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Saying it outloud!
Saying it outloud!
EP 108: Balancing the Scales: Unveiling the Hidden Effects of Cortisol and the Pursuit of a Stress-Free Life
Escape with us to the vibrant shores of Puerto Rico as we weave tales from our sun-drenched holiday retreat, brimming with the warmth of rekindled family ties and the delightful challenge of baking with tropical twists. Our intimate New Year's celebration, marked by the exchange of a piano and a stand mixer, symbolizes not mere gifts but the cherished melodies and flavors of our passions. Amidst these personal anecdotes, we unravel the intricacies of stress and its unseen grip on our bodies, delving into the dance of cortisol levels that choreograph our fight-or-flight responses.
Balancing the scales of health, we scrutinize the enigma of cortisol imbalance, revealing the myriad symptoms that often go unnoticed yet significantly shape our daily lives. As we navigate the delicate interplay of the HPA axis and the chemical intricacies of cortisol and cortisone, we illuminate the profound effects these hormones have on our well-being. Our conversation transcends the typical understanding of stress, highlighting the modern-day stressors that stealthily disrupt our internal harmony, from the foods we eat to the exercises we champion as beneficial.
Concluding our exploratory journey, we turn to the practical, discussing how the silent stressors within our diet and workout routines may be doing more harm than good. From the nuances of inflammatory ingredients to the paradox of high-intensity training, we dissect how these elements can inadvertently tip our hormonal balance. Join us as we offer insights and support for a life less encumbered by stress, and remember to connect with us on social media for a chance to shape our show notes and enhance the symphony of this conversation.
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What's going on, everyone and welcome to Saying it Out Loud. A podcast created to help people who want to learn more about fitness and life. Our podcast will help you build a foundation and turn fitness into a lifestyle and help you conquer your life. I will be your host, leo, and my co-host.
Speaker 2:Stephanie, and we're the owners of a HALA athletics coaching business built on our belief that clients aren't just a dollar sign and they're human. Now on to the episode.
Speaker 1:What's going on, everyone and welcome to 2024. New year, same months, same podcast, different day. Anyways, let's catch you up briefly on how our Christmas and New Year's are and maybe we won't get into a very important episode. We'll continue to turn from last year where I say every episode is important and we'll just keep going on from there. So Christmas time we went to the beautiful island of PR, her home.
Speaker 2:You're gonna say it, say it in Spanish.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to say it. Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2:Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1:Anywho, we went there to hang out with her family thanks to her mother for buying us the tickets and we went there for her high school, junior high, elementary, pre -k.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all the way above.
Speaker 1:Reunion and her class of how many people there are. 20 people were there. What was your class? 30?
Speaker 3:33.
Speaker 1:33 was her graduating class. It's crazy because here in Texas we'd be having like hundreds of people that was like a big class.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I met some cool people there and they're all doing crazy things nowadays with their lives. Some of them are actually here in Texas, which is cool Houston and Austin, and so when we drive up to Austin, because we're there like every month, seems like trying to hook up with some of them. But so we had a good time there. And then we went to two beaches, three beaches, four beaches Beached up. You gotta hit the beaches. That's the real reason we went there, yeah we needed the sun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely needed the tan, so we did that, had a good time Trying to think.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the biggest event was meeting her grandparents or her grandmother, because they had been estranged for six years, haven't talked and I never thought that I was gonna meet her. And then, out of the blue, she invited all of us to her house. They live in a mansion. If you're wondering, three stories, that's a lot A mansion. Yeah, three stories is a mansion.
Speaker 2:They got a pool.
Speaker 1:Go look at our stories. You know the whole thing.
Speaker 2:A mansion is what I used to live in.
Speaker 1:That's a mansion, that's okay. Anyways, that's a big mother for you house and we went there. They all speak Spanish. Obviously, I speak English and they try to speak.
Speaker 1:English. They try to speak English when they can, but I just sit there and enjoy the bantering back and forth. It's funny they hear banter in Spanish when you're so used to it in English and you can kind of tell when they're like going in on each other. Well, it was a fun time. I made what did I make? Pumpkin pie cheesecake. I hated it, absolutely hated it. They loved it. It was really good, I don't know how, really really good. And I made cinnamon roll cookies.
Speaker 2:Really good.
Speaker 1:Those were actually good, but I don't like baking over there because the sugar is different. Yeah, we make our own sugar, so the granulars are not as fine as the ones here, so it's doesn't bake as well. And then the cookie sheet I used it wasn't the Nordic wear that I'm used to, so it doesn't disperse the heat as much, so the cookies don't spread as much. Anyways, regardless of the situation, that still was going to bake because he's self-favored.
Speaker 1:Yeah, someone could make something for them. So her mother loves machi cakes, so we did that. And then she talked to her grandmother. It's six years, first time in six years, so that was a big deal. So that was pretty much PR right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:That was PR. It was a good time for Christmas. And then we came back, obviously for new years, and then we had a nice new year together. We didn't stay up and kiss at midnight like most people do. We were in bed by seven o'clock and no more day for us. And all the fireworks oh yeah, all the fireworks all night, just freaking going. But I got her a piano for Christmas, not an actual piano like a keyboard, so she could practice piano.
