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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
Today, we're going to be talking about cortisol.
We're going to be talking about the hidden and in -depth impact that this stress hormone has on our bodies, on our minds, our cognition, and even things that you might not think about, like your emotional intelligence, our creativity, our relationships.
You have probably been hearing a lot about cortisol recently, and your interest may or may not be piqued.
So I want this episode to be a bit of a 101 psychology guide to A.
What cortisol is, B.
What it does and why it's important, C.
What happens when it becomes dysregulated and more importantly, how to sustainably manage your stress response and lower your risk of chronic stress so that dysregulated cortisol hopefully doesn't become a problem for you.
there is a lot of stress to be experienced in our 20s I'm sure I don't need to tell you that because you know this period of our life is so uncertain and at times unstable but it also feels very unnecessarily urgent as if we have to have it all figured out right now this instant and all of these expectations
in this external but also internal pressure creates the perfect conditions for us to be in emergency mode maybe more often than we need to be and so understanding what happens to our bodies when that's the case or also when we experience great environmental stresses like illness, like a breakup, like
something terrible or traumatic it's really important to know what's going on behind the scenes when it comes to your stress response so that that doesn't become the dominating state for you.
There's also a lot of misinformation online about cortisol that I want to break down.
Some of the myths I've heard recently are that cortisol is always bad for you.
That you shouldn't do intense exercise because it increases cortisol.
Your cortisol levels, you know, they can be controlled by processed sugar.
You need to cleanse, you need supplements, etc, etc.
But I think that the answer is a lot more simple and the more you know about just the very basics of cortisol, the more you can make informed choices.
So that is our plan for today.
Let's talk all things cortisol and the experiences you may or may not know are associated with this widely talked about, but often misunderstood hormone, but also how you can manage your stress levels in the most simple, basic ways in your twenties.
All of that and more on the psychology of cortisol.
Without further ado, let's get into it.
Let me start out by saying something maybe rather obvious and that is that cortisol gets a bad rap.
Truly, it is demonised by people for so many things, especially online where people talk about cortisol face, cortisol weight gain, how to reduce your cortisol using oranges or some secret herbal recipe that only they can sell to you.
I even saw a video the other day titled how to get your cortisol levels to zero, which honestly, it made me laugh.
I sent it to a few friends because that is the complete opposite of what you want.
You know, there is just so much misinformation around this hormone.
So let's quickly myth bust this idea that cortisol is singularly bad for you.
Cortisol actually plays a really essential role in your body, a vital one.
Obviously it's known as the stress hormone because of its part in helping us feel alert and energized and able to respond to danger like a car racing towards you or a vicious dog or some deadline or even internal stresses like repetitive thoughts and a fear of failure.
Cortisol's association with stress, which we typically see as bad, is probably why it gets a bad reputation and, you know, why it's demonized.
But it actually is really important in helping us handle the big, scary, nerve -wracking things that we encounter in our daily life.
And without it, we would not be able to act or respond to really anything in our environment in a way that was appropriate.
it. Some people often, the second misconception is that adrenaline and cortisol are the same because they do work pretty closely together when it comes to arousal and our stress response but the main difference is that adrenaline is what triggers your flight or fright response.
