Leading a busy life has become the new “normal.” With it has come the increasing tolerance of high stress as part of one’s routine: reaching new goals, starting new year’s resolutions, and keeping on top of a myriad of responsibilities.
Unfortunately, more and more people find that high stress comes with a price. Experiencing consistent levels of stress may increase what is called “cortisol,” the stress hormone, leading to unwanted symptoms and health issues.
Read more about what cortisol is, how being aware of it could improve your health, and how working to reduce it could lead to health improvements such as: better energy, focus, and more with help of wellness tools like the ZYTO Link app and supplements that lower cortisol.
What is Cortisol – And Why Does It Matter?
Cortisol is a common hormone in the body. This means it can impact many aspects of your health, though it specifically deals with regulating stress most of all.
Cortisol “spikes” when you’re feeling stressed, panicked, or experiencing that all-too-familiar “fight or flight” response. Produced by the adrenal glands close to your kidneys, cortisol will jump into action to help your body move through a stressful ordeal — and does so by getting certain processes going: involving digestion, metabolism, blood pressure, blood sugars, nervous system responses, and more. All to keep you safe!
A natural rise and fall of cortisol, whether over time or just throughout the day, is completely normal. In fact, it’s needed to keep your body to be in working order.
However, excessive cortisol levels — which can spike during prolonged and intense periods of stress — bring unwanted side effects and issues. This is especially true if you’re dealing with triggers that consistently keep you in that elevated state!
Some side effects and symptoms of high stress and high cortisol could include:
- Uptick in blood pressure
- Increased anxiety
- Sleep disturbances
- Digestive issues
- Headaches and increased pain
- Muscle tension
- Weight gain
- Concentration problems
- Increased risk for cardiovascular disease
- …and more
Natural Ways to Manage Cortisol
Since cortisol is a stress hormone, the key to lowering it is to better manage or holistically reduce stress in your life. By way of this approach, here are some natural methods that can help you balance stress levels and thus your cortisol levels by association — while also supporting symptoms of both high stress and cortisol.
Lifestyle Adjustments.
Changing your daily habits around stress should be your first go-to, without using either diet or supplements to reduce cortisol. Without tweaks to your daily routine, along with improving how you directly deal with stress, those two options aren’t likely to take you far.
Lifestyle adjustments can also involve introducing new habits shown to help with stress. A strong list of possible lifestyle adjustments for high stress includes:
- Exercising regularly – Shown to help alleviate anxiety, stress and depression
- Finding mental health support – Helps you gain tools for handling stress better
- Mindfulness, meditation, and yoga – Shown to help manage stress on emotional, physical, and even spiritual levels
Dietary Changes.
Eating the right foods can give a little boost for dealing with stress and high cortisol. Even better, they can also protect your body from its effects. These include:
- Antioxidant rich foods – Plant-based foods high in vitamin C, vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, and other phytochemicals – like lycopene, anthocyanins, and more. These help protect against stress- and cortisol-caused inflammation. Sources include fruits, veggies, nuts, healthy whole grains and more.
- Probiotic-rich foods – These boost your gut microbiome, full of beneficial microorganisms instrumental for creating feel-good, stress-relieving hormones that balance out cortisol: such as serotonin, dopamine, and more.
- Fiber-rich and prebiotic foods – These feed probiotic microorganisms in your gut microbiome and may also help reduce chronic inflammation from stress and high cortisol.
The Role of Supplements to Reduce Cortisol.
Supplements for cortisol can give an extra push along with good diet and lifestyle choices. Supplements that are commonly recommended as reliable for helping with cortisol may include:
- Ashwagandha – This herbal supplement is shown by research to lower cortisol levels significantly. It has also been traditionally used for centuries to help people cope with stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders or imbalances.
- L-Theanine – A naturally occurring antioxidant compound in green tea. Studies suggest that taking supplements of l-theanine could reduce cortisol levels for short periods of time— suggesting that regular use could be beneficial.
- Omega-3 Fatty Acids – Besides getting these in your diet, an extra supplement of this antioxidant (such as from fish oil) can give an extra dose of cortisol protection and is shown to help lower cortisol levels from stress.
Using ZYTO Technology to Support Wellness Goals
How can you know if cortisol is an issue for you? Is a supplement to reduce cortisol a good idea for you to consider? These, and many other questions, could be answered with help from a quick wellness scan through the ZYTO Link app.
Available on both Android and Apple, this scan gives personalized insights and recommendations based on just a rapid 30-second scan from your phone — generating unique wellness reports for anyone who uses it. These can lead you to the right decisions in diet, lifestyle, supplements, and essential oil choices for wellness concerns.If you wonder about your cortisol levels – and where to even begin with helping them – trying a ZYTO Link scan is a good place to start!
Making Cortisol Management a Resolution for the New Year
Stress and busy schedules are all part of life — but so is balance. If stress is overwhelming you, this could keep cortisol levels up and eventually take its toll, in the form of many symptoms and concerns.
If you’re concerned about high cortisol and stress (or even if you just want to prevent it): get one step ahead of it! Introduce more stress management into your life.
Plus, the diet, lifestyle, supplement tips, and ZYTO Link app in this article are great places to start — and could provide guiding points to your biggest wellness goals.
About Adrian White
Adrian White is a professional writer, international author, regenerative farmer and certified herbalist. She has worked with companies and institutions such as the National Science Foundation, U.C. Berkeley, and Healthline with bylines in The Guardian, Civil Eats, Good Housekeeping, and more.
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