How to support Cortisol!

0:00I get asked a lot of questions about cortisol. How does it impact my hormones and what in the world do I even do to support my cortisol? Once I realize that that is dysfunctional. So I want to unpack this today because this is something that not only I want to say to people when I'm working with them, but I actually want my clients to hear on repeat. So I want this episode to be a resource that you save for later when you're feeling really stressed out because I'm going to talk about lots of different ways that your cortisol is impacting your hormones and your ability to feel well and energize throughout your day. How it's disrupting your sleep and your blood sugar regulation. But most importantly, what you can do about regulating your dysregulated cortisol. If you're new here, I'm Rita Johnson. I am the owner of Health in Hormones and here you'll find fatigue, help, period solutions, and so much more. Let's dive in. So first and foremost, let's talk about what is cortisol. Cortisol is not a bad thing, right? We need cortisol to wake up in the morning feeling energized. We need cortisol to regulate our energy throughout the day. The trouble with cortisol enters in when it is dysregulated with our daily rhythm.

1:05So we may have really low cortisol in the morning when we wake up and we might feel really sluggish or tired. We might notice that we're tired and wired at the end of the day. That could be a sign that your cortisol is actually the highest at the end of the day, which is definitely going to disrupt your circadian rhythm even further. We may notice with cortisol that when we're under a lot of stress with deadlines or high-pressure jobs or a stressful environment at home with lots of little people or a marriage that's on the fritz, our cortisol levels are really helping us to respond with more clarity, with more ability to show up. That's what it's doing ideally. Now, if we have dysfunctional cortisol or cortisol that's kind of been run on a rollercoaster for too long, high where it should be low and lower it should be high, then another thing that's going to result in this is very imbalanced hormones. So whether you are currently in cycles, what's going to happen with your progesterone and estrogen that are supposed to be cycling all month long, cortisol essentially steals the resources

2:09that are needed for that progesterone and estrogen. In addition to that, it's essentially wreaking havoc at a place that's further up in the cascade of what your body is saying is the most important thing. So if there's dysfunction at the place of where our cortisol is being produced, then further downstream, it's also going to impact our sex hormones. That's the fastest way I can summarize that there's lots of really great information out there and something that if you're already working with me 101, we've probably talked about this in depth, but it's really important for us to remember why is it so important when cortisol gets messed up. Another thing that we can really summarize this by saying is that if our cortisol is elevated, our body is looking for the bear. So looking for the tigers, it's looking for what am I running from? Where is the problem entering in? What are these things that I should be really concerned about? And so the last thing I should think about is fertility and reproduction. Now if you are beyond cycling, so say you've entered into menopause, this is still really

3:13important for you as well. And I hope you'll start to understand that as we get a little deeper into this. So another reason that cortisol being dysfunctional is going to impact other things in our body is because cortisol will also respond to our blood sugar being imbalanced. So this is both why is cortisol dysregulation important to look at and support, but also what are other things that can imbalance our cortisol. And so there's this back and forth relationship between balancing your blood sugar. So if you're somebody that knows you're insulin resistant or you know that you're pre-diabetes or type two diabetes, you definitely need to listen. But even if you aren't, even if you just notice that sometimes you may hangry if your meal is delayed or sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and your brain is racing or you're somebody that's really struggling with the ability to lose weight, weight is just kind of sticking to you. These are all signs that there's some amount of blood sugar dysregulation before we can get to that diagnosis of insulin resistant or pre-diabetes or perhaps because we're not testing

4:18your blood sugar in the right way at the doctor's office that can also be a part of the reason we don't actually know that, but that could still be a problem for you. I find a lot of us just have dysregulated blood sugar, so it's always good to perk up our ears and listen when people are talking about ways to support the blood sugar dysregulation. Okay, so when we eat food, it gets converted into our bloodstream into glucose in varying amounts based on how much sugar is present in the foods we're eating, how quickly it's broken down into sugar sources as well. If for example you were to eat something like some cookies on an empty stomach and your blood sugar jumps up and it's releasing a lot of glucose into your blood stream and then correspondingly your body is going to release insulin just soak up that glucose. Well, part of what's going on in this, especially when the blood sugar jumps up, is that if it goes too far outside of your baseline, it's going to be highly inflammatory signals that are happening in your body. So you're going to, in addition to having this high glucose and then high insulin,

5:22which eventually that relationship can become poisonous to ourselves and so our cells stop taking in as much insulin, which is where the term insulin resistance comes from because we stop responding to those elevated insulin. In addition to that, we also have cortisol surging at this time as well. And when that cortisol surges, it says hey, we've gotten an emergency here. We have too much sugar in our body and we need to do something about this. Our brain feeling that elevated cortisol starts to look for something wrong. And this is where it's really tricky when we feel this in our body, our heart starts racing, our palms might get sweaty, we might start to feel like dizzy or lightheaded. It was almost like we're ready to just take off and sprint through the forest away from the tiger. We need to first recognize this and say, oh, this is what my body needs. My body needs some healthy protein. What did I eat for breakfast? Oh, I only had a bagel. Yeah, that's going to make sense. That three hours later, you're going to feel really low because your