It is the first responder, it is the police car at the scene, it gets your heart pumping, your pupils dilated, your blood pressure up but cortisol is what comes in as backup, it's the paramedics it's the ambulance your cortisol is there for the recovery it's there for the long game it's there to make
sure that your response to whatever situation is alarming you is sustained so really what it's responsible for is the long -term stress response so your hypervigilance making sure you are still alert to potential new threats making sure your body can get enough glucose and can use that glucose helping
your body break down fats protein carbs which essentially is what allows you to have energy not just in the aftermath of a crisis but during your day -to -day so what i'm really trying to say is that we really actually need it let's imagine you did lower your cortisol levels to almost zero as that video
i saw the other day was suggesting, you know if you didn't have enough cortisol available in your body to really just put it quite frankly you would die, like that's it, it's called adrenal insufficiency and it's life threatening, like you would go into shock, you wouldn't be able to move, you wouldn't
really be able to respond to anything so you do need cortisol, plain and simple, even though it has that negative association with stress, we also know that stress isn't wholly bad either but the problems begin to occur when your body cannot regulate the level of cortisol we'll talk about what that does
to your body in a second but we need to discuss why it happens so the biggest culprit here is chronic stress because it causes our cortisol levels to remain high even when the thing in our environment or the internal stressor has passed so chronic stress is like a rather broad descriptor here it contains
many events situations things but i want to give you some examples of what could cause us to be in this state a big one is long -term financial problems maybe there was a study from 2013 that found that financial strain increases daily cortisol output and you know a lot of us are experiencing the cost
of living crunch that's likely making our baseline level of stress increase if you have a demanding high -presser job that's also going to contribute or even not having a job at all on the other side of the spectrum.
You can see why that sometimes might feel tricky to navigate.
What's another few examples?
Tense and difficult relationships whether that's romantic, platonic, familial that can bleed into your mental health and increased cortisol levels because you feel stressed in response to your emotional and social environment even health problems like if you have a chronic illness or a serious injury
that has impacted your physical functioning that's going to increase cortisol and major life events so death divorce a breakup all of those have a lingering emotional impact that can disturb our emotional homeostasis.
So the one important thing to remember is that stress although it sometimes helps motivate us it helps us get shit done it is not meant to be experienced constantly and when it is this means that the system in our body responsible for secreting all types of hormones it's called the HBA axis it remains
overactive and it's not necessarily getting the cues from our body to slow down to pump the brakes over time what this does is it desensitizes cortisol receptors and it disrupts the body's natural feedback mechanisms so a feedback mechanism is basically there are little i don't know how to explain it
like there are little watchtowers little gates in our body that are meant to be like oh okay we've got too much here send it back send it back lower it down increase like almost like little markers little test areas that your body is able to use to respond to levels of cortisol but when they become
too desensitized or whatever it is they don't start giving the right feedback so that can either result in something called hypersecretion so too much cortisol or the opposite low levels which is hyposecretion so hyper versus hypo how I really like to imagine hypersecretion which is really what we're
focusing on today it's like you're behind the wheel of a car and your shoe gets jammed over the accelerator and you're trying really hard to like keep your eyes on the road, you're going so many miles an hour, you're trying to navigate traffic lights, navigate stop signs and there's a bus full of children,
you want to avoid that.
There's a lake, you don't want to fall into it.
You're trying to keep your eyes focused on what is actually happening whilst also trying to get your shoe unjammed and that's the impossibility of dealing with high cortisol induced by chronic stress.
you have to both deal with the impacts of high cortisol whilst also trying to reduce the stress at the same time you have to try and keep your eyes on the road but also you know look down to try and get the shoe off the pedal so some other causes of high and dysregulated cortisol include an overactive
pituitary gland this one's actually very very common sometimes it can be due to like tumors or growths but also medications like steroids also some form of birth control I actually looked into this because I hadn't heard of that before I hadn't heard about the relationship between birth control and cortisol
and there definitely needs to be more research done on it but there was a 2024 case study conducted by a doctor at UCLA that found that some oral contraceptives increase cortisol level in patients he measured this by testing cortisol levels before and after the use of an oral contraceptive for two months
and found that there was an almost 300 % increase, 26 milligrams over the normal range, after this person began to go back on their birth control.
So it doesn't mean to like go off your pill right away or that your pill is making you stressed.
Although I think a lot of women would tell us like there are huge emotional differences that I notice because the pill is influencing hormones and that is what cortisol is.
But again yes not about trying to convince you to just go cold turkey on something that's very very important for your health and your reproductive health in other areas, but it is an important factor to really think about.
