What cortisol is meant to do
Cortisol comes out of your adrenal glands and it is not the enemy. It is what gets you out of bed.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576And cortisol sort of follows what we call a circadian rhythm during the day. So high in the morning starts to level off, and then by nighttime, or at least it should be down to very low levels because your body's getting ready to go to sleep.
It lifts your blood pressure and your blood sugar in the morning on purpose. That is the design. The whole problem is the hormone staying up when the day is over.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576So cortisol again is on your side, guys, until it's not.
Cause one, a stress signal that never stops
His picture for this is a lion. If a lion is chasing you, cortisol floods in, and you run. Useful. The catch is what your body counts as a lion.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Your body doesn't differentiate that it just secretes high levels of cortisol to keep you in the fight or flight.
Family dynamics, relationships, money worry, the news. None of it is a lion, and your adrenals answer all of it the same way. And the stress does not stop at bedtime any more.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576And we live in a cortisol, crazy world, and a lot of that is 24 hour media, 24 hour social media, 24 hour stress.
There is a second cost he flags in the same breath. Fight or flight is not a resting state.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576If you're in the fight or flight, you're not resting or digesting.
Cause two, sleep you never recover
Ask him to rank the causes and he does not hesitate.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Well, the number one issue with cortisol, the number one problem really with cortisol more than anything else is sleep.
And it runs in both directions, which is why it is so hard to break.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Because if your cortisol is high, you're going to have trouble sleeping. If you're having trouble sleeping, your cortisol is high.
The study he was reading on this episode gave him the mechanism.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Cortisol inhibits melatonin.
Melatonin is what puts you under. He is not big on the supplement, he is big on the source: real daylight in your eyes during the day, and a pitch black room at night, which is why he likes a sleep mask. If cortisol is up, he says, you are not taking the melatonin in.
"Stress seems to be on steroids today."
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Cause three, the sugar and stress loop
He puts two things in the same bucket for what they do to your numbers.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Two S's, sugar and stress. Sugar will elevate your blood pressure. Stress elevates your blood pressure, it elevates your blood sugar.
Follow that through and you get the loop he wrote a whole book about. Cortisol raises blood sugar. Blood sugar coming back down takes insulin. Do that all day, every day.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Cortisol is very much involved in insulin resistance.
One practical note he gives in the same passage. Do not take your blood sugar first thing in the morning and panic at the reading. Morning cortisol is supposed to push it up. He sees that test misread constantly.
Sugar in the diet has its own tail: a liver full of fat detoxifies badly, which he ties straight back to sleep. More in it only takes a month of eating sugar to get fatty liver.
Why your doctor has never measured it
This is the part women over 60 find hardest to believe, because the symptoms are loud and every test comes back fine.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576And when it comes to cortisol, unless you have Cushing's or Addison's disease, diseases of the adrenal gland, they don't even measure it.
In his own practice he did measure it, with a urine test, and he says that around 2004 and 2005 it was through the roof on nearly every patient walking in. The signs he watched for were brain fog, belly fat and blood pressure creeping above normal.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576Some of the signs are like brain fog, belly fat, a lot of women, they're eating properly, they're doing everything right and they got belly fat.
Cortisol does not act alone either. It is one of the strings on the thyroid, which is its own article: the thyroid never acts on its own.
What it does to inflammation
He is careful here. He does not say cortisol starts inflammation. He says it makes whatever is burning burn harder.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1576But we know that cortisol pours gasoline on the fire of inflammation.
His view of the root cause sits underneath that, and it is not cortisol. Inflammation is not Houdini, he says. Insulin resistance causes it. Leaky gut causes it. Cortisol arrives with the gasoline.
Common questions
What causes high cortisol in women over 60?
A stress signal that never switches off, and the broken sleep that comes with it. Dr. Martin puts sleep at the top, because high cortisol wrecks sleep and poor sleep raises cortisol, so the two hold each other up.
Will my doctor test my cortisol?
He says not usually. Unless there is a suspected adrenal disease like Cushing's or Addison's, cortisol is not measured at all. In his clinic he used a urine test and found it high in most patients.
Why does high cortisol stop me sleeping?
He points at melatonin. The research he cites has cortisol inhibiting melatonin, the hormone that gets you to sleep. His fix is light, real daylight in the day and a pitch black room at night.
Is belly fat a sign of high cortisol?
He treats it as one of the signs, along with brain fog and blood pressure creeping up, especially in a woman who is eating properly and doing everything right and still carrying it.
Read next: High Cortisol Symptoms In Women Over 60: The Checklist and Cortisol And Belly Fat After 60.
Understand the stress hormone
Cortisol Control Formula is Dr. Martin's daytime formula, made to help calm the stress hormone he says runs the whole show.
60-day money-back guarantee.These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare practitioner before starting a new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition.
