What is Cortisol? How Cortisol Levels Impact Your Health. HD

What is Cortisol? How do Cortisol levels impact your health? Learn everything you need to know! (FREE resources included below...) ⏬ Dr. Sarah Bennett, Co-Founder & Lead Practitioner​ of Natural Med Doc, explains what cortisol is and how it impacts your life. ➡️ What is Cortisol? What Does it Impact? Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone released from the adrenal glands, primarily known as the body’s main stress hormone, but also influences energy, sleep, bone formation, immune function, body fat percentage, inflammation, and insulin sensitivity. Cortisol naturally fluctuates daily, spiking in the morning to help you wake up, and gradually fall throughout the day to help you fall asleep at night. In times of stress, this hormone will spike up to increase alertness and stimulate our fight or flight state. ➡️ Cotrisol Imbalance Stress is a daily event in modern-day society. Over time, chronic stress ( being late to work, traffic, the kids, the husband.. ) alters healthy cortisol production, causing what is known as HPA axis dysfunction, or more commonly adrenal fatigue. ➡️ What is HPA Axis Dysfunction First off what is the HPA axis? HPA stands for the hypothalamus-pituitary- adrenal. This is the area in which the brain perceives stress, daylight, etc. and regulates your cortisol production. ➡️ During stress, cortisol spikes up. During chronic stress, cortisol levels begin to ride high consistently. Much like insulin resistance the brain stops responding appropriately. This level is down-regulated less and less. During this time you may experience: ✔️ Anxiety and/or irritability ✔️ Weight gain ✔️ Poor concentration ✔️ Headaches ✔️ Insomnia ✔️ Thinning hair and/or stretch marks ✔️ Decreased libido ➡️ Chronic Stress & Adrenal Gland Explained I like to think of the adrenal gland as a sponge. In a perfect world, cortisol is produced at a higher level in the morning helping you wake up and then will fall gradually throughout the day helping you to fall asleep at night. When you go to sleep you still have a little in the sponge but then refill while resting to have a full sponge in the morning. During chronic stress, the signal from the brain asking for cortisol is much higher. This causes spikes and cortisol and drains the sponge much faster. By the end of the night the sponge is empty and you begin to refill that sponge less and less.. Causing you to wake with less cortisol, groggy and needing coffee. Over time, you start to have a drop in cortisol in mid-afternoon, causing you energy to crash. But your brain still wants more cortisol. So when you go to bed at night and you start refilling the sponge, you still have to meet that signal from the brain asking for more cortisol.. So next thing you know cortisol spikes at 3AM and you are left lying there awake and unable to go back to sleep. ➡️ HPA axis dysfunction, or adrenal fatigue Caused by the example above which can create: ✔️Fatigued ✔️Insomnia