Cortisol : The Stress hormone
When thinking about Cortisol , I want you to visualize yourself twenty thousand years ago as part of a hunter-gatherer tribe. You’re out one day foraging for berries when out of the corner of your eye you spot a lion stalking you from the high grass. The moment your brain registers this formidable threat, it instructs your adrenal glands to start pumping cortisol into your bloodstream. In a split second, that hormone turns you from a calm, relaxed, daydreaming forager into an efficient, focused fighting machine. Cortisol acts like a rocket booster, giving you the strength and mental focus to either fight or flee.
It also prioritizes your body’s functions, taking offline those that are least important in this situation, such as your digestive and reproductive systems. (I mean, when you’re face-to-face with a lion, digesting your lunch and getting pregnant are not high on your to-do list, right?) In this situation, cortisol has just saved your life — or, at least, it gave you a better chance of survival. Pretty cool, huh?
So why does this badass hormone get so much bad press? The problem is that, these days, lions have been replaced with traffic jams, tax returns, work deadlines, and financial woes. While most of these stressors are not life threatening, our bodies react to them as though they were. And while twenty thousand years ago we might have encountered a lion once or twice a year, these modern-day stressors are there every day, all day long, all year long, triggering the adrenal glands to release cortisol into our bloodstreams almost constantly.
Over time, this elevated level of cortisol (and of other “survival” stress hormones) starts to have an effect on the “subordinate” endocrine glands, namely, the thyroid and the ovaries. Essentially, cortisol tells your ovaries to slow their roll because your body has perceived this external stress as potentially dangerous — and therefore, this is not a good time to be ovulating or getting pregnant. So, ovulation is delayed, or it may even stop for some time due to the amount of psychological stress you’re under. Cortisol also tells your thyroid to take it easy on its responsibilities, so you can conserve your energy for the “threat” you’re facing.
And . . . BAM! You start experiencing irregular periods or your period disappears completely. Your PMS takes on a life of its own, and your periods become heavier or more painful. Your sex drive withers, and you start feeling like you’d rather be gardening than getting it on with your partner. Or, maybe you start gaining weight for no apparent reason, your hair starts falling out, or you develop what feels like unmanageable fatigue. It’s easy to demonize this hormone. Chronic stress and constantly elevated levels of cortisol have become an epidemic in our caffeine-fueled, overstimulated, high-stress, fast-paced society. We’re constantly told, and rightly so, to reduce our stress levels and keep our cortisol down at all costs.
But when kept in check, cortisol, far from being our enemy, is actually one of our body’s dearest friends.
