Can Pain Cause Blood Sugar Level to Rise?

Can Pain Cause Blood Sugar Level to Rise?

Yes, the pain causes a high blood sugar level. It has been noted in several medical studies and clinical trials that patients with severe and chronic pain have a high blood sugar level. However, the exact mechanism of the rise of blood sugar level directly due to pain is not known, but it is evident that some secondary health conditions developed due to pain causes a rise in sugar level in the blood. For complete understanding, we should know about the complete mechanism of feeling pain.

The Mechanism of Feeling Pain

When the body feels a painful touch, the sensory receptor present at that part of the body transmits the detected touch in the form of electrical signals via nerve fibers to the Central Nervous System. The Central Nervous System then process the nature of pain.

There are sensory biological structures, called Nociceptors, present in muscles, joints, and scattered over the skin that detect painful touch and convert it into electrical signals. The nerve fibers like A-delta fibers and C fibers transmit these electrical signals to the Central Nervous System via the spinal cord or brainstem. The Central Nervous System processes the nature and type of pain.

A continuous chronic and severe pain keeps the whole nervous system busy all the time. Feeling pain suddenly change the psychological and emotional state of the body and trigger a sudden physical response to avoid the painful situation and reduce the pain.

How Pain Rises Sugar Level in the Blood?

Now to relate the rise in blood sugar level to the pain we have clear evidence from the above explanation of mechanism of feeling pain. As told that feeling pain keeps the whole nervous system busy. A continuous and prolong pain pushes the body into a stressful situation. And stress causes high blood sugar levels in the blood.

A correlation between stress and pain is evident from different clinical studies. A study reveals stress in the 45% of headache patients. The study was conducted on 267 patients in most of the stress was noted along with chronic headache.

In another study, it is proved that headache is the second most cause of stress. In this study, the patients were examined for finding reasons for stress and it was found that in about 67% patient’s headache was due to stress.

Hence it is evident from the above-mentioned studies that pain causes stress and stress causes a rise in the blood sugar level.

Apart from this, it is studied in most of the studies that extreme stress and pain causes trauma. And a rise of sugar level is noted in the trauma patients.