Adrenal glands let out the hormone cortisol when a person is worried. This can help people deal with dangerous or challenging situations for short periods. But if you have high cortisol for a long time, it can hurt your muscle growth.

For many people, lowering their stress is the best way to lower cortisol. If you feel less stressed, your body might make less cortisol. Sometimes, having a high cortisol level is caused by an underlying health problem or a drug side effect. A doctor can help you deal with this.

This guide describes some natural ways to lower cortisol levels and ensure the body handles stress correctly. It also discusses how rock-solid formulations can help you reach your goal.

Cortisol: What is it?

You have two adrenal glands, one on top of each kidney. They make cortisol, a steroid hormone. More cortisol is released into your system when you are worried. Your health needs to have the right amount of cortisol, and making too much or too little of it can be bad for you.

  • Cortisol works on many parts of your body and does many important things. It can help:
  • How your body reacts to danger or stress
  • Speed up the way your body breaks down glucose
  • Keep your blood pressure in check.
  • Lessen inflammation

A healthy and natural response to perceived threats is known as the “fight or flight” response, and it requires cortisol in order to function properly. Therefore, your body controls how much cortisol it takes to keep things in balance.

What Causes Adrenal Cortisol Production?

Your pituitary gland controls how much cortisol your adrenal glands make. There is a gland about the size of a pea at the base of your brain. It is sometimes called the “master gland” because it has so many effects on your body.

Your pituitary gland responds when you wake up, work out, or experience something upsetting. This signals your adrenal glands to produce the right amount of cortisol.

How Cortisol Affects Your Body

Mainly, the following are the ways in which cortisol affects your body:

  1. You can control your body’s stress reaction by releasing cortisol after its “fight or flight” hormones, like adrenaline, when you’re stressed. This keeps you on high alert. Cortisol also makes your liver release glucose, which is sugar, so you can get energy quickly when you’re stressed.
  1. Cortisol helps your body use fats, proteins, and carbs for energy by controlling your metabolism.
  1. Cortisol can boost your immune system by limiting inflammation for short periods. Cortisol levels can get too high over time, though, and your body can get used to having too much of it in the blood. This can cause inflammation and weaken your immune system.
  1. More clarity is needed regarding the precise mechanism by which cortisol regulates blood pressure in humans. High amounts of cortisol, on the other hand, can lead to high blood pressure, and low levels of cortisol can lead to low blood pressure.
  1. Cortisol balances out the effect of insulin, a hormone made by your pancreas, on blood sugar levels. If you release glucose stores, cortisol boosts blood sugar. Insulin, on the other hand, drops blood sugar. Hyperglycemia, or long-term high blood sugar, can happen when cortisol levels are too high. We can get Type 2 diabetes from this.
  1. Normally, cortisol levels are lowest when you go to sleep at night and highest right before you wake up in the morning. This helps you control your sleep-wake cycle, which shows that cortisol is a big part of waking up and your body’s circadian cycle.
  1. Cortisol amounts that are just right are needed for life and for keeping many body processes going. Maintaining regularly high or low cortisol levels can be bad for your health as a whole.

Easy Ways to Lower Cortisol Naturally

The brain and adrenal glands can usually control cortisol on their own. When worry is gone, the body stops making cortisol, and the amounts go back to normal.

Cortisol levels can be higher than usual in people who are under a lot of stress, have some medical issues, or take certain medicines. Some ways to lower cortisol that they might want to try are:

1. Reducing Stress

Since stress makes the body make cortisol, lowering stress usually also lowers cortisol. To bring down their cortisol levels, people can do the following:

  • To lower stress, people can try to avoid things that cause it as much as possible. One way to do this is to think about the things in your life that stress you out and decide if you can avoid them. If there are stresses that you can avoid, think about whether they are essential. It’s possible to give up anything that isn’t important.
  • Worry management means learning to manage worry better when it’s inevitable. Mindfulness and self-help methods are two examples of this.
  • If a mental illness causes you stress, like worry, getting mental health treatment may help you feel less stressed. Therapists can help people learn how to recognize worried thoughts and slowly replace them with more stable ones.

2. Eating a Healthy Meal

If someone wants to lower their cortisol levels, they should eat a healthy diet and limit their sugar and coffee consumption.

According to a reliable source, the following can help lower stress and keep cortisol levels stable:

  • Whole grains, beans, nuts, cereals, fruits, and vegetables are sources of fibre in the diet.
  • For omega-3 fatty acids, people can try to eat more seafood and fish. Flax seeds, chia seeds, algae, and sea veggies are all plant-based choices.
  • Cultured, fermented, and aged foods: Yogurt, kefir, kombucha, miso, tempeh, and apple cider vinegar are all these things that you can eat.

3. Caffeine Exclusion

If someone is trying to lower their cortisol levels, they shouldn’t eat or drink anything with coffee in the evening. Too much caffeine can make it hard to sleep.

4. Getting Enough Sleep

Cortisol levels in the blood can be affected by a bad night’s sleep or not getting enough sleep for a long time. However, cortisol levels may go down if you get enough sleep and stick to a routine sleep-wake pattern.

5. Enjoying Life and Laughing

Having a good time makes it difficult to feel stressed, which is why making time to have fun can also help a person reduce their levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Laughter is good for you in many ways. It can help lower cortisol and raise serotonin, which helps keep your mood in check. Also, it might make partnerships better.

6. Work-out

Getting some exercise is good for your health and can make you feel better. However, intense exercise can raise cortisol levels. The body raises cortisol levels to deal with the extra stress that exercise causes.

So, for people with high cortisol levels, low- or moderate-impact exercise might be a good choice. It is best to talk to a doctor about this because the best type and amount of exercise for each person will depend on their own circumstances.

7. Creating Good Connections

Having stable, loving relationships with family, friends, and partners can be very important for living a happy whole life. They can also help a person get through tough times.

Situations that aren’t healthy or happy can cause a lot of stress. If disagreements happen often, trying to figure out why they happen might be good for everyone.

8. Giving Up Smoking

There is some proof that smoking may change cortisol levels and the quality of sleep.

A study found that people who smoked had higher amounts of cortisol than people who didn’t smoke. They also woke up more often because their sleep was less consistent.

9. Taking Supplements

Cortisol levels can be lowered in many ways. However, if these methods are not feasible or are not showing any signs of effectiveness, the next step may be to consult with a physician about taking supplements.

A small study done in 2019 found that nurses who were feeling burned out had lower amounts of cortisol when they took omega-3 fatty acids. Participants who took Omega-3 for eight weeks reported experiencing a reduction in their feelings of emotional exhaustion.

Rock-solid formulations contain all of the supplements that will assist you in achieving good muscle growth and maintaining cortisol levels over time. For more information about supplements, contact Rock-Solid Formulations.

Everyone should talk to their doctor before starting a new vitamin, but it’s especially important for people who are already taking medicine.