Cortisol and stress response. You've heard these words thrown around all your
life, but what does it mean how does it work so I'm gonna tell you what you need
to know hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you like to 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. So let's
talk about cortisol in the stress response so first there's two questions
what is stress and what does core is all do once we understand this then a lot of
things are gonna fall in place what is stress we could answer that a thousand
different ways but let's just really look at the basics stress is not a bad
thing stress is what keeps us alive if we
didn't have stress the body would have no reason to respond or really do
anything so exercise is stress just walking gravity is stress it makes us
function but then there's bad stress then there's stress that becomes chronic
that wears us down and that's the kind we're gonna talk about so stress is
anything that the body has to respond to anything that's a challenge that the
body has to do something to to cope to adapt is a form of stress it's also
known as fight/flight so if you have a tiger coming at you if you have a
grizzly bear if you have a Mack truck coming at you
you need to move quickly that's a fight/flight situation and your body
responds with a stress response what his cortisol have to do with that well when
your body has to respond with a fierce activity like run the hardest you can
climb a tree fight what's the first thing you're going to need its energy
your body has to produce energy to get out of that bind and what's the fastest
way to produce energy it is sugar it's blood sugar so as soon as you have a
stress response your body is gonna try to find ways to raise that blood sugar
so that you can produce energy to save your life
that is the prime a function of cortisol the body makes
cortisol to raise blood sugar because in a stress response we need more energy
and once the body does that there's a few more things that happens as a result
of cortisol cortisol is also concerned the stress response is concerned with
survival in the moment so healing fixing stuff down the road is not a big deal
it's not high on the list of priorities so inflammation healing the first
response in healing is inflammation and the body says no let's do that later
so cortisol is anti-inflammatory cortisol works to down-regulate
that part of the immune system that handles inflammation and at the same
time if the body is going to raise the sugar if the body's gonna try to make
more sugar where does it get it well it gets it from protein primarily it's the
second fastest way to get energy because protein can be converted into glucose
so cortisol acts to break down protein in an attempt to raise blood sugar so
again you're saying well that seems awfully stupid protein and muscle that's
a good thing right well if you have to save your life then you worry more about
saving a life in this moment because you can always rebuild the protein tomorrow
or next year so the stress response is all about survival in the moment and
that's what cortisol is about also so even though these things may seem
destructive they will save your life in the moment that's what the stress
response is all about what happens then if the sugar is unstable so this is one
people talk about stress but they usually think about emotional stress and
they don't so often think about the physiological response what are some of
the other things that can invoke this response so let's look at blood sugar
if we eat a lot of carbs if we eat a lot of processed foods then we're gonna have
a blood sugar rollercoaster so the body the brain likes to keep the blood sugar
right smack in the middle of this blue zone here but if you eat lots of carbs
you're gonna go up the body's gonna make a bunch of insulin and it's gonna come
crashing down you get what's called reactive hypoglycemia what happens when
the blood sugar is too low you get cranky
you get cravings you get irritable you lose focus that's not a nice place to be
so the body says oh let's raise let's generate some blood sugar how does it do
that it does it with cortisol so every time that your blood sugar drops below
ideal your body is gonna make more cortisol and what does that mean what's
the significance of that it means every time you have low blood sugar you are
creating stress you are in a high stress mode chemically you're getting all of
the destructive consequences of a stress response simply by having low blood
sugar and that low blood sugar is only a result of that high blood sugar in the
beginning so stabilizing blood sugar is one of the most critical things that we
can do to reduce the stress response and reduce the cortisol so what do we do
about this well - how do we balance this system naturally you adopt a diet of
whole food whole natural food the way nature made them the way we've been
eating them for hundreds of thousands of years which means you reduce the car if
you have a lot of inflammation if you have a lot of sugar problems then look
into keto and we got some videos on that here where you can learn more about a
extremely powerful I wouldn't call it extreme because it's still a very
natural and pleasant way of eating but it's extremely powerful way of reversing
inflammation and insulin resistance and you can also do breathing exercises
because a lot of this stress is also emotional one of the most damaging forms
of stress is when we feel we have to be on the go all the time all the time all
the time we have this racing thoughts in our minds that just won't shut off we'd
give anything for just a break well breathing and meditation can give
you that break you can you can reset that stress response in a 5 or 10 minute
session of breathing and meditation you notice how you get cravings that are
toast totally out of control when your blood sugar drops that's that's a
cortisol issue it's the cortisol it gives you those cravings etc if you have
any questions let me know if you have any comments let me know I'll be more
than happy to try to discuss this either in the question section or with a new
video please share this video because it's all about health it's all about
getting the population of the world healthy so that we can stop having all
these degenerative diseases we can learn how the body works and start working the
right way again thank you so much for watching