Hello.
Dr. Berg here.
In this video we're going to talk about how to lower cortisol.
Cortisol is a very destructive hormone.
It's a stress hormone, it makes belly fat and there's a lot of theories and mixed, confusing
ideas about cortisol.
I'm going to show you what is known about cortisol as far as how to lower it.
Things that you can do, things that you can avoid.
Again, it's made outside the adrenal gland on top of the kidney and it reacts to stress.
As you age, the opposing hormone called growth hormone, this is anti-aging, goes down.
It bottoms out at age 50, so in other words the relative ratio of low growth hormone to
cortisol, cortisol naturally goes higher because it's unopposed.
It has nothing to push it down.
Anything that increases growth hormone will help lower cortisol.
Growth hormone is made by your pituitary gland and it works [through 00:01:02] the liver.
Guess what?
It activates during sleep, so if you can get more sleep or do something to improve your
sleep then you will help yourself lower cortisol.
Whatever that means.
More sleep but not necessarily taking a drug, but doing it naturally.
More sleep, more growth hormone, less cortisol.
Okay?
That's number one.
Number two, IGF.
What's IGF?
Insulin-like growth factor.
What is that?
That is a hormone that is very similar to growth hormone but it's produced by your liver.
It's released by the liver and it regulates fat-burning.
It actually helps regulate blood sugars when you're not eating.
Insulin regulates sugar when you're eating, IGF regulates sugars when you're not eating
and primarily when you're sleeping.
If you're just grazing all day, eating all day long and never giving your body a chance
not to eat, then you will not trigger growth hormone unless you're sleeping really good.
I recommend do two to three meals a day if you really want to stimulate this and not
have too many snacks.
You'll find that your IGF will go up because anything that increases growth hormone will
also increase this one here, so these kind of work together right here.
All right?
Number three, sun.
Getting sun on a regular basis.
That's very, very, very powerful to lower cortisol.
You know, you go to the beach, you get sun, and you feel calmer.
Then you take a nap.
Sleep and sun lower cortisol, so really what you need to do is go to the beach for about
six months and get sun and sleep.
Sun and sleep.
I'm just kidding.
If you can do that.
We have sun, and sleep, and then Vitamin D will also help as well.
I've done other videos on this but you need to get D3.
D3 is really good to help lower cortisol but realize that when you take it, get it in daily
dosages of about 10,000 International Units.
If you're getting about 15 to 20 minutes of sun every day you don't need Vitamin D because
you're going to get it from the sun.
The days that it's cloudy, take the D3.
One 10,000 IUs but make sure you're taking Vitamin K2 with it.
I created a video on that.
I'll put a link down below because you need to get the full scoop of what to take if you're
taking that much Vitamin D just to balance it out.
All right, walking is way better than any type of exercise to lower cortisol.
Long walks, getting space, very therapeutic.
Acupressure, that's one thing I do.
I've found that all stress accumulates and you have to extract the stress manually on
the body, so there is techniques to help pull the stress out of your body so your body can
sleep, up here.
We do acupressure to increase the sleep.
Okay, potassium.
Increase your potassium.
Normally in your body you need 4700mg a day.
That's seven to ten cups of salad a day.
This will help to balance cortisol as well, because potassium supports part of the nervous
system that helps recovery.
It's called the parasympathetic nervous system.
That opposes the flight or fight mechanism.
That's the anti-cortisol thing, so potassium is very, very good.
There's also another thing.
Vitamin B1.
Very important.
Make sure you get your B1 through nutritional yeast and not synthetic vitamins.
Nutritional yeast is a natural form of B1 and take a teaspoon or a tablespoon, put it
in some plain kefir or yogurt, mix it all up a little bit and then eat it.
If you don't like the taste put it in peanut butter, something like that, apple sauce.
B1 is a very, very, very, very good thing.
Okay, I thought of another one.
Calcium.
A little calcium before bed, calcium-citrate, calcium-lactate.
Don't consume calcium-carbonate.
That's a very bad one but calcium will also help before bed, it'll help you sleep.
That's really, really beneficial to help that.
Now, things to avoid.
Well, of course, these are the things that you can do.
These things you shouldn't do and that would be hang out with stressful people, people
that bring you down.
There's two types of people.
People that bring you up and people that bring you down.
Just avoid those negative, covert, hostile people and that's important.
Basically, this is about changing your environment with people, mainly people, whether it's a
stressful environment that you live in, job-wise or whatever.
Just keep improving that because that can severely affect your general state of being
and the cortisol.
Because if you're living in an environment that's constantly stressful, you [can 00:06:17]
have a heck of a time with this right here.
Okay?
That's how you lower cortisol.