The Role of Cortisol

Cortisol is also known as the stress hormone, but the function of it is more complex than that.  Cortisol is responsible for the production of many other hormones in the body at any given time of day.  The trouble comes when stress levels are high and cortisol is unbalanced with the other necessary hormones in your body. 

Modern stressors aren't the same as what our ancestors had to deal with.  We are rarely in mortal danger, yet our fight-flight-freeze response still gets triggered.   


You can find my book, "Stop being FAT: Love yourself SKINNY," on Amazon.

Connect with Magic:

A Magical Life Podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amagicallifepodcast/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholisticnaturalhealth/

Online: https://wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to a magical life, health, wealth and weight loss. I'm your host Magic Barclay, lead practitioner at Wholistic Natural Health Australia, a number one best selling author. In this podcast, I aim to give you practical tips on how to accelerate and sustain your health. Increase your financial, spiritual and emotional wealth. And to look at something that haunts many of us needlessly weight loss. In some episodes, I'll have guests available to give you even more tips. But in others, the floor is yours. Drop us a line at a magical life podcast on Facebook. And let me know what you would like to know more about. Now sit back and enjoy because it is time for you to create and truly discover a magical life. Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host Magic Barclay and today I'm talking to you about cortisol. Now we've all heard of cortisol. But what is it? Well, cortisol is a stress hormone. It's not your only stress hormone, but it's a major stress hormone. And what it actually does is, it's really a control center of the fight, flight or freeze scenario. So back in the day, when we were cavemen, let's go back there. Cortisol was released when you had to make a choice. Did you fight for your life? Did you flee, run away? Or did you just freeze on the spot and let whatever happened happen? and cortisol was back then a very acute response driven hormone. What we've done with our lives these days is we've actually created a very stressful life. Now, you might be sitting there thinking, you know, Magic, I'm not stressed. Nothing in my life is stressful. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I beg to differ. When we get bills, what happens when we get old fashioned snail mail? The mail is in a window on the envelope and you think window mail can't be good. We get a build your email, what happens? Do you get that little surge of adrenaline of anxiety? Do you think the phone bills do again? Internet bills do again our electricity? Why is it that match? Guess what? You are actually releasing cortisol at that time? Because what's happening when you're opening that bill, is you're activating this fight flight or freeze scenario. So when you open a bill, you might freeze you might go, I can just sit in my email because I'm not going to do anything about it to like, the second read bill comes through or till they tell me I'm disconnected. That's a free scenario. Cortisol is driving that. You might find it you might say, there is no way my electricity bill should be this much. I'm calling someone, I'm going to do something about this. I'm going to ask all my neighbors what their electricity bill is for this quarter. Because there's no way it doesn't sit right with me. Guess what you're fighting that and that's your cortisol going with it. Or you might flee, you might use flight. So you see the electricity bill or the phone bill or internet, whatever it is. And you go nap can't look at it, not fight. Don't look at it. It's not there. It's not happening. You are fleeing the situation. Again, cortisol is in charge, pulling the strings. The cortisol does not just happen when we're stressed. We actually release cortisol every single day. Because it's what keeps our central nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system going. It's what gives you the highs and lows all day that you actually need, but we need to keep it in check. Cortisol is actually a very vital hormone because it keeps you alive. It can pull the strings inside your body. It is what wakes you up in the morning. It's what lets you get to sleep at night and when cortisol is out of balance. A lot of people will find they can't get out of bed in the morning, their alarm goes off, and they have to hit snooze three times. Because cortisol should be at its peak early in the morning. And it should do window in the evening, bringing in melatonin, which is created to help you calm down, help you wine down, get ready for bed for the evening. And cortisol that time should be at its lowest. But what a lot of people do is the wrong way around. How do you know you can't get up in the morning, you just still tired no matter what the alarm goes, you're not like, bam, I'm awake. And then in the evening, you got to watch one more YouTube clip, you just can't seem to get to sleep, you dread going to bed, you're tired, there's anything and you really want to get a good night's sleep. Once you get there, if can't shake while you stare at the ceiling. Or you're thinking about all the things that you need to do tomorrow, and you quickly open up your diary on your phone or your paper diary or whatever. And you're looking at all the other things that you need to be doing. Instead of winding your brain and your body down to get to sleep. Guess what, your cortisol is too high in the evening, if that's the situation. Now, cortisol does a lot of other things. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. Yes, it wakes you up in the morning. And when it lowers it gets you to sleep at night. And yes, it's your fight flight or freeze hormone. But some of the other things that cortisol does for us, a pretty amazing. Now you actually need cortisol to help make hormones, other hormones. Why is this? So? cortisol is a hormone that can spark whether your blood sugars are in line. Because guess what, if they're not, that means your cholesterol is not in line. If your cholesterol is not mine means quarter those being a problem for you. Now, as a middle aged woman, I will tell you, I've had white battles part of the reason of writing my best selling book, stop being fat, love yourself skinny was because I was battling my weight. And I wanted to say in the book. And I think the title says at all that you have to stop seeing yourself as fat you have to start seeing what is going on in the background. Because fat itself is toxicity. It's actually the way your body stores toxins. It doesn't know what to do with. Now toxins come from what you eat, what you drink, what you breathe, what you touch what you put on your skin. But toxins also come from how you feel about yourself. Are you going through some trauma? Do you have love for everyone else in the world but not yourself? Are you under stress? We've talked about stress a lot in this podcast. Why? Because when you are stressed your cortisol switches on. And guess what? The biggest cause of weight gain is your cortisol being out of sync thing too high running your life. And you get cortisol belly, and that's exactly what I got. And for me once I lost a lot of weight. In fact, when I wrote the book, I'd lost half my body weight. I'd lost 70 kilos. And then I left my ex husband, I got very sick I actually got cancer and Lyme disease and a lot of other issues had diabetes. So I was sick, and I was stressed. going through a divorce. Guess what happened? Good old cortisol tried to save my life by wrapping me in toxins. So I've got my belly back. I'd call it Oh, Billy. Could I have done anything to stop that happening? Yes, and that's why I wrote the book. Because I had to stop being fat and love myself. skinny. Wasn't I skinny to the I know. But I was starting to appreciate myself for me and people Beautiful Things can happen when you believe in yourself. Because when you believe in yourself and you trust in yourself, and you love yourself, cortisol can no longer be your master you are. So that's just one area where cortisol can be in our lives, it can be our weight, where it could be causing our weight. Now another area in our life where cortisol comes in. So we've already discussed waking up in the morning, a cortisol belly, your fight, flight or freeze scenario. But cortisol can also be over utilized. Now, there are many conditions out there, where cortisol can create some really major health challenges. If you are running on excess cortisol all of the time, you're going to get some issues with your adrenal glands. Now, your adrenal glands are water producing the cortisol, that your adrenal glands have very, very important to you because they directly talk to other areas of the body. So you have a brain adrenal axis, your brain overreacts as a brain gut axis, you have a brain liver axis. But if the brain adrenal axis is overcharged and overused, because you are overstressed and the littlest things are stressing you out, then one of these other axes are going to be affected. So when we look at depression and anxiety, many people think anxiety is cortisol driven, but it's actually driven by the gut. And the brain gut axis is off kilter off center. When the brain adrenal axis is overcharged or supercharged. Guess what comes back to you're running on cortisol. So you'll get cannot make the hormones it needs to make to keep you calm. You can't make serotonin. So you become anxious, you become depressed. It can't make melatonin, so you can't get to sleep at night. So guess what cortisol jumps back in again and says, if you're not going to sleep at night, I'm going to make sure this becomes a habit. In fact, I'm going to ramp up because there's no melatonin to put you to sleep, and wind you down. So I'm going to ramp up and keep you awake. This is where it can become quite habit forming that you don't go to sleep at night. Because cortisol is kicking in your adrenals are kicking in because your gut cannot do what it needs to do. And when you have a leaky gut issue, or you eat too much junk food, or you have an eating disorder, or whatever, and I'm not bagging people with eating disorders, because I had one for a very long time. But this is where cortisol can jump in trying to save the day to keep you alive because it senses danger for you. So your adrenal is jumping, they kick in, they produce all this cortisol to keep you alive. But guess what? Now you can't sleep you're incredibly stressed. you're anxious because your guts not producing the hormones it needs. You're not sleeping because of melatonin is not there. So you become this really stressed being. Now that's not the only problem with cortisol and your health. Women in particular, we have this wonderful time of our lives where we're children. Everything's great, we usually pretty happy. usually pretty healthy. Yes, things can go wrong. But in general, it's a great time of their lives. And then we hit puberty. And during puberty. One of those axes I was talking to you about the brain ovary axis starts to fire and we produce hormones. Now these hormones are great. We're producing pregnenolone, which then gives us all the other six hormones. When we ovulate, we're producing progesterone. pregnenolone breaks down it gives us testosterone we break the testosterone down into a sturgeon. Happy Days, all our hormones are working. And we go through most of our life. Hormones from the brain ovary excess are working. A woman who comes into itself and then we hit Late 40s, early 50s and things start changing and we hit menopause. Or do we, what we're actually doing is we're hitting a thing called adrenal pause. That's really what menopause needs to be called adrenal pause, because no longer is our brain ovary excess, producing your hormones. Instead, you guessed it, the adrenals are producing our hormones. How do they do that? They use cortisol and break that down into sex hormones. ovaries are retired, they need to do no more work. But your adrenals have to kick in now and make your hormones. Now what happens if we're incredibly stressed, if we become internal cortisol junkies? If our adrenals have been working for a very long time? Well, what happens is we hit adrenal pause. And our adrenals go, nope, not working for you. Not doing that. No way. You've been asking me to work for so long. I can't do what I need to do now. So we get major health issues. We get all of the menopause symptoms that we're told. You can no longer seem to enjoy yourself intimately, you can no longer think clearly you get a brain fog. You can no longer seem to lose weight, because you've got menopause belly, and that's just a thing. Guess what you don't, you've got cortisol belly, your adrenals are unhappy. They've gone into overdrive. And because you've been living on a cortisol excess for so long now, when the adrenals actually have to kick in, apart from