Stress and Coping Theory and Diabetes - Essay Example

"Stress and Coping Theory and Diabetes" is a remarkable example of a paper on diabetes mellitus.
Diabetes mellitus is a disease affecting an alarming percentage of the world population with India having the most prevalence. Obesity and body inactivity are the major causes of this disorder with the higher social class being most affected. Though the disease has been established in various countries around the world, there are ways to cope with the stress that comes with it. Reducing stress in your life or learning how to cope with it can be significant to diabetes patients.

Stress and Coping Theory

Patients with diabetes are highly encouraged to avoid stressful situations which may lead to behavior that causes blood glucose levels to be altered. Under stress, patients may forget to take care of themselves by not exercising, take medication while others skip meals (Krohne, 2002). This eventually causes the blood sugar to rise abnormally high due to the body not being able to produce enough insulin needed for its activities. Coping with the disease can be an easy task when one has support from family and friends. Children newly diagnosed with diabetes can be a major stressor than an adult with the same disease. Coping with children with the disease can be difficult for the child and the parents as it requires a lot of effort and time to manage the disease especially in the onset of the disease (Greca, 1992). Diabetes affects a child’s emotions as poorly controlled blood glucose can affect the child’s behaviors such as irritability.

Male and female copes with diabetes because of the different hormones in their bodies. For example, Oxytocin, cortisol, and epinephrine play a crucial role while dealing with diabetes stress. Under stress pressure, the three hormones raise a person’s blood pressure thus lowering their immune system effectiveness (Clarkson, 2008). Women produce more of these hormones than male individuals, which makes them more emotional. Men secrete the hormone oxytocin at smaller amounts than women when stressed, which makes it easier to control diabetes.

The highest populations with diabetes are the Indians and the Americans in the world. Lifestyle changes in these two continents majorly affect mental stress, which manages blood glucose levels. The majority of the Indians and Americans are affected by obesity due to poor eating habits and lack of regular exercise. Spiritual backgrounds and practices are believed to have positive effects on people's life thus may contribute to less stressing life by having broadened mindsets, positive emotions that eventually nurture good health and well being (Lee, 2005). Being religious helps the overall behavior of a person even with other major diseases like cancer and AIDS. Thus diabetes patients are encouraged to participate in religious activities that may lower their stress levels. From the different theories that can be used to describe the condition of people living with diabetes, it is evident that the stress and coping theory is the most important. The people afflicted with the disease have no option but to live to their best with the thin condition since the lack of a definitive cure cannot be reversed. The two parts of the theory, stress, and coping are described differently for different individuals.