If you have just gone on the pill and you've noticed anxiety spiking, could this be a contributor?
But also if you are already prone to chronic stress and you already work in a really intense industry.
You're drinking three to four coffees a day.
You can only really unwind with alcohol.
All of these things are going to be compounding.
They're going to be compounding factors on your mental, emotional, cognitive state.
And the reason why is because of the influence they have on cortisol and the influence they have on how our body responds to stress.
some other factors that contribute to high cortisol conditions like depression and anxiety have also been associated with elevated cortisol levels however it's important to note the direction of this relationship it's kind of hard to pin down right how do we know whether you are anxious because you
have elevated cortisol or your anxiety is causing cortisol levels to spike It's very hard to tell.
Most researchers would say actually it's a very intertwined system, anxiety, high cortisol.
Although we don't know the relationship, we do know they often go hand in hand.
This is kind of a very quick summary of what contributes to a spike in this stress hormone.
And it's important to note that there is no way of escaping the impact this will have on your body.
Humans are very strong creatures, but we are also still creatures.
And no creature can survive under conditions of acute stress for a long period of time.
Health does decline.
Mental well -being does decline.
you even see small things like hair and skin quality start to fade like you start to see someone's skin become quite grayish their hair starts to fall out all signs of like a sickness and that sickness in this instance is coming from stress obviously those are some intense examples let's talk about what the hidden
impact of excessive cortisol might look like on a smaller scale.
Firstly I'm going to touch on some of the non -obvious effects that you may not have heard about yet.
The first big one is that high levels of cortisol dampen your emotional intelligence so you're less able to respond not only just to your own emotional states but also you're less able to recognize and appropriately respond to others.
It's why you may become snappy you may suddenly realize you're saying things you don't mean and you didn't quite realize that you were saying them that you're just exhausted and tired and sad and if someone asks you why you can't tell them because you haven't been able to see or notice any cause and effect
between situations and your emotions because your emotional intelligence has been compromised.
Here's another interesting impact.
There was a 2014 study that found that elevated cortisol actually shifts our response to risk so that we become more cautious and guarded when it comes to anything from financial decisions to career to relationship decisions it can make it so that when we see opportunity we feel like the likelihood
of that opportunity being realized is reduced so we're less likely to take risks we're less likely to bet on ourselves it's why people who are in chronic stress states find it harder to you know take the leap to start a business or to go back to school or to try something new stress intertwines not just
with health but with decision making as well here's another you know kind of scary realization or impact of high cortisol that makes us more pessimistic and it makes us less creative so if you are someone who loves making art you love creating things that important creative process and that ability
to come up with new ideas spontaneously and execute them it will decline when you are in a stressed state because you cannot thrive during acute stress it's why the secret to being more creative is is and always will be rest and novelty over discipline and routine and overworking because in the former
the latter in the latter conditions there is just not enough room for your brain to explore different areas of itself so those are some of the impacts you may not have heard of but here are some of the ones that you may already have a sense might occur to someone who's experiencing high cortisol levels
the first one is rapid weight gain so high cortisol levels triggered by chronic stress they increase our appetite and cravings for high calorie fatty foods by stimulating the release of appetite regulating hormones.
So let's talk about why this is the case.
Obviously cortisol is released in response to stress and if the body is stressed it's thinking this is an emergency situation.
This is a situation that we want to endure and survive and if we're going to survive it it means we should have as many resources as possible including the energy stores that are necessary how do we bulk up or increase energy stores as a resource by eating more so your body is literally saying almost
like almost preparing for like not the not hibernation but the opposite like preparing to fight to run away preparing to hunger down and endure whatever chronic stress is currently playing out in your life and on your mind it can also lead to what we call food noise This is like an intrusive constant
thought about food because your body is, of course, trying to consume more energy and trying to find a way to motivate you or influence you to do so.
here's another a third effect of this a third reason why people who are experiencing chronic stress often complain about weight gain it's the cortisol promotes fat storage especially in the abdominal region by increasing insulin resistance and altering how fat is distributed in the body again your body
is saying we need this this is defcon one we're in an emergency situation let's get our stocks up.
