Nourish With Intent: Cortisol

Good morning. Happy Saturday. I hope everyone's doing well today. I will be drinking my coffee because I'm only half awake. Happy Saturday. Welcome to nourish with intent. I was actually requested to talk, it was requested of me to talk about cortisol, so I thought that could be a fun topic to talk about today. I have some other ideas, too, for I think next week is going to be fun. Good morning. Good morning. I'm seeing some people pop in some names I haven't seen before. I'm glad you're here. Welcome.

I always like to start with a random, fun question because I like to get to know you guys a little bit more. So, question of the day, what is your favorite type of taco? That's gonna be my question for me. Man, that's a tough. That's a tough thing to answer, too, I think. For me, there's a little taco place by my house that has, like, grilled squash and I think, acidoro cheese. And they, like, make the cheese really crispy and then put everything on it, and it almost is, like, a little quesadilla.

So that's my answer for today. Anyway, as I said, today I'm gonna be talking about cortisol because it has been everywhere for probably the last year, but I've definitely seen an increase in people talking about cortisol, and cortisol face has been a thing. Most recently, I think I just saw tofu taco. Ooh, I'll have to try that. I don't think I've ever had a tofu taco. Yeah. So, cortisol, what is it? How much does it really impact us? Is it something we need to worry about? Let's talk about it. So, cortisol is a steroid hormone, and hormones in general are messengers in the body, and they coordinate different functions throughout your systems.

So steroid hormones in particular, glucocorticosteroids, are the class that cortisol falls under. And cortisol specifically is produced by your adrenal glands, which sit above your kidneys. They are signaled to do so from the pituitary gland and hypothalamus in your brain. So there's a lot of interplay and a lot of back and forth messaging. And so it's important to preface all of this with, if there's, like, a true issue, it could be coming from a couple different places. So this is not meant to, like, scare anyone.

This is really just educational. But just to throw out there that there's a couple different systems at play. So pituitary gland, hypothalamus in your brain signal, oh, we need some cortisol. Adrenal glands are like, we got you. We pump out the cortisol. Cortisol increases in a small amount when we eat, when we work out. When you get a random, vague email from your boss, that freaks you out. A little bit of that's normal. It's normal to have those acute upticks in cortisol. Where it can become an issue is when you have chronically elevated cortisol.

And that I'll get into can come from a couple different things. But acute upticks in cortisol are normal. And most important, they are transient. So when your cortisol goes up, it doesn't stay up. Your body knows how to react and respond to that, and it comes back down. So cortisol, as I mentioned, plays a role in a lot of systems, and some of these you may have heard online or from someone you're talking to wherever, but I kind of want to run through what is cortisol actually doing? So cortisol, as it relates to body systems, interplays with blood sugar because it counterbalances insulin.

When you eat food, you digest. We get the glucose molecule. That's what's circulating in our blood. Insulin opens the doors of our cells and allows the glucose to go into our cells and out of the bloodstream. Cortisol, when in response to whatever stress or whatever acute signal we're getting, raises blood sugar by breaking down stored glycogen in the liver and bringing it to the bloodstream. So it's kind of. They're counterbalancing each other, and that's a normal response in terms of stress and how that relates to stress.

When you're in your fight or flight response, your body is releasing adrenaline. You also release cortisol. And as I just mentioned, cortisol releases blood sugar or releases glucose into the blood, increasing blood sugar. That's energy. So if you think about. Because our body doesn't know it's 2024, however long ago, you're out, I don't know, chasing dinner, and there's a lion. All of a sudden, the lion's chasing you. You need energy in that moment to get away from it. And so that's what cortisol is doing.

It is rising in response to that acute stressor, breaking down your liver glycogen, that stored glucose, so that you have energy to get away from the situation at hand. Now, 2024, we're not running away from lions, but it's the same mechanism in terms of inflammation. I think that one gets thrown out a lot if you're, you know, they're like, oh, if you're so chronically inflamed, you must have high cortisol. There's a lot of things that can impact that cortisol, actually, in small amounts, in normal fluctuations day to day, can suppress inflammation.

So that, in turn, can actually help us. When we have chronically high cortisol, whether from a medical condition or like, very severe chronic stress, your body adapts to having that amount of cortisol, and it no longer has as much of that effect. So then you can get some of that chronic inflammation. Blood pressure. We're not sure the mechanism with blood pressure, but high cortisol has shown to be associated with high blood pressure and low cortisol associated with low blood pressure. So that's another thing.

Cortisol naturally ebbs and flows throughout our day. So when you think about, you know, oh, you have high cortisol at any given moment. We might, depending on the day, and in some ways, it's supposed to be that way. So cortisol is highest right before you wake up. And with all of those mechanisms that I just shared, it's increasing blood pressure, it's increasing your blood sugar, it's really prepping you for the day to wake up. And it's also, you see a higher level of cortisol in, like, not early afternoon, I guess, like late afternoon, and then it's lowest when we sleep.

