348: Cortisol and Stress in Midlife with Keri Glassman

I talk about these eight pillars of a nutritious life and how they all work together physiologically and behaviorally. And from the very beginning, you know, going back 20 plus years, even when I started my nutrition practice, I knew I didn't want to just talk about food. And I, as I always say, it's not all about the food.

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill and I help women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond redefine, rebrand and laugh with aging. Welcome to Midlife Conversations. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated information that is relevant in this point of our lives now and break it down simply with actionable steps you can implement to level up your life. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring people living their best midlife years. Now on this show, I cover topics about our shifting hormones, weight struggles, our mood and focus changes, raising teenagers, our relationships, career changes, beauty, and more. If you are new here, I encourage you go back and listen from episode one, when this podcast was previously called Listen up for the Full transformative Experience.

I can't wait to jump into this midlife conversation with Keri Glassman. Not only is she one of my closest friends, but she is an rdn. She's a registered dietitian, but she's more importantly, a celebrity nutritionist. She is the founder of Nutritious Life Studios. She has helped countless people change their lives. She's helped people learn to help others change their lives. She's incredible. If you've ever watched any of the talk shows or any of the big shows where they have their celebrity, celebrity nutritionist on, it's always Carrie. She's been incredible. We've been good friends for years. And I'm not interviewing her specifically about nutrition today or how she built her amazing empire or how she got on all the shows, although we could have lots of interviews about all those things. I wanted to interview her today, midlife woman to midlife woman, about stress and cortisol and what it can create in our bodies and what we can do about it. So thank you so much, Carrie. I'm so excited to jump into this conversation.

Oh, I'm so excited to be chatting with you as always. Always fun to chat with you, but especially fun to chat with you about a great midlife topic.

Yes, yes. So I want to.

Let's.

First of all, why did cortisol become an interest to you?

Like, where.

Where did this come from? What were you seeing with yourself?

So, as you know, at, you know, my, my company, Nutritious Life, I talk about these Eight pillars of a nutritious life and how they all work together physiologically and behaviorally. And from the very beginning, you know, going back 20 plus years, even when I started my nutrition practice, I knew I didn't want to just talk about food. And I, as I always say, it's not all about the food. Eat Empowered is the pillar of a nutritious life that focus on food. But then there's these other pillars, which one is even love More, which is the relationship and the connection pillar. And then another one of the pillars is stress less. So stress has always been an interest in terms of how it works together physiologically and behaviorally with all of these other pillars, like what you, you know, how you hydrate, how you're exercising, how you're sleeping. Sleep Deep is another pillar. So stress has always been an interest as far as something that I've talked about in my practice, in my books and everything I teach and educate is again, how these pillars, including stress, work together with the other pillars in a positive way or in a negative way. And so I've always been really interested in stress and then personally. So stress, I always say, has been the pillar that I've probably had the most difficulty with something that I've, I've always, I've naturally been a high stress, intense person for who I am. You know, I joke that or I don't joke. This is the, this is the truth. It's not a joke. But I joke about it that in high school when we used to do, way back when, they would give superlatives, that's probably not even allowed anymore, but they would give superlatives to the seniors at graduation. One of my superlatives was the most stressed out. Right. And so it's so ironic. Right.

Badge of honor, right?

Exactly. That stress less is part of a nutritious life. But I think again, I've always recognized that and I've known it about myself and I've tried to work on it, but it's definitely been the most difficult pillar of a nutritious life to kind of just, I guess, manage, grab hold of.

Yeah.

But also really acknowledge the. I don't want to say I haven't acknowledged the power. I've always acknowledged the power for others. But I would say if I'm being honest about myself, I've pushed it aside a little bit and haven't probably tried to manage it and deal with it as much as maybe I focused on eating empowered, drinking because it's something we can do.

It feels like it's not something we can do to fix like eating, working out. It's like a checklist. You can do this. I want to ask you about this because so we. I always heard my whole life, like, you don't want to stress, don't calm down, don't stress. Stress makes you sick. Like stress raises cortisol. Cortisol makes belly fat. Like, I'd hear these general things, but I never really understood fully what they mean. As I've gotten into my 50s, I'm learning this a lot more based on my own labs, my own conversations, and learning from more people like you. I want to take a step back for people that don't even know what cortisol is or stress or what's really. Can you give us kind of like a little basic one on one about what that even is and what that creates stress and.

