Want to lose weight? Save your Cortisol for your workouts! (Why People fail to succeed in their fat loss goals part 2)

In the first part of this series of articles on the Stress hormone cortisol I discussed the natural circadian rhythm and the timing of meals to aid in the body’s ability to produce cortisol at the right time of the day. Whereas Cortisol should peak in the morning to wake us up and get us out of bed and then drop to its low point in the evening to help us sleep better.

Let’s look now at using Cortisol to help with increasing energy for your gym workout.

The stress system relies on two key hormones: adrenaline and cortisol. In short, adrenaline works in the short term, while cortisol has large momentum and works in the long term. (Adrenaline is also known as epinephrine in North America). To be exact, the terms noradrenaline and norepinephrine are used to refer specifically to the neurotransmitter as opposed to the hormone, since they are different molecules. Moreover, there are many other neurotransmitters involved.

It is important to realise that the stress system can also be activated if your brain perceives danger or any kind of threat. In the first stage, this triggers the release of adrenaline into the bloodstream to prepare the body for action. As a result, your heart beats faster, you begin to sweat, your breath becomes shallower, and your senses become more acute.

This is the so-called fight or flight response to the stressor event, and was quite adequate during most of our evolution, when these events were quite specific and usually short-term: escaping from a lion, chasing away a rival gang, or facing up to the impudent adolescent trying to woo your mate. Problems with chronic stress arise because in a modern society we cannot escape easily from the stressor, be it an overbearing boss, crowded cities, or traffic jams. Furthermore, no matter how hard we try to delude ourselves with the pretence of civilisation, at heart we are still primates, and consequently, factors such as social status also play an important role as sources of stress. Moreover, primates have evolved the capacity to stress up the body in anticipation of a possible danger. Again, this was an advantageous adaptation in the context where it evolved, but nothing but trouble for the modern human.

The effect of the stress hormones on the brain is curious

Just as your levels of adrenaline start coming down, the amount of cortisol flowing through your veins goes up. Moreover, cortisol has a much larger momentum than adrenaline, which means that even though it builds up slowly, it also takes a long time to go back to normal. And should you constantly be engaging in activities which require adrenaline, so will your levels of cortisol slowly increase. In a sense, you can think of cortisol as a measure of the weighted average of your recent levels of adrenaline.

Together with the rise of cortisol and the decrease of adrenaline, come the nasty side-effects of the stress hormones. It is at this moment that you feel bad, anxious, and having lots of negative thoughts. And this is perhaps one of the critical features of stress which flies against common sense: you only feel its bad aspects when your body is stressing down and progressing towards a more relaxed state. When you are building up on adrenaline, in effect stressing up, you might even be feeling good! This explains what is popularly known as the adrenaline rush and the consequent adrenaline crash.

Having too much cortisol flowing through your veins has another nasty side-effect: the recovery time from any adrenaline surge increases. In a sense, the relation between adrenaline and cortisol goes both ways: the adrenaline curve influences the cortisol curve, and vice-versa.

Cortisol is a natural catabolic hormone (breaks down muscle tissue). Cortisol makes you more awake and can increase your immediate strength. Just ask any one who helped someone in an accident. The fight or flight response induced by Cortisol has allowed many people to lift a very heavy object or remove an obstacle to free someone. Under normal conditions this object would have been too heavy to move. But under the “Stress Condition” the elevation of cortisol has induce an extra neural response, allowing for an immediate increase in strength.

                                

Bearing all of this in mind, let’s look back to caveman times. It was very normal for Cavemen to go out and hunt in the morning, bring the “catch” back home before lunch, eat then set about completing chores and creative tasks in the afternoon.

Research is showing that we may be most creative when our cortisol is low.

In otherwise use cortisol to wake you up, use it to train then let it go down, as you relax you will be more productive and be able to come up with that next great idea!