How to Balance Cortisol Levels Naturally?

Author's Bio: Marcie Vaske, MS, LN, CNS

Hi, and welcome back to our channel.

Today we're going to talk about how can you balance cortisol levels naturally.

So first I'll share what cortisol is, how you can improve that naturally and follow it up with if you want to take a supplement, what kind of supplements are going to be best when trying to balance your cortisol.

But before we dig in, my name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a licensed nutritionist with Flusso Nutrients. At Flusso Nutrients, we work really hard to educate you on all kinds of different supplements, helping you to make your own choice with some understanding behind it.

Obviously, if you are taking medications or other supplements, we always recommend that you talk to a supplement literate practitioner, just to be sure that they're not contraindicating each other.

So without further ado, let's just dig into the topic of balancing your cortisol naturally.

[Video Transcript Below + Supplement Links Discussed In Video]

What Is Cortisol?

So first, what is cortisol? Cortisol is our stress hormone, which is made in our adrenal glands that sit right above our kidneys. And when we are under high stress, we have a lot of cortisol output and there are times where our cortisol levels throughout the day can get a little bit wonky. We need our cortisol levels to rise in the morning and start falling down in the afternoon. If you're under a lot of chronic stress or other having some issues with body or inflammation going on, there can be many things that can kind of disrupt our cortisol levels.

How to Balance Cortisol Levels Naturally

So how can you manage them a little bit better naturally and even be more aware of if your cortisol is off or not?

Manage Stress Through Daily Habits

First and foremost, when thinking about managing cortisol, we have to think about our lifestyle and our stress, and so we really need to come up with a way to manage our stress effectively, whether it's taking an extra 15 minutes in the morning just to sort of sit and maybe read a book or do some meditation. Just taking time for yourself kind of gets centered, and it doesn't have to be in the morning, it can be any time, but it's really all about just being aware of you and yourself and having some quiet time.

Also, you can try yoga, which is a wonderful way to kind of ground yourself, center yourself, and really just kind of get out of the hectic day. Also, when we're chronically stressed, this is when we're feeling a lot of this cortisol disruption.

Prioritize Quality Sleep

Another way that cortisol disruption can happen is if we're not getting enough sleep. So really prioritizing your sleep. And I know it can be hard. I've spent a lot of my life not sleeping enough, but as I got older, I realized that sleep is so important and I tried very hard to get the amount of sleep we need, which is between seven and nine hours.

I think too, that each person is different. So some people can function a little bit better on the low end, so maybe that's six and a half to seven hours and some people need 10 hours. But really trying hard to get that and not kind of running on empty all the time. This is where our cortisol comes out and has to do a lot more of the work, and we're feeling it. We'll start feeling cortisol, we'll feel tired. We feel rung out, we feel wired, all of those things. So spending enough time finding a sleep routine and getting those seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

Eat a Whole, Real Food Diet

Another great way to manage your cortisol naturally is eating whole real food diet is going to be one of the best ways to do this, because what we need is to balance our blood sugar. If our blood sugar is imbalance, then our cortisol goes all over the place, as well as we need some of the certain nutrients that real food can give us, such as magnesium and omega threes.

And also drink water, stay hydrated. You won't believe how many people are not drinking enough water. And again, I know it's not easy to get in every day and it feels like another thing you have to do, but once you get into a routine and a habit of drinking water, you're going to be so much better off for it, not only for your cortisol, but every single system in your body.

Move Your Body — But Moderately

Another great way to manage cortisol naturally is to do moderate exercise moving. Anytime we start doing high intense exercise daily, we've now created a more negative response for our body, even when we're trying to do a good thing. So really realizing that just walking, strength training, swimming, this helps balance our cortisol, but we don't have to, unless you are training for a race, do it moderately, feel good about it, feel like yeah, you've got a workout in, but you didn't, you're not crawling up the stairs on your last leg after every workout.

Support Gut Health

Also supporting your gut health. This is another great way to manage your cortisol. You want to make sure that you have a healthy microbiome. These will help to create, or they, I shouldn't say create, but they influence our stress response. And this is very important when it comes to how our body feels stress. And then of course, cortisol output.

Limit Stimulants and Alcohol

And the last one I'll bring up is reducing stimulants like coffee or caffeine and alcohol. Now, you can certainly drink coffee, you can have one to three cups a day, but over that or even more energy drinks on top of that, you're really burning out your cortisol. So you're going to feel that you're going to have the highs and lows of it all. Also drinking alcohol. You'll want to minimize this because this really disrupts our cortisol regulation. So kind of keeping that again to just moderation or none at all, whatever floats your boat, basically, it's just being aware.

When to Consider Supplements for Cortisol Support

All of the things that I talked about in how to balance your cortisol are really things that we should be doing every day for ourself, not only for cortisol, but for our gut health, for our mental health, for every single system in our body. So it's just kind of like taking care of your body, right? So if you have imbalance cortisol, either you've got too high cortisol or your cortisol is too low, so you feel like you're a flat line every day, there are supplements that can help support you.

A couple that come to mind right off the top of my head is going to be adaptogens of ashwagandha and Rhodiola. Oftentimes, you'll see them combined together in a supplement, which is fantastic. I've actually linked one down below, which is Cortisol Pro. It does have both of them in there with some additional minerals and vitamins to help support a balanced cortisol level.

In addition to Ashwagandha and Rhodiola, there's also the holy basil and licorice root that can help support adrenal health and that cortisol response. So understanding a little bit more about yourself in terms of you can do testing for cortisol, so you can do a Dutch test, which will measure how your cortisol is throughout the day. You can do a 4-point Diurnal Test, which will show again, your cortisol throughout the day and seeing where we need to put the supplements or even how we can support that best or do you not need them at all? And it's just really coming down to lifestyle changes.

How to Know What Your Body Needs

Supporting cortisol with supplements can be very effective, but you also want to be educated on what you need it for in terms of high, low and things of that nature. So talk to a practitioner such as myself at our clinic, Oswald Digestive Clinic, we can help you find, do you really need some cortisol support if you're on thyroid medication, just be mindful.

I would seek out extra guidance on that because cortisol and thyroid are very closely connected and they do feed off one another, so we don't want to add in a whole bunch of cortisol supporting supplements. And then we have a thyroid that just kind of your levels got off. So it's just really about understanding your body, running some tests such as the Dutch, the 4-point Diurnal to see where your cortisol's at. And I think also, if you're struggling with a lot of anxiety, Ashwagandha and Rhodiola can both help with anxiety. Ashwagandha probably helps a little bit better. But again, it's kind of understanding do you need to bring up your cortisol? Do we need to just balance it or do we need to bring it down? And sometimes there's body symptoms that we can understand better and putting you toward a better path of, do you need a cortisol supplement or not? I love supplements. I think they're amazing. And when use appropriately, they work great. And so I've used this supplement several times for clients and myself, which they've worked amazing.

So if you want to give it a shot, I will link our cortisol pro down below. And if you have any questions, you'll please leave them in the comment section. We love to hear from you.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next week.

Check out the high-quality supplements we discussed in this video - links below for your convenience!

1) Stress Essentials Cortisol Pro: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com/cortisol-pro

2) ALL PROFESSIONAL QUALITY SUPPLEMENTS: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com & https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/flussonutrients