body’s ability to regulate cortisol and manage stress comprehensively.