So it's naturally going up and down, and that way it's playing with our sleep cycles and our circadian rhythms as well. So hopefully that all made sense. But it's doing a lot in the body. And I think the main thread is that, as with anything, if there's too much, there can be a problem. If there's not enough, we can have problems, but it, in and of itself is not a negative thing. Cortisol is something our bodies need. It is involved in a lot of processes, and most people don't have a level of elevated cortisol that causes, like, severe medical concern.

Not to say that managing stress is not important. I think the, in the world we live in today, there's so many stressors, and there are also, like, diagnosable conditions around elevated cortisol. So when to worry? As I said, high cortisol is real. It's not nearly as prevalent as the Internet makes it seem in a healthy person. Like I said, we have those transient ups and downs. That's that acute stress day to day. Chronic stress. So having a job that you absolutely hate, having a lot of anxiety or stress from just the state of the world, things like that that don't go away on a day to day basis can affect some of those markers that I mentioned.

So blood pressure, blood sugar, those can also, because those are involved with, they can affect liver function. So we might even see elevated cholesterol, like interrupting sleep patterns if you're feeling. I think it is a good description. m. and you're like, let's go. That might be of concern. Those chronic situations of stress can cause some of that. And all of those also have many other causes. So it's important to remember, especially when someone's selling you a product on the Internet or talking about this in general, the symptoms are pretty vague.

They're not going to be specific to having high cortisol. Right. So many things can cause high blood sugar, high blood pressure, so many things can cause high cholesterol. Right. If you have a genetic condition. So just because you're having these symptoms does not mean that it is related to this. Could it be? Sure. Just something I wanted to point out, and the important thing I think, too, is that the prolonged chronic stress and acute stress, I'm annoying myself with how much I'm saying. I want to also say this.

Chronic and acute stress can be improved with lifestyle changes and implementing stress management. If you have a medical condition such as like a pituitary tumor or an adrenal tumor, something called cushing syndrome, you might feel a little bit different when you start to implement stress management. Maybe you're taking medication, maybe you're doing meditation, maybe you are going on more walks, maybe you're picking up knitting. Things that are going to actually help reduce stress. If you have a true medical condition involving cortisol, your symptoms are not going to go away.

They might get a little bit better. They're not going to go away. Dieting in and of itself has also been shown to increase cortisol. So dieting, not just any caloric deficit, but dieting in an extreme caloric deficit, regardless of whether or not you're tracking food, because we know tracking food and the research has shown to increase stress. There's some research that's been done that showed the people that weren't tracking but still eating a very low calorie diet still had increases in cortisol because that is a stressor on the body.

So another thing to keep in mind, high cortisol can also increase nutrient excretion. So it depletes certain minerals like potassium, magnesium, calcium. Vitamin D has been shown to be low in people who have chronically elevated cortisol as well as vitamin C. So making sure that you're eating a nutrient dense diet as much as you can can help there. High sodium intake has been shown to increase cortisol in some of the research, that one's a little diciere and endorphins have been shown to decrease cortisol.

So again, it's going back to that stress management, doing things that make you happy, laughing releases endorphins and that can decrease cortisol. So spending time with people that you like, being around, watching a funny show, just doing things that are going to make you happy, can help with cortisol regulation. And I know now I'm that person sitting here being like, we have to manage our stress. It is so hard. As someone who's very type a and gets very stressed very easily, I get it. It does take intention for a lot of people in implementing, and it's really about prioritizing time for you, even if it's five minutes a day.

Like locking yourself in the bathroom, doing skincare, if it's taking a walk without your dog. I know for me, walking my dog is stress inducing because I have a reactive dog. So I'm like always on alert of where are the other dogs? Are they coming at me or is there a dog off leash? So taking a walk for me without my dog helps that it could be ten minutes of a meditation app at night. Whatever it is, doing the things that make you happy can help with this, along with many other things. So that's all I have for you today.

A little bit about cortisol. It is real. Not as many people have elevated cortisol as the Internet would make you seem. And stress management is important for overall health and wellness, but also regulating cortisol. I think that's all I have for you today. I don't know why I can't see anyone's names on here anymore. It shows when you popped in. But if you were here, thanks for joining me. Next week, I'm not sure what we'll talk about. I have some ideas, but hope to see you back next week. And if you have any questions, if something wasn't clear, because I kind of went all over the place a little bit, put me or put it in the community tab, and I would love to answer those for you.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your weekend, and we'll hopefully see you pop on here next week. Yeah.