A spike in heart rate from a scare or from leaving your phone at home is cortisol talking and it's crucial to keep your body alive and well.
What is cortisol?
Cortisol is a hormone that is produced by the adrenal glands, on top of each kidney. When released into the bloodstream, cortisol can help:
- the body respond to stress or danger
- increase the body’s metabolism of glucose
- control blood pressure
- reduce inflammation
Cortisol is also needed for our response of fight or flight. This is a healthy, natural response to threats. Our body highly regulates the amount of cortisol we produce, to ensure the balance is correct.
What triggers the production of cortisol?
Cortisol production is regulated by the pituitary gland, the pea-sized gland at the base of the brain. When we wake up, exercise or facing a stressful event, the pituitary gland reacts. It sends a signal to the adrenal glands to produce just the right quantity of cortisol.
What happens when we produce too much or little cortisol?
The body usually produces the right amount of cortisol.`
Symptoms of not enough cortisol include:
- continual tiredness
- nausea and vomiting
- weight loss
- muscle weakness
- pain in the abdomen
Symptoms of too much cortisol include:
- weight gain, particularly around the abdomen and face
Cortisol does not increase body fat but has a negative impact on all other hormones related to fat loss - thin and fragile skin that is slow to heal
- acne
- for women, facial hair and irregular menstrual periods
If the Cortisol goes up, usually people have less appetite.
Constant high cortisol:
- Decreases immune function
- Increases chronic inflammation
- Decreases dopamine, serotonine and melatonin
- Decreases testosterone
- Decreases insulin sensitivity
- Decreases T3
- Decreases HGH
- destroys hypo campus (short term memory)
What is important is that under stress our body produces the hormone Cortisol. Cortisol brings our body into survival mode, consider it our alarm system.
Often Cortisol is considered bad. What is bad and causing health issues, is being constant under stress (= constant production of Cortisol). Stress at some times is not bad for us.
Switching between stress and relaxing is productive.
The good news is, we can also use of the body’s Cortisol in our advantage. Have Cortisol high when we need it (like in the workouts) brings benefits. We become in a state of optimal performance, that will improve the training.
High performance athlete use Cortisol in their advantage while training. Usually Cortisol lasts two hours. Licorice before a training can double the half time of Cortisol from 2 hours to 4 hours.
After the training we can calm our body down by giving the right nutrition.
In brief, cortisol is not bad and you can use it at your advantage.
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