We understand that insulin resistance is a cause of diabetes and obesity and managing insulin level by exercising and managing nutrition is critical. There is another factor that can elevate your insulin level and that is cortisol.
Key Functions of Cortisol
Cortisol is a stress hormone, secreted in adrenal glands which is located above the kidney and behind the stomach. It is a vital hormone for us. It helps increase awareness, focus, and energy by increasing the production of adrenaline. Cortisol help increase heartrate which helps transports oxygen throughout your body. This is important especially when you are exercising. Cortisol increases contraction strength and rate of heart and muscles. Cortisol also help using stored energy, which can be glycogen, fat and amino acids depending on your activity level and amount of energy is being used. By doing so our body will not ran out of fuel when we are running away from tiger.
Consequence of Chronically Elevated Cortisol
Cortisol is very important hormone, however, there is a catch. When the cortisol is elevated for extended period of time 1.) thyroid function decreases and 2.) lead to insulin resistance. Which means metabolic rate are decreased and blood sugar and insulin level is elevated. This makes fat loss hard. If you are following calorie restricted diet, this is a very bad news because you may be have reduced your caloric intake to 1500 or 1200 calories but your metabolism is decline, due to chronically elevated cortisol, and you may not only unable to lose weight but may increase body fat especially in the mid-section.
Elevated cortisol can also interferes with sleep because you have elevated adrenaline. There is a reason why 30% of U.S. adults develop insomnia. Cortisol may not be a sole reason, however, it is playing significant role in people who are not able to get quality sleep.
Cause of Cortisol Elevation
Again, cortisol elevation is not a bad thing. Chronically elevated cortisol is. Causes of cortisol elevation, I categorize into 3 factors, physical, psychological, and chemical.
Exercise does elevate cortisol. Without cortisol secretion we will not be able to exercise efficiently. Cortisol will help elevate heartrate so that we can exercise harder. So higher the intensity of the exercise where you feel the exercise to be hard, will produce more cortisol. This can be good or bad depending on how your body is capable of regulate cortisol after the workout is done. If you are not able to manage, the recovery may become slower and feel stiff and sore for longer period of time. Ideally, you want to bring the cortisol level down as quickly as possible after you are done with your workout. Normally, I would suggest having carbohydrate like rice, potato, fruits for the meal after the workout, provided that it was challenging workout. Another thing you want to work on is resetting your breathing, which I will explain later.
Similar thing will happen to psychological stress. If you are having stressful day where your mind is going all over the place, your cortisol is elevated. Degree of cortisol secretion seems to be related to stressful events. Death in the family, divorce, fired from job are all at high stress events, which the body will also produces more cortisol. Not all stress are negative. You may had a situation where you are not able to sleep before your vacation because you got so excited. This is also cortisol at work.
Chemical can be food, medication and air pollution, which anything that goes into our body. Consuming highly processed food, such as boxed or packaged food, fast food, imitation food can all cause stress to your digestive system which can lead to inflammation in the body causing the cortisol level to elevate. Similarly too much alcohol, smoking, and drugs, although they may seems helping us relax, can negatively impact our cortisol level.
Frequent usage of medication (of any kind), can cause stress to the body. Side effects are there because the chemicals in medication is depleting nutrients out from our body. This process can cause stress to the body and can elevate cortisol.
There is reason why countries like China and India, despite their wealth, has been increasing with number of obesity and diabetics, mostly due to types of food they started to consume and air pollution.
Signs of Excessive Cortisol Secretion
Because of the role of cortisol, it is relatively easy to identify when you have excessive amount of cortisol in your system.
Cortisol, as mentioned earlier, has role of producing adrenaline which leads to excited behavior. Therefore, overproduction of cortisol can lead to overexcited or agitated behavior and often feel the body stiffness and joint pain.
Excessive cortisol can also have negative impact on insulin production and thyroid function, which may lead to weight gains especially in mid-section.
Heart rate and blood pressure can be relatively higher which can lead to people experiencing sleep issue where falling a sleep or staying a sleep becomes difficult. You may be getting 8+ hours of sleep but may still feel exhausted.
4 Tips on Managing Cortisol
Typically, healthy individual can regulate cortisol well without trying. However, when excess cortisol secretion is happening, best thing you can do is to work on relaxing the body without stimulating the nervous system too much.
How to do that?
1.) You should be exercising, however, you want to avoid lifting heavy weight or go through higher intensity workout. Because weight loss is usually a goal for people with cortisol problem, people want to workout hard to burn off extra calories. But for someone with excessive cortisol can have negative impact if workout is too intense, which may lead to adrenal fatigue or exhaustion. Keep the intensity low and find the exercises that you can enjoy and not feel like a burden.
2.) Consuming carbohydrate will also help bring the cortisol level down. However, you will need to be smart with choices. Rather than ice cream, candies, and sodas, make a healthier choices like potatoes and berry type fruits.
3.) Work on improving sleep quality. Avoiding snacking and alcohol prior to sleep will help improve your sleep quality. Consuming food sources that are rich in magnesium, such as spinach, avocado, chickpeas, and nuts can help your improve your hormonal balance and may help improve your sleep.
4.) Practice breathing. This may sounds weird since breathing should be involuntary. However, when the cortisol level is high, we have a tendency to breath shallow. Work on box breathing. What you do is you breath in for 3 seconds, hold breath for 3 seconds, breath out for 3 seconds, and hold breath for 3 seconds. Work on this cycle for 10 minutes. Once you get used to 3 seconds, increase the duration on each segment. It is best to practice after your workout and before you go to bed.
Conclusion
Cortisol plays very important role in our lives and we cannot live without it. However, excessive cortisol for long period of time will have its consequence. It is called stress hormone because many have not been able to manage it and leading to health problems such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, insulin resistance, anxiety, and so on.
There are, however, certain stress causing events that we cannot avoid, such as work, finance, relationship and so on. Therefore, managing your hormone by nutrition, exercise and breathing will become important.
Kota Shimada
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