Cortisol: the Stress Hormone’s Effect on Your Health and Weight Loss

Stress is simply a part of life. Stress can be a positive thing: It can save your life in a fight or flight situation, or it can be the kick in the butt you need to finally finish that project at work you’ve been putting off. Too much stress, however, can have a negative effect on your mental and physical health. In today’s society, where we are moving faster, taking on more responsibility and are constantly technologically connected to the demands of work and home, our lives are becoming more overwhelming, and it may be taking a toll on our waistlines.

Cortisol, dubbed the “stress hormone”, is an important hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, responsible for many functions in the body including regulating metabolism and blood pressure, immune function, inflammatory response, and releasing insulin, which maintains blood sugar levels.

Cortisol isn’t only secreted when the body is under stress, but it is secreted in higher levels during the body’s “fight or flight” response to stress (think of when something pops out and scares the crap out of you. That surge you get is your body’s fight or flight response- you either jump and run, or start swinging.) The stress we encounter on a daily basis isn’t always so obvious or sudden, but daily stress, i.e. a jam packed schedule the next day or not knowing how you are going to afford next month’s bills, isn’t immediately remedied, so your stress levels stay elevated for an extended period of time until the stressor is remedied, or more often than not, until another stressor comes along and takes over.

Just as with everything in life, too much of something is never a good thing. Elevated cortisol levels cause many physical, negative changes to the body, including impaired cognitive function, blood sugar imbalances, high blood pressure, and lower immunity, causing you to feel slow and drained of energy, or even come down with an illness.

This is why when you are stressed, you may experience redness in your face, neck and ears due to higher blood pressure, increased appetite due to out of whack blood sugar levels and just generally sluggish and irritable.

Perhaps the most frustrating side effect of elevated cortisol levels, however, is weight gain. Physically, your appetite may increase causing you to overeat, which is often referred to as stress eating or emotional eating, but of course, if you don’t eat the calories, then you won’t gain the weight- simple solution. The deeper culprit to weight gain is that cortisol can decrease your muscle tissue, which will slow your metabolism, causing you to burn less calories in a day and an increase in belly fat, which not only isn’t attractive, it carries a host of health risks all its own.

Increased abdominal fat is more dangerous to your health than fat deposits in other areas of your body. Excess belly fat puts you at risk for heart attack, stroke, high cholesterol and metabolic syndrome.

Lower Your Stress Levels with a Healthy Lifestyle

Most of your stressors can’t simply be eliminated by delegating out your responsibilities or avoiding the situation completely, so finding ways to cope with your stress is the most practical way to keep your cortisol levels down. Fortunately, the best ways to reduce stress are also good for your health.

Yoga

Practice Yoga Breathing to Promote Balance

Workplace Yoga Reduces Stress and Improve Sleep

Yoga Keeps You Calm in the Midst of Chaos

A Consistent Yoga Practice Reduces Stress

Meditation

How Meditation Can Help Conquer Stress and Extra Pounds

What is Active Meditation?

Start a Meditation Practice in Five Steps

Manage Stress with Simple Relaxation Techniques

Sleep

The Importance of Sleep for Good Health

Sleep and Relax to Prevent Diabetes

Staying Up Late Harmful to Your Health

June 14th, 2011

Posted in: belly fat, cortisol, emotional eating, exercise, homepage, hormones, meditation, relaxation, sleep, stress, Yoga

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Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate

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Nutritionist Cynthia Sass, one of the creators of the Flat Belly Diet explains the benefits of dark chocolate. In moderation, dark chocolate has a positive impact on your blood pressure and it's full of essential minerals. A serving is quarter cup, which you can enjoy with fruit, in yogurt or in oatmeal.

MUFAs, or monounsaturated fatty acids, are an important part of the Flat Belly Diet. Other MUFA foods are avocados, nuts, seeds and olives.

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Yo-Yo Dieting is Better for Your Health Than Nothing at All

You have undoubtedly heard how important it is to maintain weight loss to avoid health problems. You’ve also heard that losing weight and gaining it back continually through fad diets or any other means just isn’t good for your health. Well now there is a study that shows that losing weight and gaining it back is better than not losing weight at all.

This study was done on mice, but it shows that yo-yo dieting isn’t as bad as it was once believed to be. There were three groups of mice in the study, placed into a low-fat, high-fat and yo-yo diet groups. The mice that were placed on the yo-yo diet alternated between a low-fat and high-fat diet.

The mice on the yo-yo diet were healthy when they followed a low-fat diet and had higher body fat, blood sugar and body weight when they were on their high-fat rotation. Another surprising detail of this study was that the yo-yo diet mice lived just as long as the mice that maintained a low-fat diet the entire time. This amounted to about six months longer than the mice that followed only a high-fat diet.

Although this new study has released some interesting information, dieters shouldn’t embrace a lifestyle of yo-yo dieting. Reaching a healthy weight through diet and exercise and maintaining that weight loss is still the ideal way to improve your health. There are several different diets available that can help you lose weight and if you choose the right approach, you can keep the weight off. The important thing to remember when losing weight and trying to maintain that weight loss is to start with a program that changes your habits. No one sets out to be a yo-yo dieter. What typically happens is the chosen diet is followed for a while and gives results, and then when you stop following the program, the weight comes back. It can be frustrating, and make you feel like giving up, but remember this study and use it as motivation to keep trying.

To avoid this cycle completely, you must make a commitment to change. Limiting calories and increasing exercise is known as the old fashioned way to lose weight, but it works. You have to be honest with yourself and use the particular program that works for you. Find something that involves changes you can see yourself committing to long-term so that you maintain your weight loss. One of the hardest things to do on a weight loss journey is keep the weight off. Watching your portions, taking action when you see a small gain and remembering to count calories are just a few of the things you can do to avoid falling into the yo-yo diet pitfall. The news is that yo-yo dieting is better than doing nothing at all, but you will be happier and healthier if you lose the weight once and for all.

Via MSNBC

June 11th, 2011

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