Posted by If you have been on the internet in the past month, you would of most likely seen a video or even an ad of women explaining how they lost all of that weight naturally with the ‘help’ of supplements to lower their cortisol levels. At first, I thought it was just another word, another issue and another stupid way to push a product women don’t need, promising to fix their entire lives.
As mentioned in a previous blog post about Bloom’s ‘magic’ in reducing bloating and how it was pushed all over social media and praying on women who are gullible enough to believe that a drink that is just a bunch of random them blended together will get rid of their ‘bloating’ that is just a natural process, and maybe if people are feeling bloated all the time they need to further assess what they are eating rather than trying to medicate it.
Cortisol levels are just plastered all over the place and it’s hard to find anything genuine with the products people are trying to sell because of the capitalist history and society that we have. So I have dedicated myself to coming today to deliver all of the facts so you can decide if it’s something that resonates with you or if you think it’s another trigger warning word that is trying to sell some sort of weight loss hack to you.
What is Cortisol?
Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone that your adrenal glands produce and release. Glucocorticoids are a type of steroid hormone and what that does to the body is suppress all of the inflammation within your bodily tissues and control multiple elements within your body, such as your metabolism, fat, liver and bone. It can also affect your sleep-wake cycles.
Cortisol is an essential hormone that is located all over your body and plays a major role in:
- Regulating your stress responses.
- Helping with how your body uses fats, proteins and carbohydrates or your metabolism.
- Suppresses inflammation.
- Regulates your blood pressure.
Your body is constantly monitoring and using your cortisol to help you reach an optimal point. If these levels are out of balance, it can in turn affect those areas where it plays a major role and negatively impact your health.
It’s like with everything, balance is the most desired outcome, but life happens and when the balance shifts, we are likely to be affected by it both mentally and physically.
Is Cortisol a Stress Hormone?
It has been widely described as a stress hormone across the internet and other well-known news and blogging sites; however, it’s important to note that this hormone isn’t just the bearer of bad news. It’s an important part that in fact helps to regulate your body’s stress response rather than being the cause of it.
Stress itself is varying; you can be stressed that your train was delayed and you might be late for work or you can go through truly traumatic stress that sends your body into fight or flight mode. No matter the type or severity of stress, cortisol is released within the body to help you regulate it; in a sense, it’s trying to calm you down.
What Exactly Does Cortisol Do To Your Body In Excess?
Almost all tissues in your body have glucocorticoid receptors; therefore, it has an impact on every organ in your body, including a range of systems such as the nervous system, immune system, cardiovascular system and integumentary system.
Regulate Body Stress
So as cortisol is released into the organs during these stressful situations, it also triggers glucose (sugar) from your liver for full energy during times of stress. This kind of acts like adrenaline, so when you are stressed, your body is equipped with the means to protect itself. If you are in a more than regular state of stress, then you are overactivating processes within your body.
Affects Metabolism
Cortisol helps control how your body uses fats, proteins and carbs for energy. If your body is in a prolonged state of stress, it can actually break down the muscle tissue, leading to decreased metabolism. Additionally, it can lead to disruptive sleeping patterns, stress belly which is an accumulation of fat around the belly and increased appetites as this hormone stimulates the feeling of hunger.
Sleep-Wake Cycle
Under normal, regular circumstances, you won’t use cortisol in your sleep unless you had, per say, a scary dream. But in those circumstances, if they were regular, then it would be a huge issue for your body’s circadian rhythm. You might just struggle with sleep as a whole, which means you might be stressed and it’s putting your cortisol levels in a dizzy state, which isn’t good for your overall health and leads to more irritable days.
Thoughts
From this research, it seems that all of the viral tiktoks might have some scientific support behind it. This suggests that chronic stress can lead to individuals binge eating, slower metabolisms and even encourage your body to hold onto fasts in area’s that individuals don’t want. So there is logic to why individuals are promoting this within their videos.
The only problem I had with this trend is that it’s a way for people to try and sell you a tablet to help you, but there needs to be a healthier, sustainable and natural way to handle stress rather than to put a block on your cortisol levels.
How To Naturally Regulate Your Cortisol Levels
Reduce Stressors
The first step is addressing the stressors within your life, whether you remove things from your life that cause you stress or practice stress management techniques like yoga or even meditation. You need to ensure that you are allowing your mind and body to be put in situations where you might hold onto unnecessary stress.
It’s common knowledge that stress is bad for you and misconceptions about how it can cause weight loss can also cause weight gain. If you are finding it hard to reduce your stress, take yourself on a well-deserved weekend trip; just prebook your city centre car park and enjoy a spa weekend.
Priortise Sleep
Men and women are different about sleep but aiming for anything 8-10 hours of sleep each night is imperative and if you are like me, you might struggle with staying asleep the whole night so finding solutions like pillow spray or vitamins is important. But also, not going to the gym later on or staring at screens before bed will help you.
Final Thoughts
Overall stress or cortisol might be the key issue for people who are retaining some stubborn fat and might lead to them binge eating and putting added pressure onto themselves. It seems that in order to live a healthier lifestyle, you need to find what makes you happy and do it. I would also like to recommend that you find things that work for you and don’t try and buy anything they sell for it on the internet as it wo work and then you will be stressed that it’s not working.