http://www.isagenixhealth.net/how-to-not-stress-over-cortisol/

Cortisol is the “stress hormone” with a bad rap. Most people think of it as the evil villain within the body. It’s associated with weight gain, less muscle, and a compromised immune system. But is there anything you can do about it? Digging in a little deeper, you’ll learn that, yes, you can. And—in recognition of April as National Stress Awareness Month—we’ll break down here what to do.

To start with, it’s important to understand why the body makes cortisol in the first place. Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that is released in response to physical and mental stress. Its purpose is to help mobilize fuel to better feed the body during times of stress, and to signal the immune system to stop responding with inflammation. For this reason, cortisol shots are commonly prescribed to control allergic reactions, arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions.

Cortisol levels also fluctuate throughout the day. In fact, cortisol levels that are variable indicate the endocrine system is responsive and healthy. If the body lost its ability to respond to stress, severe health consequences would result.

When Not to Worry

Healthy cortisol levels are important for the body to respond to stressors and put it on high alert when something unexpected happens.  When the body is experiencing some sort of problem or trauma, the first response is inflammation. Think of when you jam your finger or bump your knee. It gets swollen and inflamed. This is caused by the rush of blood to the area of injury to deliver important nutrients that aid in the healing process. But you don’t want that inflammation to last forever and this is where cortisol comes in. Cortisol is one of the hormones released by the body to turn inflammation off and get things back to business as usual (1). Without cortisol, chronic inflammation would result, leading to increased disease risk such as inflammatory bowel disease or autoimmune disorders.

Another role of cortisol is to direct pathways in the body to provide fuel when there is not enough glucose present in times of stress. For example, let’s say a dog chases you down the street. Cortisol helps you get the fuel you need quickly to run away. Fast. Or, cortisol can be useful for that super hard leg workout in the gym. In these instances, the body draws amino acids from muscle and converts them to energy through a process known as gluconeogenesis (2). Without cortisol’s effect on directing fuel usage, the body would not be able to function efficiently.

When Cortisol Goes Bad

Now for the other side of the cortisol coin: When levels are chronically elevated, cortisol begins to function in ways that are outside of the norm. The thing with stressors in life is that they come in multiple forms. Some produce a “fight or flight” type of response, and exist in the short term. But others like continuous psychological stress, could lead to continually elevated cortisol. That is when cortisol turns bad and could lead to serious health consequences including muscle loss, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular risk factors (3, 4).

Keeping Cortisol in Check

When it comes to cortisol, it’s all about finding a healthy balance. Here are four tips for keeping cortisol in check:

1. Exercise, then eat carbs. Intense exercise can increase cortisol levels as much as 50 percent (2). But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hit the gym. Regular physical activity has significant benefits for your health, including long-term stress reduction. Consuming carbohydrates just before, during, and/or after an intense workout helps mitigate the cortisol response. When carbohydrates are supplied in the diet—such as from e+ before a workout or Want More Energy? during a workout—the body doesn’t need to produce its own sugar so there is no increase in cortisol or accompanied breakdown in muscle. By eating protein along with a source of carbohydrate during and directly after exercise, cortisol and muscle breakdown decrease and muscle growth and glycogen repletion increase (5, 6).

2. Add Adaptogens. Priming your body with Adaptogens can help strengthen its capacity to resist and reduce stress. Adaptogens—such as ashwagandha, eleuthero, and wolfberry—are unique plants that have been studied for their abilities to act as metabolic regulators and support mental and physical performance. To supply your body with stress-fighting Adaptogens, reach for any of the Isagenix products with potent blends of Adaptogens: Ionix Supreme, e+, or t+ Chai.

3. Meditate. Psychological stress not only affects our minds, but can also have an impact on telomeres, the biological markers of aging within our cells. Chronically elevated levels of stress hormones including cortisol could lead to shortened telomeres and accelerated aging. To mitigate physiological stress, try meditation, which has been shown in studies to ease mental stress and protect telomere length (7). For further protection of telomeres, also add Ageless Essentials with Product B to your regimen.

