Cortisol And Stress Response (What You Must Know)

Introduction:  

Cortisol and stress response. You’ve Heard these words thrown around all your life, but what does it mean how does it work so I’m gonna tell you what you need to know  Wellness For Life and if you like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works So let’s talk about cortisol in the stress response 

 first there’s two questions 

what is stress?

 what does cortisol do?

 we understand this then a lot of things are gonna fall in place what is stress we could answer that a thousand different ways but let’s just really look at the basics stress is not a bad thing stress is what keeps us alive if we didn’t have stress the body would have no reason to respond or really do anything so exercise is stress just walking gravity is stress it makes us function but then there’s bad stress then there’s stress that becomes chronic that wears us down and that’s the kind we’re gonna talk about so stress is anything that the body has to respond to anything that’s a challenge that the body has to do something to to cope to adapt is a form of stress it’s also known as fight/flight so if you have a tiger coming at you if you have a grizzly bear if you have a Mack truck coming at you you need to move quickly that’s a fight/flight situation and your body responds with a stress response.

 what is cortisol have to do

 with that well when your body has to respond with a fierce activity like run the hardest you can climb a tree fight what’s the first thing you’re going to need its energy your body has to produce energy to get out of that bind and what’s the fastest way to produce energy it is 

Sugar

 it’s blood sugar so as soon as you have a stress response your body is gonna try to find ways to raise that blood sugar so that you can produce energy to save your life that is the prime function of cortisol the body makes cortisol to raise blood sugar because in a stress response we need more energy and once the body does that there’s a few more things that happens as a result of cortisol cortisol is also concerned the stress response is concerned with survival in the moment so healing fixing stuff down the road is not a big deal it’s not high on the list of priorities so inflammation healing the first response in healing is inflammation and the body says no let’s do that later.

 so cortisol is anti-inflammatory cortisol works to down-regulate that part of the immune system that handles inflammation and at the same time if the body is going to raise the sugar if the body’s gonna try to make more sugar where does it get it well it gets it from

 protein primarily it’s the second fastest way to get energy because protein can be converted into glucose so cortisol acts to break down protein in an attempt to raise blood sugar so again you’re saying well that seem saw fully stupid protein and muscle that’s a good thing right well if you have to save your life then you worry more about saving a life in this moment because you can always rebuild the protein tomorrow or next year so the stress response is all about survival in the moment and that’s what cortisol is about also so even though these things may seem destructive they will save your life in the moment that’s what the stress response is all about what happens then if the sugar is unstable so this is one people talk about stress but they usually think about emotional stress and they don’t so often think about the physiological response what are some of the other things that can invoke this response so let’s look at blood sugar if we eat a lot of carbs if we eat a lot of processed foods then we’re gonna have a blood sugar rollercoaster so the body the brain likes to keep the blood sugar right smack in the middle of this blue zone here but if you eat lots of carbs you’re gonna go up the body’s gonna make bunch of insulin and it’s gonna come crashing down you get what’s called reactive hypoglycemia what happens when the blood sugar is too low you get cranky you get cravings you get irritable you lose focus that’s not a nice place to be so the body says oh let’s raise let’s generate some blood sugar how does it do that it does it with cortisol so every time that your blood sugar drops below ideal your body is gonna make more cortisol and what does that mean what’s the significance of that it means every time you have low blood sugar you are creating stress you are in a high stress mode chemically you’re getting all of the destructive consequences of a stress response simply by having low blood sugar and that low blood sugar is only a result of that high blood sugar in the beginning so stabilizing blood sugar isone of the most critical things that we can do to reduce the stress response and reduce the cortisol so what do we do about this well – 

how do we balance this system naturally

 you adopt a diet of whole food whole natural food the way nature made them the way we’ve been eating them for hundreds of thousands of years which means you reduce the car if you have a lot of inflammation if you have a lot of sugar problems then look into keto   that here where you can learn more about a extremely powerful I wouldn’t call it extreme because it’s still a very natural and pleasant way of eating but it’s extremely powerful way of reversing inflammation and insulin resistance.

you can also do breathing exercises

 because a lot of this stress is also emotional one of the most damaging forms of stress is when we feel we have to be on the go all the time all the time all the time we have this racing thoughts in our minds that just won’t shut off we’d give anything for just a break well breathing and meditation can give you that break you can you can reset that stress response in a 5 or 10 minute session of breathing and meditation you notice how you get cravings that are toast totally out of control when your blood sugar drops that’s that’s a cortisol issue it’s the cortisol it gives you those cravings etc. if you have any questions let me know if you have any comments let me know I’ll be more than happy to try to discuss this either in the question section or with a new video please share this video because it’s all about health it’s all about getting the population of the world healthy so that we can stop having all these degenerative diseases.