Women's Hormone Health Series
Episode 1: Cortisol and my shocking discovery about negative self-talk
I recently taught a course on hormone changes during menopause. I learned a lot in the preparation for the course, which honestly is one of my favorite parts of the process. I have been on a health journey for many many years now. What I discovered in the research for this course ties lots of pieces together for me and with that juicy nugget, let’s dive in.
I’m going to assume that by now you have heard of cortisol. Besides the obvious that it’s a hormone, you have probably heard that it’s either good or bad. My answer to that would be YES and Neither. Like all things, balance is key and ironically that’s the main job of cortisol. It’s a balancer. It dives in to save the day when any of the other hormones are out of balance, especially insulin, which is an absolute necessity for your body to have at peak levels. (You literally die without it or too much of it.) Since that is the case, if cortisol is in high demand either because of insulin levels constantly needing tweaked or because the other hormones are dropping then it will quickly become depleted.
To prevent too great a loss, it will adapt and allow other hormones or non-essential functions of those hormones to suffer in other words it will put the body in survival mode. This affects many of your body’s systems. One example is reproduction. When your body thinks it’s in survival mode then it will not allow adequate amounts of sex hormones to be produced because it will interfere with “more important” (aka vital) functions to continue. Also, cortisol doing its stellar job of protecting you, will hold onto excess fat because it’s in conservation mode. The mentality is this body is in trouble, so we better save some for later. All of it relates to the idea that when the body thinks its in survival mode, it will react with mechanisms to conserve and/or rally the forces.
So what does any of this have to do with negative self-talk? Cortisol levels rise each time we feel stress. Stress can be either real or imagined. Let’s say for example you have a conversation with a loved one and find out that someone close to you has died. your emotions go into overdrive and you feel stressed, correct? Now let’s say that someone close to you gets an illness and your mind tells you that this means they are going to die. Whether that is true or not, you feel stressed. You may very well have just created an imaginary scenario, but your body doesn’t know this. On this same train of thought, if you are telling yourself that you are a failure because you forgot to do such and such or you hurt someone somehow and you are berating yourself mentally, your body says oh we are under attack! Release the cortisol. So each time you tell yourself some message about how you are not good enough or have failed in some way then you are creating a hostile environment for yourself.
How does this impact your overall health and well-being? I can and will write a whole series on this, but just for now, let’s look at some statistics as they relate to overall health.
Up to 95% or some say as low as 80% of disease is caused by stress either way, wow!
High Cortisol levels contribute specifically to the following:
diabetes
I.B.S.
P.C.O.S.
low sex drive
obesity
cancer
high blood pressure
mental health issues
kidney disease
heart disease
osteoporosis
poor immune function
infections including skin infections
hormone-driven cancers
insomnia
infertility issues
fat malabsorption
gut dysbiosis
food sensitivities
brain fog
memory issues
histamine reactions (and this is more than just nasal and hives)
P.M.S.
All of the items listed in bold print are more likely to occur and/or have a higher death rate in women. I will focus on each one of these in subsequent posts. This series will be free. If you are intrigued as to how to help resolve the issue, reach out. I will share in each one if and how I am qualified or able to help*. If I am not, I will connect you to someone who is. If you are a recipient of this email AND you are interested in being one of those people I refer someone to, send me a message so we can get better acquainted to see if we are a good fit. Either way, I hope that you find this information helpful in your journey toward better health and self-awareness. And if you find it empowering, which is my goal, PLEASE, share it with your friends so we can help more people realize the power they possess to overcome health struggles.
*In this case, how I can help is by providing you with tools to regulate your thoughts and feelings. I can also provide accountability and support both with a group of women who are also on a healing journey and helping you to spot your blind spots.