Elevated cortisol levels also slow down the metabolism so together these effects create a cycle of stress -induced weight gain.
It's so hard when I hear people or see people talking about their experience of just almost suddenly gaining weight for no reason and in such an unfair way like they're doing everything that they think they should be doing they're really healthy people they eat really well they have a really active
lifestyle and they're still gaining weight in a way that feels like their body is working against them and you know weight gain isn't a terrible thing it's not a bad thing it's not something that should be avoided at all costs but when it just appears to happen sporadically and spontaneously and nothing
about your lifestyle has changed it can be rather frustrating it's why anytime I see someone like getting trolled on Instagram or TikTok for weight gain you best believe like I'm leaving a comment on their behalf because you really have no idea what's happening in their life to cause that let alone
suggesting that you know suddenly they should feel ashamed because their body is responding to perhaps a really intense situation or an emotional or external environment of intense stress or loss or grief or whatever it is they're going through.
The human body is so much more complex than just calories in and calories out.
And I don't know when we as a society will really start to understand that.
You may also experience this as kind of, in a similar vein, a bit different, increased inflammation, especially in the face.
And this is this idea that you may know of as moon face that's where this has come from so moon face is kind of like a colloquial way to describe the puffiness and appearance that our face gets when cortisol has dysregulated has been dysregulated for too long so you often will begin to lose definition and features
it looks like your face is literally swelling up and looking like a big round moon and this occurs because our body is holding on to more fluid and salt because cortisol is not properly regulating these deposits or is not properly regulating our insulin levels which is causing us to hold on to fat in these
stores in our face.
Again, this can become a big point of insecurity for people especially since, you know, our face is often the first thing people see and so when we can't recognize it anymore and we experience a drastic change, that can cause a lot of insecurity, sometimes even a bit of an identity crisis.
I don't think that's a vain thing to experience.
Our physical form and our characteristics do help us define ourselves.
So when they suddenly change without us really realizing how or why, and we get this puffiness, we can really struggle.
Those are just some of like the first consequences or impacts that come to mind.
I'm going to take a quick break here because I feel like I've just been throwing information at you.
When we return, we're going to talk about some of the further impacts on things like sleep, like our relationships, like our, of course, anxiety levels, but also how we can address this and some of the lifestyle changes that may be floated to you by a doctor or by a psychologist.
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All right, I want to touch on one final consequence or impact of high cortisol that we may notice in ourselves before we get into my tips and advice.
And this big consequence is the impact of high cortisol on sleep, specifically something we call morning anxiety.
Morning anxiety has to be one of the worst forms of anxiety.
You know, all of them are actually pretty bad, but morning anxiety, you know, if I had to choose my favorite or my least favorite, it definitely takes the cake.
So imagine you're restful, you're in bed, you're cozy, You're dreaming nice dreams.
You're asleep. You're just feeling very, very peaceful.
And then suddenly you are wide awake, heavy breathing, racing heart.
You instantly feel uneasy for no particular reason.
And it's like, OK, here we are battling through another day of this.
That is morning anxiety is going from being restful to just being completely anxious.
And I don't even know how to explain it.
You wake up and your body is almost shaking.
And it feels like you're just waking up to a completely energized body that you had no awareness of.
And suddenly you're like 50 percent dipped into like a boiling pot of water and you have no idea how you got there.
That's what morning anxiety feels like.
And being alert when you wake up isn't a bad thing.
In fact, that's one of cortisol's useful functions.
It's meant to actually peak or spike in the morning to help you get out of bed and to help you get up and active and ready.
but sometimes that cortisol awakening response can become skewed and not work properly chronic stress obviously contributes contributes to that it leads to elevated cortisol levels at night because we feel like we can't switch off which then has lingering effects till the morning so not only are you
not going to get good sleep but you're also going to feel a sharp cortisol spike like right before you wake up.
