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
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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
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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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truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don’t miss anything stress is an enormous topic and cortisol is super important and people have
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

What is the best way to know if you have high  cortisol what is cortisol cortisol is the main   stress hormone and if cortisol is too high  there’s a lot of problems that could happen   in your body i’ve done a lot of videos on this  let me go down the list to give you some ideas  
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on what happens when your cortisol is too high  you get belly fat you lose protein in your thigh   muscles and your buttocks okay so you lose your  butt and your thighs what what’s not going to   do your knees it’s going to make your knees very  painful and weak especially when you’re climbing  
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stairs your blood pressure might increase first  starting with the systolic that’s the top number   and then ending up with the diastolic 2.  allergies asthma acne anxiety low tolerance   to stress people start really getting on your  nerves especially slow drivers inflammation  
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why because cortisol is the main anti-inflammatory  so if you don’t have it you fill up with   inflammation it could be anywhere back pain  whatever blood sugar problems you can even   end up becoming a diabetic if there’s too much  cortisol this is why when people get injected with  
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prednisone for example where they use prednisone a  lot sometimes they can become a diabetic cravings   for carbs and breads okay that would be one way  to know that you have a problem with cortisol   decreased libido decreased potassium  because potassium goes through you  
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and that’s a problem because potassium is needed  for so many things like energy relaxing you   balancing fluids it’s a main electrolyte etc etc  you may tend to hold salts and that’s why you have   edema as well but also you will lose something  that is involved with making acids okay and  
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hydrochloric acid so you end up with digestive  problems because you don’t have enough acid   and your blood ph can go more on the alkaline side  not the acid side that a lot of times people think   more alkaline and that can give you a whole  series of additional problems but in addition to  
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all these symptoms one of the best ways to know  you have high cortisol is the time you wake up   at night typically it’s going to be about two  o’clock in the morning it could be a little bit   later like 2 30 a.m but between 2 and 2 30 a.m  in the morning that’s when you become awake okay  
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now i had this problem for years and i didn’t  know what it was it was driving me crazy it was   torture because i would get up in the middle of  night and of course i had restless leg syndrome   too but i just wake up and i would start to  think and analyze and solve problems and worry  
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for hours and then when i finally went to sleep  that was around eight o’clock so the pattern   for high cortisol is you wake up at 2 a.m or 2  30 a.m and then you finally can get to bed right   around 8 a.m when you’re supposed to wake up right  why is that because cortisol follows a circadian  
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wave and cortisol normally is supposed to be the  lowest at 2 a.m okay in the highest at 8 a.m in   the morning so everything is kind of backwards and  so when you should be sleeping you’re most awake   when you should be awake you’re mostly asleep  and then also you might have a problem with  
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midday right around let’s say um two o’clock p.m  or three o’clock or you just want to take a nap   so that’s the pattern of high cortisol you  can also do a saliva test there’s also a hair   analysis i don’t know if they’re still doing it  now but that’s a really good analysis they check  
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your hair because if you test your cortisol  with your blood you’re only looking at your   cortisol at one time of the day as compared to the  hair which gives you an overall average of what’s   going on with cortisol or a saliva test which is  good which you’re measuring like every four hours  
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through a whole period of time to find out what’s  happening on this pattern so the question is what   do you do about it if you have symptoms  of high cortisol well you got to find out   what or who is causing your stress do something  to improve that okay walking long walks in nature  
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very very important physical work is a little  better than exercise even exercise is really good   but physical work to the point where you’re  you can get tired because it also doesn’t   just deplete you of the excess energy the nervous  energy but it gets your attention off problems b1  
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essential nutritional yeast is one of the  best sources and lots of it vitamin d3   vital okay and another reason why vitamin d  is good is because cortisol tends to block the   storage of vitamin d as well as the ability to  use vitamin d people with high cortisol usually  
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are always deficient in vitamin d and vitamin  d is also good for depression and vitamin d   acts like cortisol in the body with all the side  effects so it’s not necessarily going to give   you more cortisol it’ll help you regulate  or balance cortisol that you already have  
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potassium magnesium are the two minerals  that are physiological tranquilizers they’re   key minerals that help relax the nervous system  and usually if you have high cortisol you’re   going to be deficient in both of these so taking  those either an electrolyte or in food is very  
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important and then apple cider vinegar why because  you have alkalosis and we need to acidify the body   so then you can start absorbing the minerals  and breaking down protein very very important   i have a lot more videos on cortisol i’ll put  the links down below but thanks for watching