Cortisol

Good Evening!

I hope you had a great weekend.

Today, we’re talking stress. Before we take a plunge into the science of the topic, I want to make sure everyone reading doesn’t view the word “stress” too negatively, because there are positives about stress, too.

I’ve talked about the pro’s and cons of stress quite a lot on my Substack newsletter, but today I want to talk about our perception of stress and how we can change it by simply understanding it better.

My colleague Bryan Baia wrote a great article yesterday on how we view stress and how regulating our emotions around it can increase longevity, providing two great reading resources for those who want to deep-dive.

I want to expand on this topic by talking about what happens in our body at a very microscopic level, so please excuse me while I nerd-out for a few minutes.

If you’re interested in why you feel the way you do and want to manage it better, I think today’s newsletter will give you more insight and actionable steps to take toward improving your relationship with stress.

Cortisol: What is it?

Cortisol, the primary hormone associated with all types of stress* — good and bad — is a glucocorticoid, and glucocorticoids make up the family of hormones that is predominantly responsible for dealing with inflammation.

*For the sake of removing the negative association with stress, the word “stress” in from here on out will refer to any and all stimuli, or things experienced.

This is important, because as Robert Sapolsky notes in his best-seller Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, there is a sweet spot for glucocorticoids in your system.

Become too stressed and inflammation will run rampant because of excess glucocorticoids. This extra inflammation can lead to other health problems, which, obviously, no one wants.

But experiencing stress and controlling your response to it rather than letting your reaction prolong your stress (think “stressing about being stressed”), will keep glucocorticoids (cortisol) at a nice, inflammation-taming level.

In summary, you’re not going to avoid stress, it just happens. Your reaction to it is, in some ways, more important than your experience of it in the moment.

Why do I care about Cortisol?

Now that we know stress is always there, we can assume that Cortisol is, too. This hormone will roller-coaster its levels in your bloodstream throughout the day (provided you have healthy, well-functioning adrenal glands), and that’s totally normal.

You may have heard a fitness professional or two say “elevated cortisol is bad,” which probably steered you away from some activity that they said would elevate it.

This is only partially true.

Since we know that cortisol will inevitably spike on a day-to-day basis, we have to use nuance. Consistently elevated cortisol is bad (like stressing about being stressed).

Do I have control over the Cortisol Roller Coaster?

In short, yes, you do.

Before reading this article, you probably didn’t have much awareness of it. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on the blood work you receive at your next physical.

But generally, if you’re a stressed individual and looking for ways to manage stress, these following few points will help you understand what you can do to spike cortisol for good anti-inflammatory reasons and drop cortisol levels when it’s time to chill.

Things That Raise Your Cortisol Levels: Pretty much anything strenuous or difficult to deal with psychologically, like an intense workout, bad news, an annoying coworker, a really loud noise, an annoying coworker making a really loud noise, binging or depression.**

Things That Lower Your Cortisol Levels: Most enjoyable and calming things, breathing, Body Awareness Meditation, engaging in a fun mindless activity like watching television or playing video games, seeing a dog or cute animal, or lying horizontally.

**It is worth noting that depression idoes not have a direct causal relationship with cortisol. Higher cortisol levels are found in more depressed people, but there is probably a mutual causality — prolonged elevated cortisol can lead to depression, too.

What more do I have to worry about?

If you’re hooked on the idea of paying more attention to your stress, whether it’s tracking blood pressure, heart rate, or any other biometrics, the last bit of information I’ll leave you about cortisol is this: it can be easy to become numb to elevated cortisol levels.

For example, high-intensity interval workouts can leave cortisol levels higher for more extended periods than regular strength training workouts, which makes it unlikely that 4-5 HIIT classes a week will help you lose weight with so much excess inflammation.

You might be able to numb some bad news with a few alcoholic drinks temporarily, but that isn’t dropping your cortisol levels, either. The inability to properly reconcile with psychological stress, like procrastinating and deflecting instead of reflecting, can keep inflammation high, too.

Lastly, for anyone who’s still a part of the “I’ll sleep when I die” movement, that’s also a chronically high-cortisol way to live, too. And it’s subsequently a chronic disease lifestyle if you cannot take your foot off the gas pedal, regardless of how hard you’ve reverse-psychologized yourself into “loving” work.

It’s not all bad

Even if you do fit the archetype of any of the above, now you might at least have a moment or two to reckon with that fact and find more time to engage in stress-relief activities. Pausing to just breathe and be, as yogic as it sounds, can do wonders for your health.

And if you play just as hard as you work — so long as “play” for you isn’t doing something physically or psychologically strenuous — you’re on a great path to longevity.

Hopefully this helped you understand stress at a more micro level. If you’re someone who tries never to be stressed, know that you can do yourself a favor by embracing it rather than avoiding it.

Have a great week!