Absolutely. So first of all, actually, I want to just say one thing about cortisol because I agree with you. Most people think of cortisol as cortisol, the stress hormone. I have to manage my cortisol, cortisol, belly fat. And I'd say that's where the knowledge generally ends for most people. So I think you're spot on with that. And I want to tell people to start with that, first of all, cortisol isn't a bad thing. Cortisol is actually a good thing for the most part when it's controlled properly like anything else, when it's out of control. So when there's too much of it or when there's too little of it, or when the rhythm of it, which we'll get into is off, that's a negative thing. But cortisol, when it's doing the job it's supposed to do, is really pretty magical. And something that hat plays a really big role in all of our lives and how we function and our overall health. So I just want to mention that. So again, so cortisol gets a bad rap, but. And it is the primary stress hormone. But remember, stress isn't all bad.

So when do we want that? Like when do we want cortisol to work?

Right. Okay. So. Well, there's a couple, couple different places, right? So the two big ones. So cortisol surges, right. Cortisol is going to raise when you're in that fight or flight situation, right? So people know that fight or flight. Again, the, you know, the, the classic example is the, you know, the bear running, the bear chasing you. You perceive you're, there's danger, you run. So the reason cortisol is doing something good. There is. What happens is. And I'll actually, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go into the details for just a second of actually what happens there. But your brain, okay, so the hypothalamus signals the pituitary gland to release a hormone. And for those of you that don't want to stick with this, don't worry, you can ignore the details here. But just to get into the details for one moment. So your hypothalamus is going to signal the pituitary gland, which is going to release a hormone called adrenocorticotropic hormone. So acth, that is then going to signal the adrenals and the adrenal. Your, your adrenal gland, which sits on top of the kidneys. Right. That the adrenals are going to then release cortisol. They're also going to release adrenaline. Okay, so. And that's what, so what's going to happen?

We feel like we've had too much caffeine when you feel that way.

Exactly. So now let's go back to the bear example for a moment. So a bear is chasing after you. Or let's give a more modern example. All of a sudden, motorcycles chasing after you. Yeah. A motorcycle. Or you're stuck behind somebody's running after you. Garbage truck. You're stuck behind a garbage truck and you can't traffic, and you have to be somewhere in five minutes and you're like, I gotta get there. You know what I mean? So, so whatever that is, whether it's real, whether it's real danger or it's perceived danger, all of a sudden, you know, cortisol is released, adrenaline is released. So what happens? Your, your blood pressure increases. Right? So your blood pressure increases. That's when all of a sudden you start to, you know, your blood pressure increases. You have that fast breathing. You, you know, you can, you kind of become like tunnel vision, focused on what's going on, your dig down because you need to be focused on this, you know, fight or flight. Digestion is that part of the digest and rest part of your nervous system. And that slows down. Okay, so then, you know, you might be sweating again, I already mentioned the high blood pressure. But also what happens is you mobilize. Your liver converts glycogen to glucose. So it's mobilizing, it's mobilizing glucose for energy. So you have energy to run from that bear. Okay, so that's what's happening when we're stressed. So in, in a sense, It's a good thing in the sense that you're able to deal with that danger, you're able to run from that bear, you're able to act quick. It's fight or flight. You're able, your body adjusts and can handle that situation. So that's when that's, that's a good thing. Right? Right.

The other thing, the other time it's a good thing is that what it does for us is again, when it's in the right amounts is that it contributes to everything from. It helps improve our energy, it helps give us. It acts as an anti inflammatory, it helps with memory, it helps with managing our blood sugar, it helps with managing our blood pressure, it helps decrease pain, it helps with motivation, it helps with our immune system. So think like brain function.

Yeah.

Blood sugar balance.

How does it help with. Maybe this was too detailed but like how does it help with blood sugar? Because for me I've noticed like from a monitor, it can, it raises your blood sugar but it doesn't lower cortisol. So how did. So is that.

