Annoyed you that your physical progress hasn't even come close to matching the pace of your friends even though you’d been doing everything identically?
You've been hitting the gym consistently, finally got your diet in check and still making minimal progress.
More likely than not you’ve been working in a fast-paced, high-stress job for a long time, while still trying to manage your personal life & responsibilities. Overtime the brain becomes overwhelmed living in a chronic state of fight or flight.
This is where the silent killer to progress creeps in, Stress.
If your uncontrollable weight gain and lack of muscle growth are the result of increased stress and high cortisol levels, then how do you get things back on track? Moreover, if your stressful lifestyle isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, should you be taking supplements to reduce cortisol?
What is Cortisol?
Far from being a thoroughly negative force within your body, cortisol is actually an essential component of your body’s stress response system. Simply stated, cortisol is the king of the stress hormones, and when you’re faced with a real life situation that induces stress, your body’s cortisol levels naturally increase to help you contend with the threat you’re facing.
How Does Cortisol Work?
First of all, it’s helpful to keep in mind that cortisol’s foremost purpose is to prepare your body to contend with stressful situations. When you feel stressed, your pituitary gland sends a message to your adrenal glands that prompts them to produce cortisol to help remedy the situation.
In essence, cortisol is a steroid hormone that initiates a series of all-hands-on-deck emergency procedures to temporarily boost your physical performance and mental performance to ward off what will hopefully be a temporary threat.
How does cortisol accomplish this? By factoring into the processes of nearly every organ system in your body. It induces glycogenolysis in your muscle tissue, which rapidly breaks down the glycogen stored in your muscles to produce instant energy.
In the process, it boosts your blood glucose levels by reducing the ability of your muscles and stored body fat to absorb it. It also accelerates the breakdown of fats into fatty acids.
In short, cortisol increases blood glucose levels, which aids the process of feeding energy to your brain and other body tissues. This is intended to give you the necessary mental and physical capabilities to survive whatever threat you are presently facing.
What is Wrong With Elevated Cortisol Levels?
The problem with walking around with heightened cortisol levels all the time is that they essentially extend your body’s fight-or-flight response system well beyond what it is intended to cope with. In other words, what is intended to be a short-term response to increased stress can prove to be highly damaging to your body if too much cortisol is produced for too long of a time.
For starters, high cortisol levels will result in high blood pressure and all of the problems that accompany it, up to and including heart disease. Aside from high blood pressure, raised cortisol levels also compromise your sleep quality.
A byproduct of cortisol-induced sleep deprivation is often that the sufferer will increase their caffeine intake, which can also increase the cortisol levels of already stressed individuals.
When cortisol is doing its job on a short-term basis, your immune system will be kicked into overdrive to ward off anything that might cause an illness. Part of this response will be that cortisol will temporarily reduce inflammation in your body.
However, if your body is forced to contend with excess cortisol for too long, it has the opposite effect on your immune system. In effect, the presence of chronic stress causes your body’s tolerance of excess cortisol to also increase. When that happens, your inflammation levels increase over time, while your immune system ceases to function optimally.
Top Supplements to Reduce Cortisol
If you find yourself suffering from what you believe to be elevated cortisol levels, there are certain supplements you can take to either manage stress levels, or to reduce cortisol directly.
Along these lines, there are compound supplements that combine one or more ingredients in an effort to regulate cortisol production and relieve stress. The combined effect of these ingredients is a substantial relief of chronic stress and its symptoms, and the stabilization of your body at healthy cortisol levels.
Ganoderma lucidum also known as the Reishi Mushroom
is a large, robust mushroom that has been used for centuries in Traditional Chinese Medicine as an herbal remedy, especially for bolstering liver and immune functions. Research suggests that protein and triterpene constituents, specifically ganodermic acids, are responsible for the immunostimulating and hepatoprotective effects of reishi mushrooms
Clinical evidence demonstrates that ganodermic acids inhibit the release of histamine in mast cells (meaning ganodermic acids work to reduce pro-inflammatory markers in susceptible body tissues).
The distinct proteins in reishi mushrooms have also been shown to preserve liver function through antioxidant mechanisms.
Moreover, a meta-analysis that accounted for 373 subjects found that those with early-stage cancerous tumors were 27% more likely to respond to chemotherapy or radiotherapy while supplementing with reishi extract than those not consuming the medicinal mushroom as part of their treatment. Further research has shown that reishi mushroom blocks tumor cell proliferation by stimulating pertinent immune factors.
In simpler terms: Organic reishi mushroom is a potent immune enhancer with promising longevity benefits.
Cordyceps Sinensis
is an unusual fungal species since it’s technically a combination of a fungus and caterpillar, giving it a characteristic elongated shape. Asian cultures have consumed Cordyceps sinensis for centuries to stimulate appetite, increase energy, enhance sexual function, boost immunity, and improve sleep quality.
