How I Discovered That Stress Can Spike Blood Sugar — and What You Can Do About It

A few months ago, I decided to try a continuous glucose monitor — one of those little sensors that tracks your blood sugar all day.

I wanted to understand how my meals were affecting my numbers. I was eating balanced meals, watching my protein, and curious to see if I could spot any patterns.

At first, everything looked great. My numbers stayed steady after meals — no big spikes, no crashes.

Then one day, I had a stressful conversation with a friend. Nothing terrible, but it hit me hard. When I checked my glucose a little while later, it had shot over 200.

No sugary snacks. No big meal. Just… stress.

A few days later, the same thing happened after a jam-packed, overwhelming workday. My meals hadn’t changed — my mindset had.

That’s when it clicked: my thoughts were spiking my blood sugar.

Stress Isn’t Just in Your Head

We talk a lot about food, movement, and sleep when it comes to health — and those things do matter.
But what most of us don’t realize is that chronic stress quietly impacts every system in the body.

When we’re tense, our muscles tighten, our digestion slows, and our body pumps out cortisol, our primary stress hormone. Cortisol isn’t “bad” — it’s designed to protect you in short bursts. But when it stays elevated day after day, it messes with blood sugar, blood pressure, hormones, sleep, focus, and mood.

That’s why stress management isn’t just about getting a massage or going for a walk. It’s about learning how to work with your mind — not against it.

How Stress Hides in the Body

You might notice it as:

• Tight shoulders or jaw

• A heavy feeling in your chest

• Digestive issues or tension headaches

• That low-level irritability that never quite goes away

Those are all signals from your nervous system saying, “I’m overloaded.”

Massage therapy can help the physical side of stress — easing tension, lowering cortisol, and calming the nervous system — but if your thoughts keep firing the same stress signals, your body can only relax for so long.

That’s where mental fitness comes in.

The Missing Link: Training the Mind Like a Muscle

Just like physical fitness builds strength and endurance, mental fitness helps you handle life’s challenges with calm and clarity.

It’s the practice of noticing your stress triggers and shifting out of the mental patterns that keep you stuck — overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, guilt, or self-criticism.

In the Positive Intelligence program I coach, we call those patterns Saboteurs — the inner voices that create stress, even when nothing is “wrong.”

By strengthening your mental fitness, you learn how to quiet those voices and train your brain to respond from a calmer, wiser part of yourself — what we call your Sage.

The result? Less stress, fewer cortisol spikes, better sleep, and a nervous system that finally gets to exhale.

Want to See Which Stress Patterns Run Your Life?

One of my favorite starting points is the Saboteur Assessment — a free, 5-minute quiz that shows which mental habits create stress and resistance in your life.

You’ll get a visual chart that ranks your top Saboteurs on a scale of 1 to 10, and a short explanation of how they show up in your relationships, work, and inner world.

It’s confidential, science-backed (developed through Stanford research), and often eye-opening.

If you’re curious to see your own results, you can take the free assessment here:

👉 [Take the Saboteur Assessment]

A Mind-Body Approach to Stress Relief

As someone who practices both massage and hypnotherapy, I’ve seen the power of combining bodywork with mental fitness.

Massage helps release physical tension, while hypnotherapy and PQ practices train the brain to stay relaxed long after you leave the table.

It’s not about controlling your mind — it’s about understanding it.
When you learn to quiet your inner noise, your body follows.

Final Thoughts

Wearing that glucose monitor reminded me that stress isn’t just “in our head” — it’s in our blood, our breath, our shoulders, our sleep.

When we start training our mind the way we train our body — with small, consistent reps of awareness and compassion — everything else gets easier.

If you’ve been noticing how stress is showing up in your body, I’d love to help you explore new ways to release it — from therapeutic massage to mental fitness coaching and Hypno-Massage sessions designed for total mind-body reset.

👉 [Schedule a Free Discovery Session]

📍 American River Massage & Hypnotherapy – Auburn, CA

Helping you build calm, clarity, and confidence — from the inside out