Speaker 2:And he got a stand mixer Fancy house.
Speaker 1:She got me a new stand next year.
Speaker 1:Stand mixer that he wanted, and then the in three new pairs of joggers, because have you seen my joggers? I look like I'm homeless. They all tore it up, but yeah, that was pretty much it. So had a good start to our new year and now here we are, january 11th August, back on the grind. Okay, all right. So, question of the day have you ever found yourself in a stressful situation? That's my technical question. Yes, we've all been there and we've all experienced it differently. Top of the day, you probably guessed it Stress, also known as cortisol. So we're probably going to use those two words interchangeable, interchangeable. I don't think that's the one I'm looking for In the changeable, changeable.
Speaker 3:That's interchangeable, you know the podcast is mainly about cortisol.
Speaker 1:Yes, but we're going to use those words interchangeable. So it's about cortisol, and a lot of people don't understand the inner workings of the body. So when they go through a stressful situation, they just think, oh, I'm stressed. But what they don't know is that there is a hormone in the background, known as cortisol, that increases every time you go through a stressful situation. So we all learned in school I hope so that we have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic.
Speaker 2:We're going to go over that. Yeah, nervous system.
Speaker 1:And this is what's controlling your response to stress, also known as fight or flight. So in this day and age, our stressors are prolonged. They don't just come to an end, like, for example, if I'm stressed out right now because it's something she did, we can put it into it in the same day, but if I'm stuck in traffic, I can't just put it into it, so I'm gonna be stressed longer, if that makes sense. So that's a little bit what we're gonna go over, and we're gonna get down into the dirty details of how actually how stress actually affects you on a molecular level and go over the inner workings of cortisol and tell you how cortisol works in the symptoms you could be experiencing, from pro-mono cortisol, high cortisol, low cortisol and all of that good stuff. So onto coach Stephanie.
Speaker 3:Okay, and so I'm gonna talk about just like brief overview and then specifically like some symptoms. Keep in mind, there are so many symptoms that you can be experiencing if you have an imbalance in cortisol, and again it can either come from high or low. They usually mimic the same.
Speaker 1:I mean it's such a little quick, because when we say imbalance, okay, there's a certain level of cortisol that your body it's going to be producing where you're at a neutral level, where you're not Experiencing all these symptoms. So there's not like a one-for-one number, like you're not supposed to have like 50 quarters all, and if you don't have 50 quarters all you're out of balance. But there is a mid-range where you're supposed to be at.
Speaker 1:It's very narrow, that's gonna keep you when it comes to blood work that's gonna keep you level. So when we say imbalance, don't think of I don't even know an example of the imbalance extremely high, extremely low numbers.
Speaker 3:Oh, again, this is a very, very, very narrow Time, like range that you're supposed to be at within blood work, and then if you're off by one, Experiences up and down, you're gonna be experiencing symptoms.
Speaker 3:So, and it's different, it's shown different. And the dust test, because cortisol there will show you like a 24-hour period. Oh yeah, 24 hour period. So within the day. Yes, we're supposed to have our ups and downs, like it's supposed to be higher in the day, in the morning, and then come back down at night because you're supposed to go to sleep. However, you can kind of see in the graph that it's not supposed to be super high, it's not supposed to be super low in the morning and vice versa. So that's very important.
Speaker 3:So cortisol in general Is produced by adrenal glands. It's located on top of each kidney. I'm gonna walk you through like the anatomy of everything after, but just so you know, like he said, plays a vital role in a lot of physiological processes and its response into stress. But and one of the Many symptoms I'm gonna kind of narrow it. I tried narrow it down as much as possible, knowing the people that listen to us. I Can cause weight gain, trouble losing weight or immune function, blood sugar imbalance, brain fog, chronic fatigue, aches and pains, salt and sugar cravings, insomnia, hormone imbalance, digestion issues, muscle loss and weakness, lullabido, always stress and anxious, lack of motivation, getting sick frequently, hair loss, sensitivity, caffeine, high blood pressure, water retention and more. That's still a lot and they're still more, but those things I feel like are the main things that a lot of people Experience when they come to us. I want to kind of end the chronic like belly fat too, so I kind of want to talk about those. So the adrenal glands sit right on top of your kidneys. It is part of the intricate HPA access. A lot of people talk about HPA Aide. Access is hypothalamic, pituitary adrenal access. Pretty much those three things are talking to each other at all times and they're literally Navigating, like how your body is responding and how they're supposed to respond. It influences HPA access, influences your thyroid and your hormones. So that's why you can either have a thyroid hormone imbalance because your cortisol is imbalanced or vice versa and they are in charge of secreting hormones like cortisol can effin or prenefrent.
