Side Effects of Chronic Cortisol Production

Almost every cell in your body has a cortisol receptor. The nervous system, the immune system, the cardiovascular system, the respiratory, reproductive, musculoskeletal, the skin. And so we got to think about, how does cortisol affect these systems? What is it saying to it? One of the most frustrating things that women experience is cortisol contributing to their weight gain. Because what happens is when you have that cortisol awakening response in the morning, your body says, oh, we're going to get out of bed, we're going to start doing stuff. We need to have enough blood sugar to go do those things. And so if your blood sugar is low, especially if you're not making ketones, your body will actually ask your liver to put sugar into your bloodstream so you can increase your blood sugar from that cortisol response. And that's a normal, healthy way of functioning in the morning. But if you are making Cortisol, say at 4 o' clock in the afternoon, because you are fed up with the client at work, that's driving you crazy, or the kids that you're watching at daycare, whatever your job is, that can also put sugar into your bloodstream. That can also cause your blood sugar to be elevated. And then insulin has to come out and do something with it. And if you don't actually run around and use up all that sugar that you just got for that stressed out rush, then your body has to store it as fat. And that's what insulin does. And so, unfortunately, I see a lot of women get into this scenario where they're just stressed out all day long, all day long. They might not be eating anything, but man are they stressed. And so their blood sugar's up, it's down, it's up, it's down, and then it's staying up, staying up, staying up. And before you know it, your average blood sugar is continually elevated or you're developing insulin resistance. And it's all from the stress that's not being managed, that's being ignored, or, or just fed into. So that's a really important point. I know that we all think we can handle our stress, but it's not about if you can mentally tolerate it. It's not a sign of weakness. What's happening is a physiological response that's driving weight gain. And if you want to lose weight, you gotta get that stress under control. The other thing, chronic cortisol production suppresses the immune system. So if your immune system is suppressed, it can't fight off things that are coming in from the outside environment. I See this a ton. When I do stool testing, people will have really low IGA levels in their gut lining. IGA is one of the branches of your immune system. That is your first line defense at preventing bad stuff from getting into your body that's coming in through your food and through your sinuses and everything else. And so if you have that weakened immune system, you're more likely to get sick, often have slower healing, like a cut could take forever to heal, or if you have surgery, have complications. It's really important for you to know what kind of inflammation is happening in my body. And there's ways that we can test that and figure all of those pieces out, because that kind of stuff, you don't necessarily feel those are the silent killers. That's what's contributing to the heart disease and slowly sneaking up on you and eventually, you know, showing up as dementia and things like that. So that kind of stuff, you just have to test for your blood pressure. That is a really important sign. People are always like, oh, yeah, I have the white coat syndrome. I go to the doctor's office and my blood pressure goes up. Well, imagine if that was happening chronically when you have too much cortisol. Chronically, it does harden your arteries. It causes your heart to work harder, and you get hypertension. Essentially. The other spectrum of that is if you wipe out your adrenals, say you're stressed for like, five years. You know, you're losing your job, you're going through a divorce, your. Your parent passes away, like all these major events, and eventually your adrenals say, we're not doing this anymore. They downregulate, they no longer produce cortisol, and you're in adrenal fatigue, so to speak. That feels like low blood pressure. That's dizziness. And if it goes on long enough and becomes bad enough, that can be POT syndrome, and it's postural hypertension issues. And if you look back on the chart that I shared with you, like the first column down from cholesterol, makes aldosterone. Aldosterone is our blood pressure hormone. We actually have a hormone that regulates our blood pressure, and it does this through the kidney by shifting how much potassium and sodium gets reabsorbed or removed into the urine. And if you are making so much cortisol all of the time, you are robbing your body's ability to effectively manage the aldosterone. And then when everything gets downregulated in your brain, you make less acth, and ACTH talks and makes cortisol and aldosterone so this is the last situation I want for anybody. It breaks my heart when I see patients in this scenario because it takes a long time to recover. You know, it took you 5, 10 years to get there. It's going to take you a long time to recover. But just know that that could be a first sign of something really bad happening. I literally passed out, I think four years ago now or maybe five at this point. I went to my regular doctor. He had no idea why. He was like, oh, I think it was a one time fluke. Don't worry about it. And I did this test and I was flatlined. My adrenals were done. They were like, we're not functioning anymore. And so I had to make some major shifts. So events you, you got to get this testing done. The sodium and potassium that's regulating all your adrenals and your kidneys. That's why I put the 2 in the 2 10, 20, 30 rule. It's super important for you to get sodium and potassium in with every meal. And our soil is so depleted that we're not even getting it in the vegetables like we are supposed to. So you've got to get that salt in there with your meals, okay?