This may come as a surprise to you, but the drinks you take in may be contributing to the stress you are feeling, or making you more irritable. You do not have to stop taking any of these drinks completely, but you can reduce them or watch the times you take them. Here are the troublemakers to watch out for:
1. Coffee
Coffee contains caffeine which is known to stimulate the immune system, and increase the release of cortisol, the stress hormone. It can also cause some of the symptoms of stress directly, such as digestive problems, high blood pressure, and rapid heartbeat.
2. Soda
A normal-sized soda contains as much as ten cubes of sugar. This is an insane amount for the size of the drink, and all that sugar enters the blood rapidly and easily, giving you a temporary ‘high’, but then forcing insulin to be released to convert them to fat for storage.
Insulin works overtime, converting a lot more of those sugars and crashing that feeling of ‘high’, and causing low blood sugar levels.
This puts the body under serious stress, and the body responds by releasing cortisol to force the blood sugar levels back up. Cortisol puts the body further under stress.
3. Alcoholic drinks
Taking little amounts of alcohol can help relieve stress, but guzzling it down in unreasonable amounts can exacerbate it.
Your body treats alcohol the same way it does sugar: excessive amounts of it in the blood forces insulin and cortisol to be released both of which put the body under stress.
4. Energy drinks
Energy drinks contain caffeine, theobromine, and many other ingredients that stimulate the immune system, and many other things to produce stress.
Alcohol is also contained in some energy drinks, and has been described earlier, increases the chances of stress developing.
5. Fruit juice
Some processed juices of some fruits have some of their fiber stripped off, which makes the sugars they contain and those added, easy to enter the blood much easier and quicker. As has been described earlier, this causes insulin and cortisol to be released, increasing stress.
image courtesy of: sparkplugcoffee.com, wsj.com, askdoctork.com.
