How To Reduce Cortisol Levels Naturally For Weight Loss And Stress Relief

how to reduce cortisol well cortisol is a stress hormone so in order to reduce

cortisol we have to reduce stress and stress has been linked to every disease

condition known to man and because stress is often a result of

a lifestyle it's a way of life that we have adapted then in order to truly

reduce stress we have to change our lifestyle so today we're going to talk

about not just what the steps are but why they work and once you understand

that then you can turn your lifestyle into one of stress reduction and learn

how to get truly healthy coming right up

I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian and if you'd like to

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stress is an enormous topic and cortisol is super important and people have

different reasons but since so many people have issues with weight they want

to lose weight and cortisol is part of that picture that's where a lot of

people start looking at cortisol that's where they're we get their attention but

in order to reduce cortisol we also have to change the whole picture and that's

kind of just a side benefit that once you reduce cortisol and you understand

the bigger picture you don't just change one thing you get a trickle-down effect

that can be tremendously beneficial some people look at cortisol because of

adrenal fatigue chronic fatigue syndrome they just don't feel right other people

look at it because it's involved with insulin resistance weight gain and also

with type 2 diabetes and like we looked at a recent video on Cushing's disease

with which is an extreme cortisol level it can also be involved with muscle

wasting so once we address the root the core issues

we turn around all of these things all at once so what is stress well stress is

a response from your sympathetic nervous system so your autonomic nervous system

the part of your nervous system of your brain that manages everything about your

body everything that you don't have to think about is your autonomic nervous

system has two branches and the sympathetic nervous system responds to

things that threaten you when there's some threat real or imagined the

sympathetic nervous system revs you up it increases resources so that you can

defend yourself so you increase your heart rate your blood pressure you you

body wants more blood sugar for quick fuel so that's where cortisol comes in

cortisol goes up to raise the blood sugar but you also increase muscle

tension you increase LDL cholesterol because LDL cholesterol is part of wound

clotting and during a fight flight situation you might get situation where

you start bleeding so all of these things are part of the stress response

but there's a balance that we have to understand that the parasympathetic

that's the other than sympathetic it handles your digestion it stimulates

immune responses it's responsible for reproduction function and it's

responsible for healing so the key takeaway here is that you can defend

yourself you can activate the sympathetics and defend yourself or you

can activate the parasympathetic and heal but you can't do both at the same

time you can do a little bit of one or the other but the more you do of one the

less you do of the other that's just how we are wired and we're going to look at

that so even though the sympathetic is a stress response that doesn't make it a

bad thing it's not like a mistake in the way the body is created the sympathetic

nervous system keeps you alive in emergency

situations it's just that we're not supposed to have emergency situations

all the time and it's designed for bursts of activity so if you get chased

by some some wild animal if you have an emergency you're supposed to engage that

sympathetic to a very high degree and then you're supposed to be done with it

but in our modern life style it doesn't matter if it's a real short threat or if

it's a long term imagined threat so financial pressures and bad news and

overwhelm at work and feeling overwhelmed insufficient all of those

are stresses they activate your sympathetic nervous system and we

develop chronic stress so I don't have any exact numbers but just to give you

an idea I would guess that were designed probably for 10 or 20 percent burst

sympathetic activity and the rest of the time 80 90 percent we we should be in

parasympathetic but with a modern lifestyle it's kind of the other way

around we don't have many of those extreme burst activities but we have a

little bit of stress a little bit of sympathetic activation most of the time

so it's like this balance is reversed we've developed habits and we have

become stuck in sympathetic dominance so this is why stress is so destructive

this is why the things that the sympathetic develops like heart rate

high heart rate high blood pressure high cortisol muscle tension cholesterol

that's why those are things that people take the most medication for because

you're sympathetic drives those things when they become a chronic habit that's

the stuff we end up taking drugs for they become chronic degenerative

diseases the next thing to understand about

stress is that most of the time that you have stress you're not aware of it

because stress can be many different things anytime your sympathetic nervous

is activated you have stress could be something chemical it could be an

infection it could be toxicity could be long-term low-grade toxicity or it could

be something like food poisoning you could have dis glycaemia unstable

blood sugar for which the body has to compensate with cortisol that's a lot of

