Episode 9: Meet Your Best Frenemy: How Cortisol Works In the Body
You’ve probably heard mention of this hormone before, but we’re going to be talking about your best hormonal FRENEMY… cortisol.
Cortisol is a super important hormone– critical to life, to keeping us safe and alive, giving us the ability to get out of bed in the morning and some strong signals that it's time to go to sleep at night. But what does cortisol do??
When it gets out of whack, our cortisol levels and the impact they have make it feel like our cortisol levels are working against us.
In this episode, we’re talking about cortisol… the most important hormone produced by the adrenal glands. We’ll get into what it does, how it impacts our body, and what it looks like when our cortisol levels aren’t where they should be... and what are normal cortisol levels.
And, of course, I have a few simple shifts that you can do to start making an impact in this area today.
Glad you're here,
Sarah
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Adrenal Dysfunction Assessment: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Products and Tools to Support The Adrenal Glands & Healthy Cortisol Levels: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Disclaimer: Information shared on this podcast and any referenced websites are not to be taken as medical advice or to be used as a diagnosis or treatment plan for any medical condition. I’m sharing my educated opinions & experience but nothing shared here can be taken on a one size fits all basis and we always recommend you do your own research, talk to your own doctors and practitioners, and take full responsibility for any health & medical choices you make.
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Want to read this episode instead? Here’s the transcript!
Hello. So this is an area whereas I've been pulling together all the notes and the information and whatnot for this episode. I am also taking a good hard look in the mirror and my own routines to see how I can better support my own healthy cortisol levels, because I am a firm believer that this is an area where you need to constantly be tweaking and working and diving a little deeper to support your adrenals.
As I'm gonna talk about here, I am a firm believer that this is a problem for the majority of people. We can all do at least a little bit better in making sure that we're supporting our adrenals. We might not be in massive dysfunction, but I think that the stress of modern life just puts us all in a position where we're probably leaning more towards adrenal dysfunction than we are healthy adrenal balance. And so, yeah, you know, when you start working, pulling together the information, kind of brushing it off and going, oh yeah, I used to do that, or I, I I should do that, that I could incorporate that or that would be easier. Maybe I should try that. You know, th that's these sorts of things. And so as we jump in here today, I hope that you are able to pull out a couple things that you could kind of add into your routines that could support your cortisol levels, because that's what we're gonna talk about today.
And ugh, this is just one area where it screams like, MOM, mom problem. Like, moms are going to deal with this. And I mean, don't get me wrong, there are many people who aren't moms who have issues with cortisol levels being out of whack or some, you know, some level of adrenal dysfunction, but modern motherhood I think just sets women up for this. And this was surely the case for me. And honestly, I think, I think that I've actually sort of struggled with adrenal issues most of my adult life when I, when I look back on it. But especially when I became a mother. This was something that I think was really probably one of the big factors that led to, that led into it was it was one of the big on-ramps for my developing an autoimmune disease with Hashimotos, where my thyroid was eventually involved as well.
And I think that for many, many women this comes, these adrenal issues come out of becoming a mom for the first time, maybe not having a ton of support, or you're just like thrust into this new role and life as a mom, where there's this small person that is, you know, totally hijacked all of your sense of self <laugh>, um, in all the best ways, right? Hijacked your sense of self. It's now dictating your schedule. Doesn't know anything like you don't know anything. It's, you're a first time mom and this baby knows nothing about how to feed itself, take care of itself, clothe itself. You know maybe a little bit more cuz you read a couple books, but anyway, it's a little stressful, right? And you're not sleeping, which is all these things as you hear, you're gonna hear me talk about the problems that when these problems can occur, you're like, check motherhood, check motherhood, all of that, because this is an issue with stress, uh, are constant stress, constant stressful lifestyles, raising young kids, trying to work, trying to have careers, financial pressures, all the things.
This constant stress, it has an impact. And I say all the time that stress isn't just a mental health thing. There are physical implications to stress and this exact thing is one of them. Constant stress is having an impact on your very best. F fren me your cortisol levels, and I love to call cortisol myre me because it does two main things. It, it makes it so that I can actually do things like that. I can actually get out of bed in the morning and have the motivation to do like anything, anything at all. It's also probably responsible for saving my life a time or two when I might have otherwise gotten hit by a car when a driver turned without looking. Or I'm sure I would've had many, many more injuries as a kid if it hadn't been for cortisol. Giving me like cat-like reflexes to dodge and errands softball or a tree branch heading my way or whatever.
