Why is your blood sugar high when you didn’t eat anything extra? If stress and cortisol are spiking your glucose, the answer may come down to one thing nobody talks about: timing. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I’m unpacking the strange, specific way stress hormones raise blood sugar, and why the same bad phone call can move your numbers forty points one afternoon and do nothing the next morning.
I’ll walk you through what cortisol and adrenaline actually do inside your body, using a story about a bank you will never forget. You’ll learn why stress on an empty stomach barely touches your glucose, why stress after a meal keeps it elevated far longer, and why carbohydrates can actually make your cortisol response bigger. Then we get practical: what stress management did to A1c in a year-long trial, where mindfulness helps and where it doesn’t, and the research on walking after eating that gives you a way through the wall insulin resistance puts up.
What you’ll learn:
How cortisol and blood sugar are connected, and why stress raises glucose without food
Why unexplained blood sugar spikes often trace back to when stress hit, not what you ate
The fasting versus fed research that changes how you think about stress and glucose
Why walking after eating lowers blood sugar, and why walking before a meal doesn’t
The exact post-meal walk timing the trials used: 15 to 20 minutes, starting within 30 minutes
What stress management training did to A1c in people with type 2 diabetes
Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/when-does-stress-actually-raise-your
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