stress stress can be mechanical being sedentary is a form of stress having

passed trauma like slips and falls and car accidents is a form of stress having

a spinal stiffness having a lack of spinal movement also known as

subluxation in chiropractic is a form of stress and we will look at that in just

a second we can also have emotional stress and that's what people usually

talk about when they mean stress that's when you have an emotion that you don't

like when you feel bad when you have fear anger when you're feeling

overwhelmed when you have feelings of grief and those are obviously types of

stress but they're not the only types of stress they're not the only thing that

activates that sympathetic that stress response so we want to think of this as

a triangle where every part is equally important we have chemical we have

structural we have emotional stress it's sort of like three legs on a table if

you have a three-legged table you can't balance the table on two legs you can't

balance the table on one leg you want to start addressing all sides of the

triangle to create balance in your life and now we're getting to the really cool

stuff this is what true stress management is what is it that manages

stress in your body well it is your brain and specifically it is your

frontal lobe because stress is lifesaving stress responses are

life-saving when something threatens you you're supposed to react you have to if

you don't you're a sitting duck and whatever threatens you gets you so

stress responses are necessary and life-saving but the

frontal lobe has the ability to determine when it's time to turn it off

if the frontal lobe doesn't work so well then stress responses just kind of come

and they're acting unopposed and they go on much stronger and much longer than

they're supposed to that's why different people have different stress tolerance

that's why they manage stress differently some people act very calm in

stressful situations and some people completely freak out

that's depending on how well is that frontal lobe working and what is it that

the frontal lobe does well the frontal lobe inhibits it turns things off it's

like a light bulb that the brighter it burns the better it is at turning things

off it's like turning off the darkness if you will and the way that we're wired

is that the frontal lobe can turn off the sympathetic stress response and the

sympathetic nervous system in turn is wired to turn off the parasympathetic

nervous system why is that because the body has limited resources so in a

stressful situation you're not concerned about digestion

that's the liability you'll be wasting resources on digestion if there's

something threatening you so your body is wired that any time that you have a

threat you turn off the parasympathetic nervous system so even though the

parasympathetic helps you digest and defend you from immune issues and it

helps you reproduce and heal it is not an asset in an emergency the frontal

lobe turns off the sympathetic stress response so indirectly the frontal lobe

turns on the parasympathetic s-- it turns on digestion it turns on immune

system it turns on reproduction it turns on healing so by turning off the thing

that was turned on you turn it on and this is just how

we're wired that's just part of the design but we can use it to our

advantage because if we understand this then we can use this to control stress

so let's talk about the solutions but we're not just going to talk about the

solutions we want to understand why they work because if you understand what the

mechanism is then you'll start noticing in your life when you start apply you

become more sensitive and that's how you truly can turn it into a lifestyle which

is necessary if you want long-term results so the way that you can manage

stress is primarily through a few different mechanisms it's by doing a

pattern interrupt so why is that important because the reason that you

have a stress dominance is that you're stuck it's become a habit the brain

doesn't quite know it's done so much of it it just gets stuck in that habit and

what we want to do is interrupt that pattern the other way we can manage

stress is through brain stimulation just like we talked about if we increase the

activity of the frontal lobe then we manage stress we can also do it with

nutrients we can give it nutrients we can give the brain nutrients that help

it function better and we can give nutrients that are innately calming to

the brain and then we can have certain lifestyle modifications that are going

to affect hormones and neurotransmitters such as growth hormone and cortisol

primarily so let's look at the list number one aerobic exercise aerobic

exercise is fantastic because it is a pattern interrupt it gets you away it

gets you out it gets you moving all of those are pattern interrupt it's

also brain stimulation because 90% of what stimulates the brain the signals

they get to the brain 90% of those are from movements and

you're also increasing oxygenation which your brain loves and you are starting to

you not getting tremendous amount of growth hormone from just walking but

you're getting just a little bit you're also reducing insulin because

your muscles become more insulin sensitive during aerobic exercise so

it's a fantastic way to reduce stress and reduce cortisol of course the next

thing you can do is another type of exercise and this might seem

counterintuitive because this is kind of the opposite of aerobic exercise this is

extreme high intensity interval training and this will stimulate cortisol but the

