If your food intake is regulated correctly by diabetes medication (pills or injected insulin), you shouldn’t be experiencing wide swings in blood glucose levels. However, if you aren’t eating 3 evenly spaced meals a day or periodically overeat, your diabetes medication will have a difficult time regulating your blood sugar. It’s time to discuss your blood pressure, diabetes medication management and blood glucose with your doctor who can best advise you. Bring the records of your daily blood pressure and blood sugar to your doctor. Ask to talk to a dietitian who can read your medical chart and discuss the best nutrition therapy for all your health concerns.
Stress can make your blood pressure and blood sugar go up. While the body’s mechanisms that regulate blood pressure and blood sugar are different, there is one common organ – the kidneys. While the adrenal glands (organs that sit on top of kidneys) help your kidneys to retain sodium (salt is sodium chloride), your body also produces hormones to regulate blood pressure. Blood pressure can change from minute to minute which allows your body to fight or run.
Insulin helps glucose get into cells which convert glucose to fuel thereby lowering your blood sugar and glucagon releases glucose from your liver (or muscles during exercise) when your blood sugar is low. High blood glucose irritates the kidneys which will remove glucose from the blood and dump it in urine usually in the case of someone with unregulated or undiagnosed diabetes. Blood glucose also changes from minute to minute depending on what you eat, when you eat and calories spent doing exercise.