4. Sleep. Quality sleep is remarkable in its role for body maintenance and renewal. When you’re sleeping, the body is going to work on itself, building and repairing. But when you don’t get enough quality sleep, stress hormones including cortisol can become elevated leading to a suppressed immune system (8). Focus on getting seven to nine hours of quality sleep each night to support healthy cortisol levels.

With these tips, there’s no need to worry over cortisol—that might just run cortisol levels up higher. Instead, remember that cortisol is not necessarily the bad guy; in fact, we need it to survive. It’s just important to keep the hormone’s levels in check by following a healthy diet and lifestyle.

References

1. Elenkov IJ. Glucocorticoids and the Th1/Th2 balance. Ann NY Acad Sci, 2004;1024:138-46.
2. Bird SP, Tarpenning KM, Marino FE. Liquid carbohydrates/essential amino acid ingestion during short-term bout of resistance exercise suppresses myofibrillar protein degradation. Metabolism, 2006;55(5):570-7.
3. Nabi et al. Increased risk of coronary heart disease among individuals reporting adverse impact of stress on their health: the Whitehall II prospective cohort study.  European Heart Journal. 2013 [E-pub ahead of print] doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/eht216
4. Andrews RC, Herlihy O, Livingstone DEW, et al. Abnormal cortisol metabolism and tissue sensitivity to cortisol in patients with glucose intolerance. J of Clin Endo, 2002;87(12): 5587-5593.
5. Ivy J, & Portman, R. (2004). Nutrient timing: The future of sports nutrition. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications, Inc.
6. Aragon AA, Schoenfeld BJ. Nutrient timing revisited: is there a post-exercise anabolic window? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2013 Jan 29;10(1):5. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-10-5.
7. Lavretsky H et al. A pilot study of yogic meditation for family dementia caregivers with depressive symptoms: effects on mental health, cognition, and telomerase activity. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2012. DOI: 10.1002/gps.3790
8. Möller-Levet CS, Archer1 SN, Bucca G, Laing EE, Slak A, Kabiljo R, Lo JCY, Santhi N, von Schantz M, Smith CP, Dijk D. Effects of insufficient sleep on circadian rhythmicity and expression amplitude of the human blood transcriptome. PNAS 2013 Feb 25 doi:10.1073/pnas.1217154110.