just keeping you alive, they actually have to help create the scenarios for life now. And they can't do it. Because they're tired. They are absolutely sick of picking up the slack because you became a cortisol junkie. Now, none of us walk down the street and go, you know what, give me a hitter that cortisol. And I'm gonna do that. Yep, that sounds like a good idea. Now, we don't do that. But what we do is put ourselves in situations where we're not grateful for the things that are happening in our life. We might be in an abusive situation, and we stay there because we think that's all we're worth, guess what? Your body's reacting to that minded. We might stay in a job that we hate. We have to catch the train to work. And it's like, I have to go in here again. Oh, no. Our it's all about the money. No, it's not. Your body is reacting internally to the situation that you are choosing to put yourself in. Now many of us just have to take jobs, to make the money to survive. I get it. I totally get it. But what is going on inside you? Are there some things that you can be grateful for? You get to the job that you hate. You've been on the train for an hour to get to the job that you hate. You're really not into the people you're working with. You don't particularly believe in the job that you're doing. But you know, it's a paycheck and you've got to live. I get it. I totally get it. What things can you be grateful for? Is it that your desk faces out a window, and when you have a sneaky moment, you can look out the window, watch a bird fly by some comes in window you can bask in the sun will be filtered through the window, but hey, natural light, it's still there. There might be one person in the office that you just feel calm, you feel happy. When you're around that person. It's uncomplicated. Be grateful for that. There's always something in your day that you can be grateful for. And as you do that, cortisol is not your master. Cortisol thing goes back to doing what it's supposed to do. Now back to adrenal pause, commonly known as menopause. Yes, you need cortisol to make your hormones. But there are some things that you can do to support your adrenals you can create some Vegas nerve activity Vegas nerve. It's this fantastic nerve that keeps you active keeps you healthy talks to all the other areas of the body, you can activate your Vegas nerve by when you're drinking your water, taking it a step at a time, this swallowing gives you Vegas nerve activity. You can chew each mouthful of food plenty of times because chewing gives you vagus nerve activity, you can go outside and take your shoes off and put your feet in the dirt because grounding creates a Vegas nerve activity. When your cortisol is slowing down in the evening, you can switch your phone off at 7pm. Yep, 7pm. When you go to bed at nine or 10, you haven't had exposure to the blue light from the screen. Guess what now you're creating some Vegas nerve activity. As you sleep, you actually reset your body you become well rested. You can think more clearly the next day, what is always no longer your master. And that's where we should all be in life. Now whether you are having battles with your weight battles with your health battles with the people around you, we have these battles every day. Unless you're like a Buddhist monk or something, yeah, you're going to have some issues come up and your cortisol will elevate when those issues come up. But what you want it to do is then back off again, and let you enjoy what's going on in your life. No matter how disastrous things may seem to be. There's always something to be grateful for. And being grateful lowers your cortisol response. Now we live in a very stressful society. I get it. Yesterday, I came back from a lovely day out, came to my office area at home. I got really stressed because there was an invasion events. And they were everywhere. They were in my computer. They were in the printer. They were everywhere. Yes, I had a cortisol response, I got really stressed. So I kicked my brain into gear. And I got my cinnamon bark oil. And I started putting that around wiping it around my desk and ran my computer and decided I should leave the area. Otherwise my cortisol was going to keep increasing my stress would keep increasing. Because I love all creatures. Except flies and ants. So here was my office, black with ants. Put my cinema back Euler and left the area went Do you not today, I'm not doing any work in the office. Because the anthill doing their work and I don't want to be around. I don't want to be stressed. Get back to the office this morning to record this podcast for you. And to go on. Chai immediately wake up this morning as my alarm goes off because cortisol is firing first thing in the morning, come into my office thinking cortisol is going to fire again. Because there's and guess what, there's no way I can start living my life again. No way it should be ungrateful. There's no ants my cortisol is not jumping in to save my life from them. So you know, what I'm saying basically is we're exposed to these kinds of situations every day with cortisol has to elevate. It has to jump in and save our lives so we don't die. And the body's fairly primitive in some ways it thinks the anti invasion might kill you. It triggers off a whole lot of scenario has going on and just tries to keep you alive. So appreciate when your cortisol spikes but look at ways that you can reduce those spikes because you do not want it to be your master. I hope that helped a little bit in regards to your emotional and mental health. Your internal hormonal health, understanding a little bit about weight and cortisol. Now this was episode 43 and Episode 44 I have Dr. Emily la Tran talking about growth potential. coming up soon in Episode 45 we have Zane Truscott talking to us about strong health foundations. And I'll be back in Episode 46 talking to you about golden values. But for now I hope you've learned a little bit about cortisol and how important in the body it actually is. You now know that menopause is really adrenal pause, and listeners, go forth and create your magical life. Thanks for listening today. Please subscribe to hear future episodes, leave a review and share this podcast. You can follow us on Facebook at a magical life podcast or at Wholistic Natural Health Australia that's holistic with a W. You can find us on Instagram, at Wholistic Natural Health or at www dot Wholistic Natural health.com.au. That's where you access all sorts of articles, freebies and more.