How to Balance Cortisol Levels

Cortisol is often referred to as the stress hormone. Fitness guru Jillian Michaels and The Doctors explain how to keep cortisol levels in check.

How to Balance Cortisol Levels Dr. Travis Stork: And we’re going to go through some steps -- Jillian Michaels: Yes. Dr. Travis Stork: To help control our hormones. Jillian Michaels: Right. Dr. Travis Stork: Hormones are good. We’re going to talk about three in particular. First one is cortisol. It is your chronic stress hormone. It is part of fight or flight response but more of a chronic one. It does give you energy. It actually helps control your blood sugar, increases your blood sugar level the opposite of what insulin does. We need it but what is the problem when your cortisol is out of whack? it increases your blood pressure, it increases your level of stress, it increases the fat around your mid-section something called visual fat. That hugs all your internal organs. What does more fat in your mid-section do? It causes you to get more cortisol, so it gets out of whack. If you look at this animation, cortisol is something produced in your adrenal glands. It sits right above in your kidneys and the problem with cortisol is we need it but too much of it as you see in this animation literally causes your body to get out of a “homeostasis” and at least a lot of the metabolic syndromes that we deal with today, and it’s vicious cycle. But Jillian, we can take steps to control cortisol. Jillian Michaels: Yes, definitely. Well a big part of it is how you’re eating and how you’re living, so make sure that you get enough sleep. Don’t overdo it on the caffeine. While caffeine can boost metabolism, overdoing it going over say 400 milligrams a day can release excess cortisols. You want to be really moderate with that. Don’t drink -- I want to say too much but quite honestly alcohol. It really throws all your hormones out of whack not just cortisol but even if we’re about to move on to estrogen next, I’m jumping ahead. Try to alcohols as much as possible and Vitamin C actually inhibits the body’s ability to produce cortisol. So try to keep enough Vitamin C citrus in your diet. Dr. Travis Stork: It’s part of your foods again. Jillian Michaels: Absolutely, yeah. Dr. Travis Stork: So you want Vitamin C enriched foods things like oranges, broccoli, so many great foods that help keep your cortisol levels on check.