And that's going to create not just, you know, take that natural alertness that you're meant to feel in the morning and turn it into anxiety.
And of course, like the bull doesn't even stop there.
2018 study found that when you have a bad night's sleep, you already are at risk of higher levels of anxiety the next day, which you guessed is going to make it so much harder to sleep the next night.
And it's just becomes a cycle of, okay, I can't sleep because I'm anxious.
but then when I finally get to sleep, my sleep isn't any good.
And then I wake up really anxious the next morning because those cortisol levels have carried over, but also because I had a bad night's sleep.
So I'm extra anxious.
How do you think that's going to help you or help your body?
It doesn't. And it honestly has such lingering effects in all other areas of your life.
You're cranky. You have that mild feeling of irritability constantly.
You can't process information as well you feel slow in a study from 2013 researchers observed people's IQs after a good night's sleep versus a terrible night's sleep where they periodically woke up their participants those who had been woken up their IQ dropped on average 10 points the next day following
sleep deprivation it might seem small but if that is a consistent impact that you are noticing caused by high cortisol, it's just going to feel like everything else is just a little bit harder.
This really does go to show it's not just about feeling more anxious, it's not just about feeling more stressed, it touches everything else in your life.
It is an everything disorder or an everything experience and I think I really feel, you know, I really feel for people who start to piece that together and realise that all of these interactions and things that are happening in their body linked back to this stress response they can't control.
So we're going to talk about how to navigate that, whether you're experiencing just low levels of stress, slightly elevated cortisol or extremely high levels of cortisol.
What are some of the lifestyle adjustments that might be recommended to you?
I think if you're going to get tips on how to lower cortisol levels, the first people you want to talk to or hear from are doctors or an endocrinologist basically that's a doctor who specializes in hormones and the endocrine system hormones like cortisol but before you get to that step I do actually
want you to make sure that what we're describing applies to you there is a difference between heightened levels of stress you know that's short term and chronic stress that is causing elevated cortisol and if you think that this applies to you please go and see a doctor they will be able to diagnose
knows it for you they will be able to really see what's happening below the surface through blood tests through saliva tests but I really think that cortisol dysregulation is not something you can say oh yeah I have that that describes me and I'm just going to go with that diagnosis also because it
can be linked back to really serious serious problems like cushing syndrome or tumors or problems with your pituitary glands so if you are hearing this description being like that's me oh my god that's me that's totally me go and speak to your doctor I think whenever something blows up online or on social
media like this idea of you know cortisol face and cortisol weight gain and is it high cortisol we really do find it very easy to see ourselves represented in people's descriptions it's very easy to see something and say oh my god that's totally me and that's because that's intentional from them like
they want you to engage with their content so they're going to make it as general and broad as possible and I'm sure their intentions are pure and if they're trying to sell some tea or some supplement maybe it did work from them but your health is really such a valuable investment and you know if you
wouldn't want your mom or your sister or your brother or your partner getting all their health advice from people on social media don't do the same for yourself people sharing their experiences is so valuable and it does help us become more educated about things that we didn't know about the human body
or ourselves but for something like cortisol dysregulation make sure you get a doctor to confirm that and with that in mind that's where I sourced all my information from specialized professionals because I understand cortisol from a psychological perspective but how it impacts us biologically and how
an androchronologist or a doctor would recommend we address that that really reigns supreme for me besides from addressing underlying medical conditions that are causing elevated cortisol and addressing those through a medical intervention which dar would be the first step the biggest piece of advice
i received for lowering stress and therefore lowering chronic overexposure to cortisol is to pursue balance not extremes often extremes are what cause chronic stress in the first place extreme work hours extreme exercising in some instances extreme relationships extreme sleeping patterns your best bet
for reversing the impact of high cortisol or chronic stress is to try and return to your factory setting to return to how you were made to operate as a human as best as you can given your circumstances what that means is get back to the most simplest foundations of health sleep nutrition safety connection outdoor time
let's focus on sleep first obviously we spoke about that morning anxiety and how sleep can be very heavily impacted by cortisol.