Well, it's not managing it because think about when you're not over, when it plays the role in it because it's going to release too much when it's like constantly being released. So it's part of the managing of it all at all. It's all working sort of, you know, in concert. Right. Okay. Okay. So those are two times that. Those are two, two scenarios where it's good when you're in that fight or flight situation. And then when you're producing the right amount at the right times, it's beneficial in terms of all those things I just mentioned, energy and inflammation, memory, all that. So which brings up another point about that it's important in terms of when you're. It's not about necessarily it being. Well, it is. It's about the amount of cortisol you have, but it's also about the rhythm of it.

Okay.

So it's. Many people think, oh, I got to, I have to manage my stress because I have to. My cortisols, you know, too high. But oftentimes it's not even that it's maybe too high, it's that it might be out of whack we want. And that's one thing that I always bring up to people is it's not just, oh, lower cortisol, lower cortisol. It's managing your cortisol in terms of the rhythm that it has. So cortisol works sort of opposite to melatonin, which Most people know of as being a sleep, the sleep hormone. So cortisol, when you're producing the right amount and you have this good rhythm of it.

It'S going to be higher in the morning. So it's going to spike in the morning after you wake, a couple hours after you wake. And then it continues to decrease at night and lowers again as you're starting to go to sleep and you don't need as much. Again, like I said, it has to do with energy. It's going down and then you sleep and then hopefully again it rises in the morning. So it has this peak a couple hours after you wake up and then you want it to go down. So it's not just the amount of cortisol, it's when you're producing your cortisol. So that's also something we want to think about. So when. So that's. So those are the. But those are the positives about.

Yeah, so let me ask you a question there on that. So a lot of people use caffeine and a lot of people use melatonin to. I'm assuming they probably don't realize they have their cortisols backwards or it's not working correctly. And so they're using caffeine to wake up or perk up or when it's dropping, like they're supposed to wake up in the morning and it's not. So they do that and then they can't fall asleep so they're using melatonin. Is that working? What is that doing to our own cortisol production?

Yeah, great question. So with caffeine, and this is something that I've worked on a lot because I would say like coffee is something I've always loved. It's always been a part of my diet. I've never abused it dramatically in terms of the amount that I have. And I try to have like really good high quality organic fair trade coffee. And I, you know, very careful with what I add into it. However, I was always having it first thing in the morning and so always was part of my real early morning routine. And so what caffeine does is that can also spike your cortisol. So if you're trying to balance your cortisol and you really want to wait to have that caffeine because it's going to increase your cortisol slightly. So I. And then, so if you wait to have it, you're going to have your kind of natural spike and it's in or you're going to be spiking it's just, it's more in rhythm with, with your natural spike as opposed to making it raise right there when you wake up, when you it. Because it's going to rise because you.

Want it to gradually go. And instead of when you're injecting the caffeine, it's like forcing it up. So then you're disrupting what was already going to naturally happen.

Right. And so it's better to wait. And then what happens is if you stick, then it's helping you kind of have that natural curve. And when you, when you, when you have that natural curve, what also happens is then you have that natural, the drop hopefully like you're trying to get into this rhythm. I keep doing this like little like curve here. You try to get into that rhythm and then that will be helpful in terms of your energy later in the day too because again, slow decline versus it's balance. It's this balance of it versus this like shot of it. And then, oh wait, and then another shot and then it's, it's more natural.

I just thought of this and maybe this is completely unrelated, but I was thinking about dopamine and people that are dopamine driven. And not everyone listening is that. But I know you and I definitely are that ADD kind of dopamine driven people. I'm wondering if people that are dopamine driven if. Because you're constantly looking for that next like spike that kind of. Does that work with cortisol too? Does that affect how we're naturally producing it?

You know, I don't. Wow, that's a good, that's. That's interesting. I mean here, here's my, sort of my gut reaction response without having Dot, you know, diving deep into that is that our bodies are all work. Everything's working in concert. Right. Everything's working in concert there. So I don't know the exact.

Yeah. Connection there, but it probably is somehow connected on that.

But there's, yeah, there's, there's, there's is, it's all, it's all working together.

Yeah.

