How stress impacts metabolic health

Fight or flight

Your stress response (aka fight-or-flight response) helps your body react to any perceived danger. It triggers a cascade of stress hormones that influence the rest of the body, helping you rise to the challenge of any perceived threat. This response is a survival mechanism that once kept humans safe from legitimate dangers as we evolved (think, running from a saber tooth tiger). While we’re not faced with those same dangers today, we are exposed to constant modern-day stressors that our body perceives to be just as threatening. From slamming on the brakes when a car in front of you suddenly stops, to feeling worried about your kids—a heightened perception of stress of any kind can trigger your fight-or-flight response and result in these same physiological effects.

HPA axis and your stress hormones

The HPA-axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) is simply the connection between your hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands—and it’s an important part of the cascade that’s signaled when your brain senses fear. The HPA-axis effectively governs how you respond to a perceived stressor by releasing hormones that help regulate the body. When your HPA-axis is functioning properly, you’re effectively able to manage stress and return back to your baseline. But if it’s over or under-stimulated from consistent stress exposure, it can become dysregulated and make it difficult for you to cope with everyday stressors that never used to phase you.

Cortisol is your chief stress hormone that’s produced by your adrenal glands and regulated by the HPA-axis. It plays a crucial role in your fight-or-flight response, but it also has other important functions like maintaining your blood sugar levels, regulating your metabolism and supporting the immune system. In a healthy stress response, cortisol rises to help your body make use of its energy reserves, then returns to its normal levels once the perceived threat has passed.

If you’re under constant, prolonged stress, instead of lowering after the stress has passed—cortisol can remain high. Long term exposure to elevated levels of cortisol can negatively impact how you feel each day—from your mood and energy levels to your sleep, how your sex hormone's function and how your body utilizes energy.

How stress impacts metabolic function

Inefficient energy production

The fight-or-flight response increases the demands of your body—putting more pressure on mitochondria to generate more energy. If you’re constantly in a state of fight-or-flight, your mitochondria can struggle to meet these increased energy demands. On top of the stress you may be perceiving externally, there’s also the invisible stress load that your cells face on a daily basis—also known as free radicals. Much like an exhaust from a car engine, free radicals are produced by your mitochondria as a by-product of generating energy for you to function. The accumulation of free radicals can lead to oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress can impact cardiovascular health by influencing heart cell function, heart rhythm, blood pressure, and vascular health. Endothelial function is now recognized as an independent predictor in the status of heart health, and endothelial tissue (the tissue that lines of our blood vessels, arteries, veins and capillaries) is extremely sensitive to oxidative stress. Ongoing exposure to oxidative stress can manifest as thickened, stiff arteries over time—which is why addressing the effects of oxidative stress is important in reducing cardiovascular risk factors and supporting overall metabolic health.

• Mitoquinol Mesylate has been shown to prevent oxidative stress by increasing antioxidant defenses by up to 36% and reducing free radicals by up to 48% in healthy adults.*

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Cortisol ‘wear and tear’

The long-term activation of the stress response and the overriding of normal metabolic processes that follows can lead to the ‘wear and tear’ of organs and tissues. In addition to the impact on the cardiovascular system, elevated cortisol can lead to suppression of the immune system, compromising immune function. Chronically elevated cortisol can also contribute to digestive disruption, promoting intestinal permeability and impairing the absorption of micronutrients.

Blood sugar roller coaster

The link between blood sugar levels and stress is an intricate one, but to make a connection between the two we need to understand the hormones at play. Insulin is a hormone that helps bring glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream into our cells. The stress response encourages the release of stress hormones like cortisol, which decreases insulin secretion.

Without the proper production and secretion of insulin, sugar remains in the bloodstream and causes blood sugar levels to become imbalanced. In reverse, the body’s stress response can be triggered by low or high levels of blood sugar. The bottom line—if you want to manage stress and avoid metabolic disruption, focusing on balancing your blood sugar levels can be an effective way to support the body holistically.

Hunger hormones

Not only can the stress response influence the way the body utilizes energy, but it can influence feeding behavior and appetite. The activation of the HPA-axis and the secretion of cortisol that follows has been shown to stimulate appetite and increase the desire and intake for highly-palatable foods. By encouraging the consumption of food high in sugar and fats, stress can promote unhealthy eating behaviors that further contribute to blood sugar dysregulation and add to metabolic disruption.

Sleep disruption

Sleep disruption influences metabolic health in many ways. Your circadian rhythm is the physical and behavioral changes that happen throughout the body over a 24-hour period in response to natural light and darkness. While personal preferences, shift work and jet lag all try to steer us away from the natural pull to sleep with the moon and wake with the sun, this pattern is our basic instinct.

Stress can disrupt sleep and cause irregular sleeping patterns, and studies show that sleeping outside of the body’s normal light-dark cycles can lead to circadian misalignment—which is associated with impaired control of glucose and increased markers of oxidative stress. People with circadian misalignment are at risk for elevated body weight and other risk factors for poor cardiovascular health. Sleep disturbances can also influence appetite and increase stress—further perpetuating the cycle.

By influencing blood sugar regulation, appetite, sleep, and many other important factors that influence metabolic health – supporting the way the body responds to stress is one of the most effective ways to enhance metabolic function.