But the tip that I heard that I thought was really, really amazing is that even if you are not asleep, try and be in bed for eight hours a day.
Don't scroll, don't get up and watch TV just because your body isn't listening to you.
Yes, you may have to lay in bed till 2am in the morning, but you're giving your body the best chance at rest it has.
Around 40 to like 40 to 60 minutes before bed as well reduce your exposure to bright and blue light I personally did this I was finding that I had my phone in my bedroom so if I couldn't sleep after the first 10 minutes I would get my phone or I would watch Parks and Recreation or something like that but I
have since bought like an old -fashioned alarm clock and it's been a game changer it's been incredible I spend less time in bed in the morning and my room is now associated with sleep it's not just like some fun place to hang out.
Like that's not where I go to scroll.
That's not where I go to watch movies.
Like that is my restful place.
And that is all that I want it to be kind of used for.
Another basic to get back to is regular movement and movement in a way that you enjoy, not in a way you think you should be enjoying it or doing it.
Now, there has been a lot of information going around that high intensity exercise should be avoided if you are trying to manage stress, mainly because of a finding from a 2008 paper that essentially claimed that intense exercise increased cortisol levels.
Now that paper was correct.
It did increase cortisol levels and it was actually published in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation.
So their findings were accurate, but those levels of cortisol actually ended up fading and reducing over the next four to six hours.
And that's because exercise is a form of stress.
It is stress on our bodies, but there is a difference between short -term stress and chronic long -term stress.
Exercise triggers short -term stress, which does cause cortisol levels to rise.
But actually when we keep up with that regular movement and exercise, our body learns how to regulate those spikes and cortisol fluctuations.
And so it becomes better able to regulate cortisol in general.
So although yes you might experience a small spike in cortisol after you exercise you'll also experience a spike in endorphins.
You'll also feel more relaxed and so it actually is for the better.
Obviously if you are exercising at 90 % effort seven days a week you're not giving your body a chance to repair and balance things out but pursuing the kind of movement that our ancestors would is really beneficial.
Moderate exercise, movement in whatever form works best for you walking lifting the way we would have lifted fallen trees children rocks like I know it sounds so rudimentary and basic but if it's gotten us to where we are as a species where we are now and if that's how our bodies were designed to operate
I'm just assuming that that kind of movement is really what our body is is asking for the next focus is what we're putting into our body the biggest one being caffeine i'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear but truly caffeine is not doing you any favors so i haven't drunk coffee or really caffeine
really for almost four years at this point maybe i'll have the occasional diet coke because i can't be helped but I noticed such a huge shift in alertness energy levels and anxiety I was so reliant on caffeine to make me alert and then I would basically just allow it would make me alert and then I would obviously
it would fade away and I'd feel less alert and then I'd make myself alert again and you know by the time that I was ready for sleep hopefully the caffeine had faded like it was really controlling my energy levels and with that it was artificially controlling my anxiety and stress levels like the times
that I felt most stressed in my day or in my week were the times when I had consumed the most caffeine thinking that it was going to help me be more productive but actually it just made me feel more jittery it made me feel more almost like unstable in a way like every single thought just felt a little
bit too loud and a little bit too urgent and when I eventually quit I found that I was so tired for the first two weeks like I cannot explain how tired I was but then I was actually able to regulate energy using routine and actually utilizing like the natural circadian rhythm and flow of my day and my
wakefulness versus sleepy hours and noticing like peak kind of like peak hard work times or like peak inspiration motivation focus times for myself and it was a really important change a 2008 study also showed caffeine stimulates cortisol secretion no matter how much caffeine you consume as well you were never able to build up a tolerance So let's take a quick
look at the measurements.