Right. So when you have though that, when you have caffeine and you are getting that spike, you're kind of, you're giving yourself sort of that artificial little like boost of it. But caffeine has a lot of wonderful benefits. It's just a matter of learning the timing that you should have it, how sensitive your body is to it. So how much, what time, how sensitive you are to it. You know, so there's a lot of other factors with it. So I'm not saying, you know, everybody, give up your coffee if you want to balance your cortisol levels, but you might have to figure out the timing, the, you know, all of that and how much. And, and especially you probably don't want to have it after about, you know, 2pm for most people, and you don't want to obviously overdo it. And, you know, you know, so that, that, that you asked about that, but.

Then you also asked about melatonin.

Melatonin. So melatonin I'm not really a fan of, for people because it is a hormone. We don't know how much we're getting in a lot of the supplements that you can just easily buy over the counter. I think people abuse it. They often take it right before bed. And really you're supposed to take it about an hour and a half before bed if you're going to use it to help with that natural rhythm. I think it's helpful when you're trying to balance your melatonin, your natural circadian rhythm. So again, you've got your cortisol and your melatonin are part of that circadian rhythm. When you're trying to balance it, like from jet lag or from being possibly really thrown off. I think that it can be helpful to like, reset your circadian rhythm, but I don't like people to take it regularly because I think again, for various reasons, you don't really know what you're getting. It's a hormone. It can throw. It's just, I think it's being abused.

And I think the opposite also would be cortisol. So I would imagine it would also create spikes in your cortisol as a rebound.

Right. Well, and it can. And another thing also, actually it's even been shown to affect, like, fertility with, with young women. It can affect that. So there's like, there's a lot of reasons that I, I just am like, you know what? I don't like people to. People always think like, oh, melatonin, let me. It's. But it's a, It's a serious hormone.

How do you know if you have a cortisol problem? If someone's listening, going, I think this might be. And how. What do they do about it? What's the first step like on accurately figuring this out? And then what do you do?

Okay, so that's a fabulous question. So I think most people have a cortisol problem, to be honest. Most people have a little bit of a cortisol problem, especially people that we're talking to. Right now, midlife, we've got lots of different stresses. You might have aging parents, you might have dealing with finances. You might be building or selling a business or trying to keep a business alive or starting a new business or starting another career. Teenagers, like you just mentioned, there's so many reasons to have things affecting our stress. So I think a lot of people have that. But also I think.

I think that one thing I want to mention about this is most of the things I tell people to do, to manage their cortisol or to get it back into rhythm, I want you to do anyway. So it's almost like how I was talking about stress less is part of a nutritious life and is a pillar of a nutritious life. It's something we should all be focused on anyway. So whether you think you have a cortisol problem or not, if you're midlife and you're worried about your health and you're thinking about maximizing your health and preventing disease going forward, you should be focused on it and you should be doubling down on it. Again, like I said, for so long, I kind of like it was the one that I struggled with the most. So I kind of pushed to the side a little bit, A little bit more than I should have. And, you know, dealing with all things throughout my life, I think it kind of. I hit a wall with it a little bit. So what I noticed and what I think many people notice is. Okay, so you asked, like, what people might notice. Sorry, sorry. It took me a while to get back to that question. I wanted to give you that background. There was that weight gain, specifically in the midsection, but often weight gain, like I said, you're mobilizing this glucose, you're mobilizing sugar, and then you're often holding on to that. You're holding on to weight in the midsection because also this. This whole cascade of hormones, what happens when you're stressed, it also increases ghrelin, your hunger hormone. So you also are hungrier. And then also think about when you're stressed, even if you're not hungrier, what happens? You often eat emotionally, so weight in the midsection for various reasons. Brain fog. Like I said, when cortisol is nice and balanced in the right amount at the right time, it's going to help you to be focused, and it's going to help for all those reasons. Inflammation. Maybe your inflammation markers are high.

Pain, you might feel achy. Pain, you might just not feel as good.

Your immune system might be low. Maybe you're getting Colds, you might be irritable. Think stress, anxious. Irritable. I'd say that's probably one of the biggest ones. Just a little more stressed and irritable and anxious.

This is so interesting because all these things you described.

Yeah.

