****Be warned - I don't have any pictures so I hope you don't get too bored***
Cortisol is a hormone produced by our adrenal glands in response to mental or physical stress. It is a hormone released in our body during times of stress or in response to low blood sugar. The primary role of cortical is to increase blood sugar, decrease the immune system, used in fat production and decreases bone formation. Cortisol is important for regulation in our bodies, but chronic elevation can lead to obesity, diabetes and other chronic disease. Foods that are high in sugars or white flours can elevate cortical production. Chronic inflammation, caused by lifestyle factors such as poor diet and stress, helps to keep cortisol levels soaring, wreaking havoc on the immune system.
Why is diet important? Obviously, maximizing the anti-inflammatory foods and minimizing the proinflammatory ones is a big step toward controlling inflammation. Incidentally, dietary strategies for controlling inflammation may also help with adrenal support in general, since diet can directly affect adrenal burden. This is another reason why an anti-inflammatory diet can help you lose weight.
These are several ways how cortical affects different diseases….
Arthritis
Obviously, arthritis is a part of life and is the “wear-and-tear” of hard work. Arthritis can occur from elevated levels of cortical and inflammation in the body. High levels of cortical that can be increased through an unhealthy diet can suppress the body’s functions to naturally fight off inflammation. An interesting fact is that inflammation can enter the intestinal tract from a poor diet that triggers the release of the enzyme, aggrecanase which actually eats the cartilage in joints and results in arthritis.
Duke University released a study where they linked a diet rich in carotenoids – the chemicals that give certain fruits and vegetables their orange and yellow colorings – dramatically reduced their risk of inflammatory arthritis.:
Depression:
Unbalanced levels of cortisol, either too high or too low, alter the activity and chemistry of the brain and can result in depression. Of equal importance, 99% of the chemicals (neurotransmitters such as serotonin) that determine your mood are made in the intestinal tract from the food you eat, and only 1% of them are made in your brain. So if your intestinal tract is inflamed and unable to function normally, you may not be able to make enough of these chemicals to keep your moods stable.
Chronic Fatigue
Cortisol imbalances due to stress and/or inflammation can cause fatigue in several ways. Because cortisol is designed to keep you alert in times of stress, it can cause insomnia, and the lack of quality sleep will make you tired. Cortisol also suppresses insulin production to keep the sugar available for muscles in a stress response, and can result in low blood sugar, which will also make you fatigued. Lastly, your adrenal glands can ultimately become exhausted from the constant demands placed on them to produce endless amounts of cortisol, usually as a response to chronic inflammation from a poor diet and/or over-use of anti-inflammatory drugs, and they simply wear out and produce too little cortisol, which will also result in fatigue. This sequence usually results in chronic fatigue syndrome, which manifests many of the symptoms seen in cortisol imbalances including insomnia,
depression, food cravings, weight gain, and muscle and joint pain.
| Food Cravings Because cortisol is meant to suppress insulin production and lower our cells’ sensitivity to insulin so that sugar is available to the muscles for a stress response, excess cortisol will cause blood sugar levels to fluctuate. Since the brain’s primary fuel is sugar in the form of glucose, any imbalance in blood sugar will cause you to crave sweets and carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, potatoes, and pastries. In addition, when the adrenal glands are busy producing cortisol in response to stress and/or inflammation, they cannot adequately fulfill some of their other functions, such as producing aldosterone, a hormone that regulates the body’s mineral content. This means you might be low on magnesium, which will make you crave chocolate, or salt, which will make you crave chips, olives, or other salty processed foods. Insomnia: Cortisol has its own circadian (daily) rhythm, and should be at its highest level in the morning when we are waking up and getting started with our day; by night time it should be very low. One of cortisol’s functions is to keep us very alert in times of danger, so high levels of cortisol at night will cause insomnia. There are two types of insomnia. In the first, you have trouble falling asleep because the cortisol levels are already too high; in the second, you fall asleep but then wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. This second type occurs because either the elevated level of cortisol has lowered your blood sugar too much (see Diabetes), or it’s time for your body to repair connective tissue and it realizes that the intestinal tract is inflamed and it produces cortisol in response to the inflammation. Weight Gain This goes hand and hand with the blood sugar problem of cortisol and diabetes, because the brain’s primary fuel is glucose or sugar. If you are not able to metabolize sugar properly, your brain will demand that you eat more foods that have sugar in them to feed itself. So now you are eating high-calorie carbohydrate foods that often are high in fat, and you will gain weight. Equally bad is the fact that these types of food cause systemic inflammation and the further production of cortisol. |
No comments:
Post a Comment