What hormone is Cortisol in the body?
Balancing Cortisol: Your Key to Stress Relief and Wellness.
Unlock the secrets of cortisol, your body’s stress buster! Learn how to balance cortisol levels naturally for optimal health and well-being.
What is the secret to your stress response — what is the hero or heroine of the story? The hormone that plays the biggest role in how you react to challenge and stimuli is called cortisol, and it’s often referred to as the ‘stress hormone’. Join me as we start our exploration of cortisol. Skip the Fad Diets! Natural Smoothies for Sustainable Weight Loss, Click Here.
What is Cortisol?
And the most cathartic is to acknowledge the existence of the threat long enough to make its relative power clear But what exactly does cortisol do to accomplish these feats? It is the primary stress hormone, produced by the adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys.
Cortisol has several roles: it helps your body convert food into energy, it reduces inflammation, and it suppresses the immune system. In short, it helps initiate the fight-or-flight response to a potential threat. Think of cortisol as the hero who swoops in to save you when danger beckons.
But on the other hand: not only is cortisol an essential part of our survival response and a life-saver during times of need, when stress becomes chronic these tightly-regulated equilibrium points can be lost. When we’re chronically stressed, cortisol can remain high for extended periods leading to many health issues. So it’s worth learning about how cortisol functions and taking steps to keep it in balance.
The Stress Connection
The two are almost inseparable: get stressed, get cortisol. Work is closing in on your deadlines? Walked a little too close to a snarling dog on the street? Enter an overwhelming amount of stress, and then cortisol. The ‘fight or flight’ response that flooded your body helps you survive threatening situations.
But for many of us who live hectic lives, chronic stressors — from bumper-to-bumper traffic to looming deadlines to financial concerns — can keep cortisol levels chronically high, and the consequences are not pretty: excess abdominal fat, gastrointestinal difficulties, problems sleeping, and suppressed immune function. Skip the Fad Diets! Natural Smoothies for Sustainable Weight Loss, Click Here.
Cortisol and Health
Dysregulation of the cortisol circadian rhythm can trigger an array of health problems almost everywhere in the body, and those with elevated cortisol are at an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression, while those with low cortisol experience fatigue, weakness and dizziness.
So what can you do to regulate your cortisol levels for optimal health? Balance is important. Healthy habits, including regular exercise, adequate sleep, stress reduction and a well-balanced diet, can help keep your cortisol rhythms in check. You can minimize the toxic effects of chronic stress and maintain good health.
Cortisol in Daily Life
But this isn’t the only time that cortisol gets activated; it also handles the minor daily stressors that are constantly biting at your day, such as preparing for important presentations at work or pushing through difficult workouts at the gym. There is a fine line between working hard and working too hard, and that line can be crossed when you continually push your body past its limits, causing you to start spilling over into the exhausted zone.
Cortisol Myths and Misconceptions
It is this confusion born of many myths and misconceptions about cortisol that generates the knee-jerk response of ‘Cortisol is bad. Eliminate it from your life.’ Done well, this isn’t a bad research topic for a high-school student.
Sometimes, you just need to shut down all the background noise in your life, open your heart to the beauty of the world, and drink in the love and comfort of a close circle of friends. Quite simply, some extra cortisol might be exactly what you need for a few hours.
Cortisol is natural and necessary in your body — just like blood. The trick is to keep it balanced and make sure your elevated blood pressure doesn’t get out of hand when the stressful circumstances fade into history. Skip the Fad Diets! Natural Smoothies for Sustainable Weight Loss, Click Here.
The Cortisol-Balancing Toolkit
So, here are some ways to encourage your body’s regular cortisol rhythms and find some more balance in your life:
1. Get a Good Night’s Sleep:
Establishing a consistent sleep/wake routine can help your body’s cortisol fluctuations stay on track. Set your alarm for the same time every morning, no matter how sore you feel, grab a cup of coffee and get outdoors. Don’t hit the snooze button. Go to bed at the same time each evening, put away your electronic devices and settle into a relaxing pre-sleep routine.
2. Exercise:
Even if your schedule is full, moving your body consistently helps your cortisol levels decrease in the afternoon and evening, preparing you for rest. Find a sport you enjoy and aim for one to two hours of intense activity a few times a week.
3. Eat Shift Workers:
this may not be scientifically validated as a specific recommendation, but it certainly made me less hungry, grumpy and lethargic.
Practice stress management techniques:
Practice a relaxation technique (deep breathing, meditation, yoga or tie chi) daily to decrease cortisol levels and enhance relaxation.
Get regular exercise:
Try to get 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, such as walking or cycling, on most days of the week to help regulate cortisol levels and keep stress under control.
Get adequate sleep: Make sleep a priority by scheduling it, relaxing into it, and creating a comfortable sleep sanctuary.
Eat a balanced diet:
Make those carbohydrates come from fruits and veggies, along with whole-food grains. Those fats? Get them from oily fish, avocado, nuts and seeds. And protein? It’ll all come from a plant-based diet rich in legumes, tofu and tempeh, whole grains and green veggies. Through all this, remember to keep your fluid intake ample.
Water flushes excess cortisol from the body. Eat a lifestyle diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and healthy fats. This way, your body is adequately nourished to maintain proper cortisol levels throughout the day.
Limit caffeine and alcohol:
But if you make a habit of a cup of coffee in the morning, or match your favorite shows with a glass of wine every night, then your daily caffeine and alcohol intake can influence cortisol and ultimately affect how your body responds to stress.
These easy-to-implement strategies can help to keep your cortisol under control, which will help to keep your health fat at bay.
Conclusion
To emphasize, cortisol is a highly effective internal stress-management hormone; without it, you couldn’t survive. It becomes life-saving in emergencies, yet, during extended periods of stress, it can easily get out of balance, causing major health issues. Once you have a grasp of how cortisol works, you can develop healthy habits that support its natural rhythms to keep your life in balance — creating a virtuous circle of optimal health and wellness. Skip the Fad Diets! Natural Smoothies for Sustainable Weight Loss, Click Here.