6:23body is in this emergency response state. Okay, so that's the first thing, balancing our blood sugar is critical. And so what does that look like? That looks like being sure that you have protein at your meals. You have good healthy fats. You're not eating high sugar things on an empty stomach or maybe not at all. Foods that you know that you react to, you're eliminating them from your diet. These things are all really important to balancing our blood sugar. In addition to that, same side, diversited the same coin is our stress response. Cortisol itself is a result from our stress response, but it's also a response from our blood sugar being dysregulated and vice versa. So if you have ever heard of a continuous glucose monitor, it's something that diabetics wear on their arm to really monitor their blood sugar levels and what's going on. It's something I love to use in my practice to have my clients wear as well and something that will be able to see is that some days they might eat the exact same thing they ate two or three days ago and it's impacting their blood

7:26sugar. But what we really find when we dig into this is that, oh, you know what, I also had a really stressful day at work. So maybe it wasn't just the food. It's not just food that's going to impact your blood sugar. It's also the ways your stress can impact your blood sugar. Okay, so we're going to impact this a little bit more. So when we're talking about these stress responses, you know, sometimes we jump to this conclusion of like, well, do I have to quit my job? I can't get rid of my kids, right? I've got all these kids and they need all this stuff from me and it's a lot less about getting rid of things that are on your plate and a lot more about how can I store better what I already have? And part of that is by increasing our capacity. So the ways that we increase our capacity to be able to carry more things with, I like to think of it as carry more things with more grace, you know, it's very similar to how I do a lot of my day-to-day life, right? I have six kids, one to 17. It's not uncommon for my husband and I to be cooking in the kitchen and the one-year-old is crying, he wants more food. The five-year-old is demanding something

8:28that someone else got and she forever would whatever reasons overlooked. And the 17-year-old is telling me about his plans in two weeks and the 15-year-old needs to know if she can do something with her friend tonight. We're just all over the place, we're cooking dinner, we're trying to get stuff on the table, the house is a mess, right? This is this is typical, but how can we be peaceful in those moments? Whether your life this has crazy as mine or not, how can we cultivate this greater feeling of peace? And this is really where it's taking deep breaths, it's acknowledging this is a lot. These people need a lot for me and right now I'm being asked to give a lot, but I can handle this. A lot of times it's just for a short period of time, right? I know I'm around mealtimes, it's a little different. It's a little different than, you know, if I'm just sitting on the couch watching the one-year-old play and then the 15 and 17-year-old needs something and the 12-year-old's having a friend issue and the five-year-old didn't get the brownie everyone else got, it's easier to just handle those things and stride. But if I can go into the kitchen

9:31before cooking dinner with a couple breaths and arm myself with a thought around how I'm going to hold on to this time in the kitchen when it's crazy everyone's descending on the house, it's gonna be okay, it's all gonna be okay and I have time for everything that's really important. I have time to make the meal, the one-year-old will get fed, maybe the nine-year-old can help, the five-year-old will get what she wants, maybe the 12-year-old can help. Sometimes it's choosing to see things differently, asking for more support and help, the ways that we need, whether that's with your spouse or with older children, or trying to not have mom be needed for every little thing. Sometimes that is especially in work, taking the opportunity to close your lap tap in between meetings and do some deep breaths, put your feet on the ground, feel your weight settle into a chair, look around the room, adjust a couple things, maybe things that you didn't notice before, two, three, say their names, just helps to regulate a nervous system, you're safe,

10:35you can look around and say there's no tigers, there's no tigers here, all of these things are telling our body that it's safe, that even though things are crazy and loud, they're busy, more pulled and stretched to thin, that you're safe, and the more that we practice this, the more your body is going to feel it's safety, it's safetyness in the midst of a lot, in the midst of a lot going on, and the better we can get at incorporating these little things into our day-to-day life, the less we're going to see our cycle chart impacted by our stress, our blood sugar imbalance affected by our stress, because our body is able to handle that stress without whaling over, and it's going to be hard initially, it's going to take you a while, and I want you to expect that, and give yourself a lot of grace, I'm learning how to get better at increasing my capacity, I'm learning at getting better,

11:40at calming my body down, it's a really big step, but it makes such a difference for our long-term health, and then we can get back to a place where cortisol is serving us, it's not run away dysregulated, it's not messing with our blood sugar levels, our body knows it's safe, even when there's a lot going on, and the really wild thing is, that then we can increase our capacity, we can do more, and I truly, this is part of my story, and I want it to be a part of yours too, so invite you, save this episode, listen to it on repeat, especially when you're under a lot of stress, to remind yourself how cortisol can impact your physiology, but also the ways you can support your body's cortisol levels in that process. All right, friend, you got this, let's go forward and support these amazing bodies, God has given us.