What does cortisol do in the human body?
Cortisol is, in stressful situations, the combination of adrenaline and cortisol is what makes us be able to stay safe. But also it kind of steps in when it's not needed. Like, you know, you look at your phone, there's the name of a person on that caller ID that maybe kind of, I don't really wanna talk to. It's not really a need for a cortisol spike. There's not a real threat or danger or something. Uh, baby's crying like, it's okay, I know what to do, I have the supplies to do it. No need for the like intense cortisol spike. A quick scroll through the daily news, um, or a flip through social media. Nope, I don't need the cortisol spike. Um, my village is okay, <laugh>, I, you know, no need for cortisol there. This is just news occurring far, far away. However, our bodies can't tell the difference.
Cortisol can't tell the difference. Our adrenals, which are responsible for creating cortisol and kind of answering the call for cortisol in a stressful situation, they can't, the adrenals can't tell the difference between the real threats and the perceived threats. And so it just responds as if everything's a threat. And that's why it's a friendy. It's good, but it can also very easily get outta whack. Let's talk about cortisol. Like what is cortisol? It's, it's a hormone. It's critical. It's a life sustaining hormone. It's a hormone produced by the adrenals that's made from cholesterol, which is like lots of other hormones. And cortisol controls blood sugar levels. It's a natural anti-inflammatory. It controls salt and water balance in our body. It influences blood pressure, lots and lots of things. There are two sort of primary functions when it comes to cortisol. It is, uh, it regulates and it reacts.
And so when it's in sort of its regulatory mode, it coordinates our sleep and wake cycles and our food intake, and the flow of cortisol in that's in that function is predictable. That is, that's a, the normal way of cortisol. And then when it's in its react function, it's not predictable. It does not have a predictable flow. The peaks and cortisol come as part of a reaction to stressors like dodging outta the way of a car who blew a red light or out running a bear in the woods. Those we've got a burst of adrenaline that comes in to kind of, you know, get us out of the way across the street or whatever. And then cortisol to give us the energy and mental clarity to be able to move through that situation safely. And so this is, those are the two primary functions.
This is a normal, normal thing. Um, the normal process for cortisol when it's in its regulatory mode is that cortisol is low overnight. And then we get a burst of cortisol within about 30 minutes of waking up. And so that is what should make you feel energized to start the day. You might not feel super awesome like lying in bed, but about 30 minutes after you're up, you should feel less pain, more mental clarity, um, a little ooph to get your day started. Many people attribute that to their cup of coffee, but actually it should be cortisol that's allowing you to do that. And if you're drinking coffee, that's like a bonus <laugh>. That's the ideal. And so that's the normal process for cortisol. It's high in the morning and then it is kind of on like a slow, um, dip or slow kind of, uh, arc towards lowering low cortisol levels near bedtime.
It should be low again when it's time for bed, except for when it's in the fight or flight, uh, situation. So the nervous system is highly attuned to this. We get that jolt of adrenaline if we're in a stressful situation. So a stress could be anything. Stress could be hunger, it could be a hard workout, it could be lack of sleep, it could be a crying baby, it could be a, an intruder, uh, or some kind of physical threat. These are all things that could give that nervous system, that jolt of adrenaline that makes you feel super clear-headed and energized and whatnot, followed by an increase in cortisol. And this is, again, very important from like a primitive sense for saving your life. That is, it's a good thing that it does. That problem is modern, constant mo modern life is full of constant stressors and those constant stressors get interpreted by our nervous system that we're constantly in danger.
Again, text comes in, that's a little irritating. Um, get a bad report from the kid's teacher at school, or your irritating coworker stops by your office with some irritating news or something like that. Whatever it is, add into the fact that maybe you forgot to eat breakfast or maybe whatever. There's so many stressors. I can't even think. Oh, then, then layer on our phones in our pockets that are constantly buzzing with information. Or even if they're not buzzing when we pick them up to kind of just mindlessly scroll, we inevitably see a social media post from our crazy uncle, or we see bad news headlines from some other place far around the world and that sets off a little rise in stress or whatever the, whatever the news of the day is, can trigger stress. And so all of these little triggers and stress, they basically, uh, allow for a rise in cortisol every single time.