trick is to do it for such a short duration you do it 15 seconds at a time

you do a few repetitions of 15 seconds until you get exhausted until you max

out your heart rate and then you have increased your growth hormone by 3 to

400 percent and growth hormone opposes cortisol they work against each other so

you can do things to reduce cortisol or you can do things to increase growth

hormone and you can accomplish the same thing so even though you produce

cortisol with hit the trick is to keep the duration so short that the growth

hormone benefit far outweighs the cortisol downside if you're really

really fragile though if you have just totally burned out your system if you're

feeling sick you're feeling bad you're not fit then you might want to hold off

on the hit or you might want to do it extremely carefully because this is a

stress on the body and some people are just not at a point yet where intense

exercise is a good idea so if you have any question marks about that then hold

off on the hit number 3 recover exercise can be beneficial but just

because it's beneficial doesn't mean that more is better and it's the

contrast between exercise and recovery that helps your body heal so anytime

that you exercise you want to allow enough recovery and you never want to

exercise so much that your body starts feeling fatigued or worn down number

four Yoga Yoga is fantastic it is a pattern interrupt it is brain

stimulation you stretch you teach your brain about paying attention to

different things it's a different mindset

highly recommended just don't get into the modern versions of yoga where they

turn it into something intense something upbeat fast moving because that defeats

the purpose of reducing cortisol breathing exercises number five very

very powerful because your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system

are tied to your breath when you breathe in that's a sympathetic activity when

you breathe out it's a parasympathetic activity so if you do a slow breath in

and a slow long breath out then you're balancing your sympathetics

and your parasympathetic so the trick is keep your out-breath

about five seconds or even a little bit more but at least five seconds that

gives your parasympathetic nervous system five whole seconds to engage and

you're in training a pattern there number six meditation very often tied to

breathing but meditation is more about paying attention to your mind it's about

changing your focus which increases frontal lobe activity so it's a pattern

interrupt it is brain stimulation and it's about finding a profound place of

peace and in doing that in reaching deeper and deeper levels of of Pia

that you're getting more and more pattern interrupts and brain stimulation

and you can start undoing by finding that deep piece you can start undoing

past stresses also number seven mindfulness often associated with

meditation it's even called mindfulness meditation which it is but mindfulness

goes much much further than that it's something that you want to turn into a

lifestyle habit it's something that you do all day long if you can remind

yourself every minute as you get better and better it runs more an automatic

remind yourself every minute to pay attention to how you feel make how you

feel the most important thing that there is and start looking on the bright side

that's what mindfulness really is it's a it's a way of life eight celebrate

whenever something good happens don't just brush it off and move on to the

next thing take some time pat yourself on the back

milk it take a minute to really sort of celebrate and appreciate and and soak in

why that was so good and take a moment to just feel good about it and now

you're building momentum number nine appreciate look around you into your

wonderful life look at how beautiful nature is look at the good things in

life there is few things as powerful for feeling good and undoing stress as

appreciation you cannot appreciate and be stressed at the same time number 10

read make it a habit to read or if you're reading challenged then listen to

something get a good audio program most of the time you're limited to your own

mind your own thoughts but when you read or listen to something uplifting you

have a third party put in good stuff in your mind it's a pattern interrupt it

helps build your momentum it helps you change perspective it helps you build a

positive outlook over so I can't emphasize that enough take 10

20 30 minutes every day and build yourself grow yourself

number 11 positive people notice how you feel around people and give yourself the

