Cortisol (hydrocortisol)

Cortisol and why it's important to you!

I'll try to keep this simple and easy to follow.
Your adrenal gland releases cortisol into your bloodstream after receiving signals from the hypothalamus.

• Cortisol acts to suppress your immune system.

This sounds boring but it's actually really important. You get more prone to bacterial, viral and fungal infections. Nasty stuff.

• Aids in glucogenesis

A.k.a raises your blood sugar (amount of sugar in your blood). This is bad, it leads to insulin resistance which is diabetes type 2.

It is released in response to stress to restore homeostasis in your body but in excess it's bad bad bad for you. The syndrome is called Cushing's syndromeSo, in essence you get all the stuff that you don't want. You can get this syndrome from either pro-longed intake of corticosteroid drugs or by a tumor on any of the gland in the hypothalamo-pituitary-adreno pathway which upregulates their secretion.
But that's bad stuff!

So I hope it's clear now that cortisol is in most cases bad.
It's not all bad though because would god have "planted" cortisol in us if it ain't did us good?
Don't think so, in small doses it's good in response to stress.
* It can give you a sugar kick when needed
* Increase your blood pressure in a flight or fight response
* Increases your short memory function
* After strenuous exercise it can act to inhibit excessive inflammation.

However after we've returned to homeostasis it needs to go away which it doesn't always do in our high stress society. So if we keep our levels high

Most of the time you want to keep your cortisol levels low because prolonged high levels may cause...
* Destruction of cells in the hippocampus area, responsible for memory
* Decrease in muscle tissue
* High blood pressure
* Depressed immune system and slower wound healing
* Increased abdominal fat (which is where you defenitively not should have your fat)

Increased cortisol levels have been seen in..
* Depression/stress
* Illness/fever
* Trauma, fear, pain
* Physical exertion/ temp extremes
* Too much caffeine
* Sleep deprivation
* Burnout
* Cortisone levels may be altered in people with Autism and Asperger's

Pain is an interesting one, so there is a correlation with being in pain and a suppressed immune system! Especially if it's chronic pain. What if you walked around with back-pain all the time, for years? Your cortisol levels would most probably be elevated and your immune system suppressed.

I cant believe it's such a big no-no to talk about these things. It seems like a sensitive topic to talk about but I don't care. This is a real thing and people are afraid of talking about it?
This shouldn't be something hidden away from people.
It's cool that what the old time Chiropractors claimed to be able to do, science is now on it's way to explain parts of it.

And now for the good stuff that you want to bring in to your life
* Magnesium supplement after aerobic training (Unfortunately not seen with weight training)
* Omega-3 intake
* Music therapy
* Massage therapy
* Laughing, humor
* Crying
* Vitamin C intake
* Black tea
* Regular dancing (Argentine tango)
* Regular sexual intercourse
* Meditation

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The above may be completely off since it's not referenced at all.
Just be critical to everything you see or hear because there's is probably a lot of stuff out there that's not right. Even though I try to make sure the stuff I'm writing about is 100% right you should be critical. This is just a good way for me to express what I'm reading about at the moment and things might be completely off since I don't have the time or feel the need to reference things when I'm just free writing like this.
Stay critical and don't believe anything that is not referenced.
Not even what your lecturers tell you and especially not me.

But hopefully you have a better understanding of what cortisol does to you by now.