There's a stressful or dangerous situation that's, or, or not even a stressful or dangerous situation. It could be just what our nervous system is perceiving as a dangerous situation that activates the nervous system, adrenaline and rising cortisol, all of it. And this ultimately is what we call adrenal dysfunction. When there is so many constant stressors that our body just kind of gets fried and can no longer tell the difference. And so adrenal dysfunction can come from anything that sends dangerous signals to the body. That sleep deprivation, not eating enough, working out hot, having a hot demanding job, being involved in relationships that aren't healthy, being hit by a car, all the stressors, it doesn't matter. Our body reads them at a physiological level all the same. And that sends the signals to the body that it needs to sort of shift into survival mode.
What does cortisol do?
Those dangerous signals come in. We need to shift into survival mode. And a key part of survival mode is a spike in cortisol. So, oh, I also wanna throw out there, I don't wanna blow past this because this is one of the most important things we can do to help, but sleep deprivation. There's research that shows that sleep deprivation is probably the fastest way to trigger a stress response in our bodies. It's the fastest way to make sure that we are going to rely on adrenaline and cortisol spikes. So just tuck that away. Sleep deprivation is not good anyhow, so we have that immediate stress, the hypothalamus senses, the stress sets off that cascade, and as part of that response, the adrenals pump out extra hormones that our body and our body shift from going into the state of relaxing and digesting that parasympathetic part of our nervous system, that parasympathetic state.
It switches into a survival state, the fight, flight or freeze state, and those spikes in hormones just start to change things physiologically in our body. When our body is on constant high alert, then our body is getting mixed signals. And ultimately, you know, when we're talking about this, this becomes problematic because it's constant because when we're talking about primitive people, these instincts were really important to, you know, escape a bear or get outta the way of a car. All those things that then that de demand for the emergency levels of hormones that calms down after that stressful situation. And then we can return to the normal like resting parasympathetic state and focus. That's where we, our body focuses on body maintenance and upkeep. But because we're living in a chronically stressful life, the chronic stress and the never ending cycle of, uh, of stressful situations, we are living in a chronic situation where we are calling for more cortisols.
High Cortisol Level Symptoms
And as a result our cortisol levels can actually get flipped, flipped around. So they end up instead of being high in the morning and then tapering throughout the day, they can end up being high at night and low in the morning, which means we have trouble getting out of bed in the morning by midday. Your levels could be, you know, still somewhere in the middle, but you're not on your way down. And so you find your way, yourself reaching for things like caffeine or sugar to just have energy to get through the day. It's sort of a way of self-medicating and propping up what our body should naturally do. You know, we drink, you know, copious amounts of caffeine to boost our energy level and then at night have to drink wine to calm down and we'll, we can when, when we, uh, when our cortisol levels get flipped, we sort of have to, to be able to get through.
So I get that. But by evening, when we're feeling tired, we should be feeling tired when cortisol levels are low. But when the cortisol levels are flipped, we can't fall asleep. Even though we might be super tired, it's like we're too tired to fall asleep and this just adds to the cycle because then we're sleep deprived, it creates more stress and becomes even more of a problem. So this is massively important on its own, independent of thyroid issues. It is totally, totally big time problem and it's a big time problem actually for the majority of people, people living in the modern world today, most people have some level of adrenal dysfunction, some level of cortisol imbalance. However, for those of us who are constantly kind of aware and trying to manage hypothyroid issues, this process directly, this problem directly affects the thyroid cuz cortisol levels slow down the thyroid hormone production, meaning that having chronically elevated cortisol or cortisol all over the place can have a super big impact on thyroid function.
Um, additionally just having high cortisol can increase antibody production and inhibits the conversion of t4, uh, which is the inactive thyroid hormone into t3. We're not able to get the thyroid hormone produced that we need. We're not able to convert it and our body starts producing antibodies to attack our thyroid simply by having cortisol levels high. And so this is just, I mean, all kinds of problem, right? Which is why if you're dealing with hypothyroidism at any level, whether it's a new diagnosis, whether it's subclinical, whether you've been dealing with this for a long time, you need to look at adrenal stuff and start to do interventions to work on adrenal health because it is so impactful to thyroid specifically. However, just having the adrenal glands dysfunctional is actually enough to cause symptoms, which the symptoms of adrenal dysfunction are actually in a lot of ways very similar, which is why it's hard to diagnose sometimes.