Are signs of perimenopause. They're signs of menopause. They're signs of just aging in general. They're signs of hormone, massive hormone swings. There are signs of being deficient of estrogen or testosterone or progesterone. So it's so confusing. It's like, how do you know what the thing is?

So again, great point and great question. And I think that's why it is really confusing. And I think that's why a lot of people sort of either blow it off, like, oh, this is just aging, or, oh, this is just, you know, perimenopause. Or they, yeah, they blow it off to various things. Or this is just. I'm really stressed in life right now. All these things going on, they just, they, they, they write it off, which to some extent they're right. It's part of it sometimes is part of aging in the stage of life you're in. But that doesn't mean that you can't fix it. And that doesn't mean that you can't dive into it. And that's why I was saying that who you are, you want to focus on managing cortisol because it's going to, even if there isn't a big problem right now, managing it properly, it's like maximizing your health. You can maximize your health. Right. But one last thing I just want to mention on this, what you just mentioned, though you could think it's perimenopause, that was one of the reasons I had my cortisol tested was because I was thinking, oh, I must be like deep in perimenopause right now. My hormones are still so out of whack. I'm so irritable. I've been getting exhaust more exhausted than I ever have in my life in like that 3, 4 o' clock period, which a lot of people get tired then. And that can be normal to some extent. But like, there's various reasons for it. It's not as cortisol, but I was noticing that just a little more, a little more irritable than normal. Yeah. And my, and I tested and my doctor's like, you're not, you're just at the very beginning of perimenopause. Like the very beginning. But your cortisol levels, you know, how I talked about that curve that goes like that, up and then down. Mine is just flat in the morning. It is flat. And that's what happens from. It's probably just from all these years of pumping out cortisol. Pumping out cortisol. Not bears tracing. Yeah. But from what so many people are.

Or yeah.

An email, someone honking their horn at you.

Text message.

Yeah. Your kids texting you at the same time. You know, you got to hop on like a call with your boss, like whatever it might be from years of things like that. So. But regardless then this is. But regardless if I knew that flatline and listen, there's great ways to test. You can test. You can do, you know, a urine, a dried urine test. You can do a saliva test. There's ways to test. And they're not actually. Most of these types of tests aren't actually aren't that expensive.

I'm a huge fan of a Dutch test, which is the one I know you did too.

Which. So yeah.

So I feel when people go and get their blood tested, what you really should be countering with something else too, like a Dutch test, because. So blood will show kind of. It will just show what's in your blood, but a Dutch will show how you're metabolizing it. So it gives you even more data. And it's so good to cross reference because sometimes blood will show something totally normal and then you see something totally different on your urine or vice versa. So it's really important to do both. Okay, I've got kind of like some four final wrap up questions that will sort of tie this all in a nice little bow. Number one, what do you want? Women and men. Because men can deal with this too. Yeah, mostly women on. They're listening to this. What do you want them to decide for them about cortisol right now?

So I want them to decide that regardless if they go and get it tested or not, they're going to focus on managing it right now going forward. Because even whether you have a big problem now or a little problem or no problem, let's prevent any problem in the future because it's going. Like I said, cortisol plays a role in so many aspects of your overall health that if you manage it right now, you're setting yourself up for so much success going forward. And the things that I tell you to do, to manage it are going to benefit you in a variety of ways.

Got it? Okay. What is your vision for people and your own health once this is under control?

I want people to feel when they wake up naturally, if possible. Naturally, feeling really well rested and energetic. Feeling really energetic and excited to start the day. Because again, when your cortisol is in the right, you know, in the right balance, you're going to. And at the right levels, you're going to not only feel energetic in the morning, you're going to feel motivated, you're going to be clear and have good cognitive function. So that's what I want. And women, especially at our age, I want women of this age to feel motivated and excited and energetic and not depleted.

So good. Okay, if you. I know this is hard because we. There's a whole bunch of information here, but if you were going to just give people listening three actions right now, like I want you to do these three things, what would you say?

Okay, so I would say in terms of maximizing your, your cortisol levels, there's a lot, there's many things you can do and we can even have that as a little add on here. But I'll give you three things to do.

One.

And this is something you've probably been told a million times throughout your life, but you have to double down on it. Seriously is really focus on that sleep in a very serious way. Like give yourself that set bed.

