Cortisol and adrenaline are released by the adrenal gland in times of stress. These hormones perform a variety of functions to prepare the body to cope with perceived threats. These hormones have a vital role to serve, but you don’t want them in your system long term. The problem is that we experience a trauma, the “threats” and therefore stress response tend to be constant and ongoing. This causes the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your system to be chronically elevated.

When cortisol and adrenaline are elevated, all hell breaks loose in the body.

• Digestion is inhibited. All the important digestive juices like stomach acid and enzymes are prevented from being released. When that happens, you can’t digest your food. The undigested food continues down the tract, where it feeds the microbes instead of you, causing an imbalance of gut bacteria (more below). As a result, you get bloated and you have indigestion.
• Cortisol creates an unhealthy environment in the gut. Besides the digestion inhibition, stress actually feeds the bad bacteria in your gut, injures the lining of the intestinal wall, and increases inflammation. These three things are the root cause of all gut issues as well as most other health diagnoses in the entire body.
• Cortisol suppresses the immune system, so your body has more difficulty fighting off germs. You will get sick more.
• Cortisol also interferes with sleep.
• Cortisol is made from the same building blocks in the body as other hormones. If the adrenal gland needs to keep producing more and more cortisol, it will steal the building blocks from other hormones. So, your thyroid hormones and sex hormones will be low. This can lead to fatigue, weight gain, digestive problems, hair loss, loss of sex drive, disruption of menses, and more.
• High stress, imbalanced hormones, and gut issues all affect the brain. Mood and cognition will suffer.
• High stress hormones disrupt your blood sugar leading to cycles of sugar craving and crashes, fatigue, and weight gain or loss.
• After a period of heightened stress, the adrenals are fatigued, and can’t produce sufficient cortisol. Low cortisol levels lead to a (now familiar) host of problems, such as gut troubles and fatigue. This is sometimes termed “adrenal fatigue” but the more scientific name is HPA Axis dysfunction.

What can be done?

There are many treatments and things to combat all this harm to the body. A few are described below:

• Eat a whole foods diet. Cut the sugar and processed foods. Processed foods come from a factory, box, or bag. Eat nutrient dense real foods that come from an animal or the earth. A sweet potato, an apple, or a piece of chicken are all whole foods.
• Eat regularly. Do not skip meals which puts stress on the body.
• Take a high-quality multivitamin. Other supplements can help too. Examples would be a B complex, fish oil, Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, Phosphatiylserine, Magnesium Glycinate, Passionflower, or Probiotics. It is always recommended to be under the care of a supplement expert to know what is right for you.
• Prioritize sleep.
• Deep breathing or meditation.
• Get sunlight and fresh air every day.

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