This extract is rich in beneficial cordyceps constituents, notably cordycepin and its derivatives, ergosterol, and rare polysaccharides. Research continues to demonstrate that these compounds have a vast range of medicinal and ergogenic properties in humans, including:
- Promoting healthy blood glucose balance
- Supporting cardiovascular function
- Protecting the kidneys
- Stimulating energy (ATP) production
- Decreasing fatigue from strenuous exercise
Lion’s mane (Hericium erinaceus)
is revered as a medicinal mushoom that enhances cognitive function and revitalizes gastrointestinal (GI) integrity. The bioactive compounds in this fungal species are diverse, including erinacines, hericerins, hericenones, resorcinols, terpenes, and glycoproteins. Recent evidence has shown that Lion’s mane mushroom strongly reduces gastric ulcer size and formation, and also helps maintain antioxidant status in the mucosa of the GI tract.
Further research suggests that Lion’s mane has strong nootropic benefits by promoting neuron growth and differentiation in the brain - particularly those involved in the cholinergic system.
In fact, Lion’s mane administration increased neurite (dendrites and axons) outgrowth by upwards of 60.6% in one study.
These neurotrophic effects may translate to enhanced acetylcholine transmission, which is important for optimal cognitive function and focus.
Ashwagandha
Ashwagandha is an herbal remedy that is often used to treat anxiety and reduce stress. As a byproduct of addressing these two root causes of increased cortisol, it may play an indirect role in lowering cortisol levels as well.
Benefits of Reducing Cortisol Levels
There are plenty of stress reducing benefits to be unlocked by controlling your body’s cortisol response and engaging in general stress management. Whether you manage cortisol levels through lifestyle changes, supplements intended to lessen the production of stress hormone, or a combination of the two, avoiding high cortisol levels is always beneficial to your body.
Improved Mood
Chronic stress and the constant flow of cortisol that accompany it keep your mind in a constant state of defensiveness, and do considerable damage to your mental health over time. Conversely, lower cortisol levels are associated with reduced stress, improved overall brain functionality, and a reduction in mental health problems.
Better Sleep
Managing stress as a component of a healthy lifestyle is associated with improved sleep. For a non-stressed person, cortisol levels will decrease during sleep, and then rise to an acceptable level to sustain a healthy level of alertness. If you’re stressed, cortisol will compromise the function of melatonin and adenosine, two hormones that help induce sleep. Reducing cortisol frees these hormones to do their jobs.
Enhanced Immune Function
Your immune system and your nervous system work together to protect your body from illnesses. Too much stress hormone in your body can impair your body’s ability to protect itself from illnesses, whereas lower cortisol levels enable your body to manage to adequately defend you.
Weight Management
Your body responds to high cortisol levels by slowing down your metabolism, increasing your appetite, and boosting both your insulin level and your insulin resistance. All of these actions can contribute to rapid weight gain. Once you have a stress management system in place, cortisol levels return to normal, and weight gain is reversed.
FAQs About Cortisol-Reducing Supplements
Supplements are a popular way to get your body’s stress response system back online, lower your cortisol to manageable levels, and preserve your body’s overall stress resilience. Here are the answers to several popular questions related to supplements used to control cortisol levels.
Do Cortisol-Reducing Supplements Actually Work?
There are several supplements that have been proven to maintain cortisol within a healthy range. These range from widely available vitamins and minerals — like magnesium and vitamin D — to more exotic sources like ashwagandha.
What Are the Best Supplements to Reduce Cortisol Levels?
People’s bodies may react differently to different supplements, or have different degrees of sensitivity to each of them.
As a starting point, it is often best to begin with supplements that contain stress-controlling ingredients that are common in everyday food items, like omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium, and vitamin D.
Can I Reduce Cortisol With a Healthy Diet?
While you can reduce cortisol levels with a healthy diet, regularly consuming foods with ingredients that control cortisol in the necessary quantities is not always a practical or reliable strategy that can be carried out with consistency.
In particular, magnesium can be very challenging to consume at recommended daily intake levels despite its availability at low levels within a wide variety of food sources.
Is Stress Reduction the Best Way Lower Elevated Cortisol Levels?
Because lifestyle factors are often unpredictable and difficult to control, it can be challenging to maintain the sort of stress-free lifestyle that can mitigate the damage that the resulting creation of cortisol can do to your body.
As such, cortisol-reducing supplements are often the most reliable way to reduce stress and prevent cortisol from climbing into a problematic range.
Stress Relief is Always Worth It
Clearly, your cortisol levels are worth getting under control. Aside from the obvious physical benefits that can be accessed through the consumption of the right supplements — like a reduction in body fat and an increase in muscle mass — your mind will also be set at ease as you unburden yourself from the constant weight of stress. That way, the next time you do a set of squats at your gym, the only heavy weight on your shoulders will be supplied by the barbell.