Liberty to avoid the people who make you feel bad the people who pull you down

the people where you feel like there's a shadow coming as soon as you get in the

presence give yourself the freedom to avoid those and instead find the people

to make you feel good find the groups of people the organizations where where

positive people hang out and go there on purpose number 12

essential oils they have become extremely popular in recent years but

how do they actually work and the thing to understand I'm not opposed to

essential oils at all I think they're great but a lot of people use them as a

form of nutrition which they are not they don't add anything that the body is

missing what they do is they provide a pattern interrupt

they smell is very very powerful it's the most primitive is the most

fundamental of all human senses and it has profound impact on the brain so when

you smell something and you pay attention to that you're interrupting a

pattern you are stimulating the brain and you're changing your focus you're

paying attention to something else you're getting a timeout and it's very

very powerful it doesn't have to be essential oils but anything that serves

that purpose can be excellent there are also homeopathics of flower

essences we use several in our office that have excellent effects in calming

you down you can also use herbs number 14 that there are adaptogenic herbs like

ashwagandha and ginseng and kava and they help your body calm down there they

have safe medicinal effects number 15 smile and laugh give yourself a moment

when you're sitting in the car just put a big silly grin on your face and smile

for no reason at all and just notice just ask yourself how good could I feel

right now for no reason at all put a big smile on your face and just let that

emotion right just let that state go for a few seconds and you'll have a state

change you'll have a pattern interrupt and you'll feel better if you do that on

a regular basis you can have long-lasting effects you can build

momentum allow yourself to laugh for no reason or watch a funny movie number 16

sleep sleep increases growth hormone especially if you get a couple of hours

of sleep before midnight and you need to get enough sleep and you need to have

certain regularity to your sleeping times it's very beneficial for your

recovery and for growth hormone which again opposes cortisol another way to

raise growth hormone is number 17 intermittent fasting whenever you go a

period of time without food then your increase in growth hormone so if you

just go from three meals a day to two meals a day

you're just making more growth hormone you are reducing cortisol but you can't

get very good results with that if you're eating a lot of carbs because if

you're creating a blood sugar rollercoaster then every time your blood

sugar dips in the low end then your body makes cortisol to compensate so you need

to be fat adapted and have stable blood sugar in order to benefit optimally from

that intermittent fasting which brings us to number 18 stable blood glucose so

that goes together with number 17 unstable blood sugar is a stress it

stimulates cortisol whenever the blood sugar is low number 19 there are

specific Newt that help your brain and your adrenal

glands work better your adrenal glands of course are the ones who respond to

stress your brain detects the stress it sends signals to the sympathetic nervous

system and it's the adrenal glands that carry out the orders of the sympathetic

nervous system so when you have a lot of stress you're wearing your adrenals down

and you want to give them the optimal nutrition so vitamin d3 and number-20 B

vitamins primarily b1 and b5 but don't get the synthetic stuff you want to get

it from food and you want to get it the best natural source that you can take

sort of as an isolated source is nutritional yeast it's taste great I

love it you can put it in smoothies you can sprinkle it on things it's got kind

of a cheesy flavor excellent source number 21 we are still in the nutrition

category those are minerals minerals not only provide necessary nutrients for the

brain but they also have a calming effect on the brain

magnesium especially is generally considered calming it helps the neural

membranes regulate ions better potassium and calcium are also very important

minerals number 22 DHA which is docosahexaenoic acid don't worry about

the name it is one of the two most important parts of fish oil so the EPA

is in anti-inflammatory the DHA is a brain building nutrient that also has a

calming effect an anti stress effect number 23 there are a couple of adrenal

points that you can stimulate you have if you go to your belly button and you

go one inch over on each side and one to two inches up on

side then those are your adrenal reflex points these are points that have been

identified in applied kinesiology as early as the 1960s and they relate to

the adrenal gland so if you take and you rub those you put a finger on each and

you rub them for a few seconds and then you just hold them while you relax you

will notice pretty soon 10 20 30 seconds that you start getting a pulse right in

the skin and as you hold it longer that pulse increases and you're actually

allowing the adrenal glands to calm down so it's a direct treatment that you can

do a couple of times a day you don't have to rub very hard because they tend

to get tender if you do number-25 you could get a pet they are very very

calming they have a good energy about them spending time with a pet focusing

on the pet interrupts your pattern and it changes your hormone balance it

really helps you reduce cortisol levels and you could also get a hobby

you could go exercise you could join a chess club you could join a choir

anything that you consider fun anything that's your idea of fun is going to help

you feel good it's going to help your pattern interrupt and have tremendous

benefits so even though this videos about how to reduce cortisol it's

important to understand that you never reduce one isolated thing that cortisol

is just one component of the stress response which has a multitude of

components and once you learn how the bigger system works and you start

bringing the whole system back to balance

then you will reduce cortisol every one of these steps will reduce cortisol but

if you understand the bigger mechanism then you understand how you can turn

this into a lifestyle you can reduce the bigger picture of stress and you can

really start undoing ambass and disease if you watched a few of my

videos already then you know that we have several videos on a lot of these

different topics but if you feel that there's a topic that I haven't covered

as completely as you would like then please let me know in the comments below

which one of these would be your number one choice to see more elaboration on

and whichever I see the most comments on I'll go ahead and do a video on that if

you enjoy this video you're gonna love this one

so make sure you check that out and until next time thanks for watching