I notice you have an aura ring on like I wear too.

So yeah, get rid of that, get rid of that. You know, the blue lights before bed. Maybe, you know, add in something like magnesium before bed. Do what, you know, make sure that it's really dark in your bedroom. Create a really good sleep hygiene routine and, and you might have to tweak it and it might take a little time to, to, to find what's right for you. Yeah, but you have to double down on it as much as you used to double down on your, on exercise in your 20s. We used to go crazy with exercise. Yeah, yeah, do that crazy with your sleep because that is going to have a huge effect on balancing all this. Okay, so that's one thing. The next thing is when it comes to exercise, if you've been doing like, and I love a good hit class, you know that. But if you've been going, you know, trying to do this, so many women go extreme dieting and intense exercise. Because that worked for me in my 20s. It's the opposite right now. Okay, you need to go hardcore exercise. But the right type, you might need more yoga, you might need more walks versus running. So I would really take a look at your exercise. I still do HIIT classes, but I try to do one a week. And then I do more yoga and more long walks versus running. So things that are going to be. Because exercise itself can increase stress and can be doing the opposite for you. So that's something to do. And then, oh, there's so many more, but I'll just pick one.

Well, I'll say the, I guess the obvious one here and then there are a lot more which I can add on later. Manage your stress. But, but again that sounds trite, like sleep deep, you know, but really do it. Like don't just say, oh, okay, I know I'm supposed to like manage my stress. Create some sort of a routine that you're going to do every day to do it, whether it's a 10 minute meditation in the morning and one in the afternoon, whether it's taking, you know, 10 minutes in your late afternoon to go outside and have, and get into nature and do deep breathing, do at least one thing every single day that you're truly doing to manage your stress that you really know is really taking it, taking it down a notch so you're not kind of at like this revved pace all day long. And again, it sounds trite but the, but the truth, the truth is here is that most people have heard these things, but they haven't really. Like I said again, I'll say this just again, they haven't really doubled down on it. They haven't really done it consistently.

No, it's like we say we know we're supposed to, but we're not actually doing it. So it's like it's not just doing it once. It's like not just doing a class. It's like really committing it in your schedule like it's a priority, like an appointment, like anything else, which is another.

Final, actual add in that one final point. Consistency is huge with all of this. You're not going to see results in a week, you're not going to see results in maybe two weeks or even three weeks. It might take six weeks, it might take a little while to get into the student. But all of a sudden you're going to be like, wow, these little consistent behaviors are really making a huge difference. And I, and yeah, and that's the time like I would then go retest, go retest if you've tested and if you haven't tested, maybe you're just feeling better and you don't even need to go test, you know, like.

Yeah.

So.

Yep. And then my final question, if you were to look at the next chapter of Cortisol and Women and Midlife like, If it was 10 years from now and next chapter and that's. That's kind of happened, what would you like to see?

You mean in terms of. What do you mean in terms of, like, what women will be, how they'll. Like, what would you. What do you.

What's your vision for cortisol in the next chapter of people's lives? Like, like, you've, You've mentioned that we're dealing with it always, but it's really affecting us in midlife. In midlife, like, if people are applying this and making these changes, like, what do you see possible?

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I wasn't sure if you meant, like, where's the research going with cortisol in the next 10 years?

That could be part of it. But more, more importantly, like, what do you.

What.

Knowing, learning what you've learned and seeing what's possible. What would you like to see?

Yeah, well, what. Well, what I think, like, it's kind of the same as that first question you asked me is like, how do I want. How do I want women to feel, right? And I want people to feel energetic and more alert. So what I would say is if you, if you focus on this and you're managing all of this, I'd say there's probably. It could be everything from less. I mean, when you're managing even inflammation, right? So then your. Your. Your body is less inflamed, there's less risk of neuro, neuronal degeneration, there's less risk of cancer, there's less risk of heart disease, there' risk of diabetes. So the benefits that can be reaped from managing your cortisol are endless. I mean, so I guess I would say that is if I have to give. Like, one thing is, I would say I would love for women to get a hold of this so that they then really increase their chances of preventing disease and maximizing thriving.

So good. Thank you so much, Carrie. This has been amazing.

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