Cortisol Imbalance Symptoms
They're very similar to hypothyroidism. So this is something that you need to pay attention to and address because your adrenals are all outta whack. Your cortisol levels are all over the place and cortisol is just sending it. It gets all wonky and sends mixed signals to maybe the right amount at the wrong time, the wrong amount at the right time, the, you know, all over the place. There's all kinds of things that can that can go wrong there. Regardless. You probably are having symptoms, common symptoms, if you have cortisol levels that are outta whack is you gain weight in your belly, you have brain, brain fog issues or memory problems. You're tired, you have kind of like, uh, constant pain. Thyroid issues are very common. Autoimmune conditions are exacerbated when you're dealing with adrenal issues. And like I said, most people living today have some level of cortisol imbalance or adrenal dysfunction, most people.
What you can do if you have a cortisol imbalance
And so it is worth paying attention to. Now how do you find out? One, you can just sort of look at some of the subjective things and all of the shifts are pretty simple lifestyle shifts that you can work on. But if you want to get testing, you can, you're gonna wanna look for a saliva test or a urine cortisol test. And these tests are samples taken at about four, sometimes five points throughout the day to see where your cortisol levels are. One test, one sort of test that's very common and I don't recommend is like a cortisol blood draw cuz that is just a snapshot at that specific moment of the amount of cortisol that's in your blood at that specific moment. So if you nearly got in a car accident on the way to the testing center to get your, um, your, your cortisol blood test done, then your cortisol level is probably gonna be high.
And if you just came back from like a massage where you're like super chilled out and then your part cortisol level is probably gonna be low, it's just that snapshot in time, which is why having those multiple points throughout the day through the saliva urinary test is a much better indicator of what's going on. It kind of gives you a better picture, a bigger picture, okay, so you can get those tests done. They are not necessarily essential, but if you want to, you can usually sort of take some of these inventories like the adrenal uh, dysfunction quiz that I have available for you linked in the show notes. But testing, if you wanna get testing, that's the kind of testing you're gonna wanna look for. Okay? So I wanna give you a few things that you can do today to start moving the needle in how you feel.
And again, these aren't going to be all the things that you need to do and they're not maybe even gonna have massive impacts. Some will, but here's the deal. When you're approaching thyroid health, and in this case adrenal health and cortisol levels, really any health issue from a holistic perspective, healing is a culmination of small steps that are combined together to create a massive impact. So here are some small steps for y'all. Okay, so the first one is you should assume that you have a problem. And the reason I'm saying assume you have a problem is because pretty much everyone can benefit from supporting their stress response and their cortisol levels and their adrenal glands. Like everybody. And specifically if you are diagnosed with hypothyroidism, you've really, based on the research, likely got some adrenal issues going on and somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 to 95%.
And so if you wanna be really sure, like I said, you can get some testing done, you'll wanna look for the saliva or the urine test to measure your cortisol levels throughout the day. And it's also not something that you will find at your like traditional general practitioner doctor's office. And so I'll be surprised, I mean I'm seeing it more and more, but I would not be surprised if you don't find it there. So you'll have to do, um, I have a couple links to some direct lab sites that you can look at there where you can do the testing at home, which is super handy. Or you can look for more functional doctors that will, uh, do that sort of do and order that sort of testing. So you can find those things in the show notes or you can find it at bit.ly/thyroid-tools where you will also find the little quiz that I have for you, which is the adrenal dysfunction inventory and you can kind of tally up the symptoms that you're experiencing and see if they're connected back to adrenal issues.
I'd highly recommend grabbing that, the link in the show notes or at bit lee slash thyroid tools. Okay, the second thing that you can do tonight, I guess not right now, unless it's nighttime, you're about to go to bed. But the second thing is adjust your sleep schedule. Sleep is probably the biggest tool in your healing toolbox on this one. Uh, and this is because this is so important to your ability to heal and rest and how you, how stress is, stress and sleep are just really tightly connected. So you wanna aim for seven to nine hours of sleep and along with that, start to establish some evening routines as you're heading towards sleep to kind of give your body the signals like, hey, cortisol, it's time to calm down, it's time to chill out. That is, those things are really helpful. So simple things like heading towards sleep at the same time, maybe a bath, having some essential oils that you're always using for sleep, not having screens, especially in your, in your room and looking at those within an hour of sleep.
