Ep. 01 / My Daily battle with cortisol
What is cortisol? Cortisol is our main stress hormone. It increases the release of sugars (glucose) in to our blood stream, and also curbs any functions that our body wouldn’t need in an emergency situation. Our cortisol is naturally higher in the morning, and it needs to be that way. We need cortisol to get moving and as the day progresses, cortisol lowers and melatonin slowly kicks in to help us sleep.
We have three parts to our autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The SNS (or Sympathetic) is our fight or flight and the PNS (parasympathetic) is our rest and digest and they’re what I’m going to focus on. When our body thinks we’re under threat, the SNS increases our heart rate, our blood pressure, increases our respiration, and releases stress hormones Adrenalin and cortisol, removing blood away from our digestive tract, where we get all our nutrients for survival, and increases blood flow to your muscles so that we are more equipped to run away from what is threatening us. Today, these threats can be something as simple as coffee, or just having a feeling of urgency or pressure and stress.
Ways to reduce cortisol in our system are to:
Walking and low impact exercise (running and other high-impact sports trigger that “fight or flight” response).
Meditate/ prayer. There are more and more studies being taken on the impact of meditation and cortisol. One study in particular observed significantly lowered blood pressures during prayer, in patients who had previously been diagnosed with high blood pressure (Janos et. al., 2007)
Reduce screen time, especially in the evening. The light from our screens trigger that cortisol and inhibit melatonin. The two stimulate each other, the don’t co-exist. So if we’re triggering that cortisol at night when we should be winding down for sleep, this then disrupts our sleep which then triggers high-cortisol the next day and a vicious cycle begins.
It’s important to take the time to signal to your body that you are safe. This may sound hippy-dippy, but everything we do, the food we eat, the exercise we do and the thoughts we think influence our nervous system which in turn affects every system in our body (Kox et. al., 2012).
