Chronic stress activates the adrenal glands to produce stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine. Overproduction of these hormones drops your blood sugar because stress hormones make you burn circulating blood sugar for energy instead of body fat. When blood sugar drops, your brain turns on the sugar cravings to replace the burned-off sugar.
When you’re stressed out all the time, your adrenal glands can’t keep up with the constant workload, so they lose their ability to continue churning out enough hormones to keep glucose in your system. The result is a consistent underproduction of cortisol, which in turn yields low blood sugar, chronic fatigue, and more sugar cravings.
Chronic fatigue doesn’t come just from stress; it comes from excess sugar, too. Insulin resistance causes the cells to refuse the action of insulin trying to bring sugar into cells to be burned for energy. The result is more sugar circulating in the bloodstream and less sugar available to be metabolized for energy.
This makes you tired — unspeakably tired, no matter how much you sleep. Cells are unable to take up the glucose they require, and muscles can’t restock their fuel supplies of glycogen. The whole system begins to shut down and becomes an exhausted, nonfunctional mess.