Those are things that kind of create good sleep hygiene and set you up for good sleep. I would also encourage you to try to limit things that would disrupt sleep, like light sounds. Um, temperatures, having electronics around. Those are important things that encourage you to get good quality sleep throughout the entire night. Additionally, you wanna think about how much sleep do you need so that you wake up refreshed and you know that you're waking up refreshed. When you can wake up without an alarm is the ideal situation. That's how you know that your body is getting the amount of sleep that it actually needs and you need to adjust then when you're going to bed or when you're waking up to account for that. And then the third thing that I would encourage you to do is add in some smart supplementation. So we, a lot of times when we're thinking about making adjustments to health, we think about restricting, um, and kind of reigning in either our diet or things we're we're eating or kind of limiting ourselves, but actually we need to nourish our body too, not just restrict it.
And so nourishing your body through nutrient dense foods is obviously really important and that should include lots of protein, healthy fats, complex carbs. Those are important because balanced blood sugar is actually a really good place for adrenals to be to support cortisol. That cortisol rollercoaster and consistent cortisol levels. So eating balanced blood sugar means that you're eating enough protein, enough healthy fats that you're not having these, uh, those, those spikes and dips in blood sugar, which are perceived by the body as stress. So we wanna try and avoid that. But adding in supplements like a high quality omega supplement with the right combination of omega three s and sixes is really helpful. Research actually shows that specifically fish oil helps to lower and balance cortisol levels in as little as three weeks of use. Additionally, adaptogenic herbs such as ashwaganda are super effective in helping to activate the re receptors in the brain that calm the body down during stressful times.
There's also studies that link, uh, something called altheine and gaba, they're incredible for supporting in similar ways, sort of putting the brakes on the brain in stressful situations that would otherwise cause all of the physiological responses of stress to come about and sort of cascade. So those things are very helpful to add into your supplementation routine. Vitamins that are specifically associated with cortisol and helping with cortisol metabolism and just supporting the adrenal glands in general are vitamin C, b12, folate, and magnesium. And so sometimes just adding in a high quality multivitamin that contains those things, that is sort of the equivalent of making sure that your car has enough oil to keep going in a way that's not going to mess it up. So these are some great things that you can layer, layer in. Um, I have a of suggestions for supplements that I, that I use and like that you can find when you head to bit lee slash thyroid dash tools.
And again, the link for that's in the show notes and you can find some of those tools there that you can add in as a pretty simple way to help support what's happening with your cortisol levels. Alright, so there we have it. Be sure to head to the link in the show notes to take the adrenal dysfunction assessment and see how high on the priority list focusing on your adrenals should be. These, uh, these things with hypothyroidism and adrenals are super connected, but additionally there's a lot of evidence and really you could just kind of guess that the majority of people, hypothyroid or not are dealing with some level of adrenal dysfunction. And I believe we can all stand to improve our stress response and the cortisol, uh, rollercoaster that we are on. And that is an important, important facet of health. It's important to kind of see where you're at so you can kind of check back over time.
And I think that's why that adrenal dysfunction assessment can be really helpful. You'll find that at bit dot lee slash thyroid dash tools so you can head there or click the link in the show notes. I hope you're able to apply some of these things and make some small shifts towards feeling healthy and good because I am confident that when you do it in that way, when you make small shifts, first of all, it makes them possible to continue doing them. And when you focus on doing those doable lifestyle shifts, living a symptom-free life is totally possible. And I want that for you.
Real quick before you go, if this show has helped you in some way, then I know that it'll help others too. So please head over to iTunes, subscribe, and then leave a review so that more women can find health and healing too. And do you know that you can have an incredible impact on the women who deal with thyroid issues in your circle? Yep, that's right. All you have to do is take a screenshot of this podcast, tag me at natural dot thyroid dot fix and post it in your stories. Let's light a path for all the other hypothyroid mamas looking for hope and healing and to just feel like themselves again. I'll look forward to connecting with you over on Instagram until next time on the natural thyroid fix.