http://blog.inhealthchiropractic.com/colic-in-health-chiropractic/

by Laura McKenna  posted on Aug 7, 2014

I just read a post which was titled “An open letter to that lady with the screaming baby”. I’m watching you walk back and forth with that baby in your arms. You wear a path like a dog on a chain. You just laughed at the joke someone in your party told, but you laughed too late, and I can tell you didn’t get it. I’m guessing you haven’t slept more than twelve hours in the past six weeks. It’s all I can do not to run over to you and shower you with my hard-earned wisdom, but I control myself because I remember what it was like to be a new mom. When I was a new mom, there seemed to be no boundary between strangers and me. They swarmed me with advice and admonishments. As a rule, their comments made me feel like I was a danger to my child. One day a woman marched over to me in Bloomingdales to declare, not say, but declare as if it were an irrefutable fact of the universe, “That baby is going to die of suffocation in that sweater.” I nearly cried. Did she have any idea how long it took the two of us to get out of the house that morning? Did she not know that just the day before another well-meaning woman had told me my sweaterless child was going to freeze to death? So I don’t approach you, New Mom. I’d rather leave you alone and just hope that you pick up this article during a midnight feeding, just after having jotted down “15 minutes on left” and switching sides. I want you to know that you have not been Punk’d. This moment that you find yourself in with this six-week-old baby is not what motherhood is going to be. Swaying from side to side, trying to follow an adult conversation about things you no longer feel a part of, is not the culmination of that big wedding and festive baby shower. This is just a moment. I also want you to know that your baby has colic. People might be telling you he’s a little fussy or that he takes after his cranky Uncle Al. Or they wonder if you eat too much dairy while nursing, or not enough. They’ll tell you he’s screaming because you don’t let him sleep on his stomach or because you had an epidural during delivery. You’re secretly afraid that he’s defective in some way. I tell you it’s colic, and I’m guessing you have another six weeks left. After consulting many doctors, I have determined that colic is loosely defined as: There’s nothing at all wrong with you or your baby, but he’s gonna scream for the longest three months of your life. And if there was an audio component to that definition, it would surely be the sound of your baby crying. Your baby’s cry is not a regular “I’m hungry” or “I’m tired” or “You just scraped my back with your bracelet” cry. It’s a screech as loud, jarring, and rhythmic as a car alarm. Except car alarms have an auto shut-off function that kicks in after 10 minutes. This scream evokes sympathy so deep in me that I want to run over to you and cover your ears. You just caught my eye. You think I’m staring at you because of the screaming baby. I want you to know that the screaming doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s not my car alarm. What bothers me is that I have seen you try to sit down to eat three times tonight. And every time you try to pass that baby off to a friend and make contact with the picnic bench, the impact activates the car alarm. That baby does not want you to eat or sit. I want you to know that you are going to sustain your own life by snacking while swaying and standing for another two months. And then it’ll be okay. When the women gather and tell you how beautiful your baby is, how lucky you are and how this is the happiest, most precious time of your life, I want you to know they are out of their minds. They have grown children who are drinking and dating and talking back. They don’t remember what it was like to sleep for only 90 minutes at a time and to have scabby nipples. You are not the first person to think maybe this whole motherhood thing wasn’t such a good idea. You are not the first person to fantasize about maybe being hospitalized with some minor ailment for three days so that you can sleep. You probably have a few friends who’ve just had babies, too. And you probably have a friend whose baby slept through the night the minute he came home from the hospital and feeds on an every-three-hour or whenever-it’s-convenient-for-Mom schedule. And you probably hate that friend and her lazy baby. I want you to know that I was that friend. My friend Eileen and I had babies at the same time; mine was the sleeping and smiling sort and hers was the car alarm on a Maserati. She did not sleep for the first six months of his life. Obviously the better mother, I liked to offer suggestions: “Have you tried rocking him?” I also want you to know that life is fair and that my second child was hell-on-wheels colicky. And that he almost never screams now. I want to march him over to you in his full 11-year-old glory and say, “Look!” I’d make him show you how he can dribble with both hands or how he can calculate the per-glass cost of a bottle of wine. (Have you ever tried to divide by 4 ½ ?) He has a strong sense of how to solve his own problems and a heroic pain tolerance. Skills learned during infancy? Maybe. I want you to know that he now wakes up on a Sunday morning and grabs a granola bar, letting me sleep until I’m good and ready to face the day. Most importantly, I want you to know that if you have any money at all – money you’ve been saving for a vacation, retirement, or a medical procedure – hire help. Indulge in the pure luxury of a nap. Don’t sneak the nap. Instead, shower and put your pajamas on in the middle of the day. If money is not here to help us repurchase a bit of lost sanity, I don’t know what it’s for. And when you wake up, take that screamer back in your arms. He won’t have forgotten you. And I’m sorry for reading your mind, but I can see the question you really want answered. No, you will never have your life back the way it was before. Never. Nor will you want it back. Just hang in there. I thought it was a humorous take on a very important subject. What I wanted to add is that you do not have to just let your child grow out of it. I have seen these mums come into our office and there baby has not stopped crying. Colic is very real. Chiropractic can help. #thepowerthatmakesthebodycanhealthebody,#powerofchiropractic #health #chiropractic #inhealthchiropractic #pascalmarkey #wellness #wellbeing #colic #reflux #babies #infants #crying #subluxation #monaghan #cavan #ireland