Speaker 3:This episode we're just gonna simply talk about cortisol in general Chemical structure do you want me to talk about? Okay, so cortisol belongs to glue to glue co cortical class of hormones as chemical structure similar to cortisol and hydrochlorozone. On the dust test, if you see, you'll see a chart with cortisol and start with cortisol. Cortisol is pretty much like the byproduct. So we talked about an episode of thyroid. We did right, okay and and that and that episode. We talked about like T3 being the active thyroid hormone and reverse T3 being inactive. So pretty much cortisol.
Speaker 3:Cortisol tends to be the same cortisol is an active hormone, cortisol is an active form. So I see a lot of people and it's something that happened to me with the IID my body was just not using cortisol correctly. It was just kind of like making it into cortisol, making it into inactive. So that's why I was experiencing symptoms and I see happen that a lot. So support and to understand that it is produced, sensitized and released in the adrenal glands and Cortisol level, like what I said, follows a rhythm throughout the day. So that's something to keep in mind when you're doing a dust test, but something that we keep in mind when we're reading blood work. That's why we always tell our clients that they have to go literally as soon as you wake up. We should be going to get blood work done as as easy as it's possible for us to read it. We kind of get more information if our clients experience it later, whatever it is, so we can read it accordingly, but that's something that's very important.
Speaker 1:All right. So, like I said earlier, the fight or flight or the stress response that you experience, so the analogy that everybody always uses if you're on the wild.
Speaker 1:So, nowadays, if you're in Africa and a lion pops out, okay, immediately, probably don't matter who you are your heart rate is going to increase, you're gonna start sweating, your freaking people's are gonna dilate and You're gonna feel shaky. You're gonna feel like Boost of energy. That is your fight off-light Stress response, tested like we just talked about the adrenaline norbent epinephrine being released into your body along with the liver release and sugar into your bloodstream, so you can have immediate energy and, at the same time, all of the functions that are meant to like Keep you alive, like digestion and all the other little functions, are going to be Tone down because you need to get away from the situation. So all that resources are going to be dispersed to the immediate threat. So you're gonna be it's gonna all of us go to your hands, your legs, your brain so you can make quick decisions, so you can run faster, or you're gonna freeze, fight, fight, freeze, but that's your stress response. So if you ever been angry at somebody and you start shaking, that's your stress response. That's your quarters are going up, that's your adrenaline going up. So that is the fight of light now that is supposed to happen to get you away from the threat as fast as possible and once you're away from that threat, that so entire system is supposed to come back down to a base level where it started, and our Society? It does not come back down to a base level.
Speaker 1:So you are constantly pumping out that cortisol because your stress remains high all day. So say you have an issue at work and you're just pissed off all day at work. You hate it there. So you're just stressing, stressing, stressing, stressing, stressing. Now it may not be such a drastic Responses like a lion or something, but you're still releasing that cortisol all day, all day, all day. And then you come home crying kids, angry husband, angry wife, whatever the issue may be, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping. So I should pump it all day and that's when we run into these issues that people are experiencing. Now.
Speaker 1:Cortisol has it's Anti-inflammatory, okay, in the initial release, is supposed to bring down information, so everything that quarter they demonize cortisol because I was doing this job and his job is the stress response. So in the initial release, you know, and brings down inflammatory markers and it it releases the initial blood, blood, the glucose, into the bloodstream and then it brings down your cravings. It does all that initially, and then it's supposed to come to an end but it doesn't. So once it's prolonged, you know you have elevator blood sugars, which is an issue which leads into resistance, which we talked about in another episode and I just talked about it and inhibits the muscles and all the cells from intake in the glucose. And then it Moves and mobilizes all the fatty acids in your butt, in your butt Blood, and then you start getting them things guess what stored as fat.
Speaker 1:This is all on Afterwards, after the initial burst, and this is on the prolonged in scale. So initially, stress response good, we're talking about prolonged. This is all the stuff that happens on prolonged. And then you can end up metabolizing your protein. So what's that worry looking for Car, car Catabolism, start catapulting your protein and starts eating away all your protein in your muscle and also regulates your electrolytes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Modulates the water balance and electrolyte. That was.
Speaker 3:So we talked about one of the effects. Well, we talked about the sentence and effects. Another thing that's talked about a lot is Adrenal fatigue is something that's super controversial. If you talk to people that are just macro trackers, they don't believe in functional medicine etc. They don't believe that chronic adrenal fatigue exists, and when you do a Dutch test, you can see it clearly like what point You're like your cortisol super and balance throughout the day, and the further down or the further up it is, that means that you have, for example, further down, flatline pretty much, which a lot of people feel that way. Some people don't. Actually, they're like a stage for adrenal fatigue. There's different stages to adrenal fatigue, um, and it's the opposite happens as well when the cortisol is super high, but they're still experiencing the same issues. So it's something that we talked about a lot but, like, one of the main things is that you feel like you're flatlined, energy wise, all day, every day. Again, not everyone will experience that, so it doesn't mean that if you have energy throughout the day or whatever, doesn't mean that you don't have adrenal fatigue. But that is definitely gonna be something that comes with a lot of repercussions, but it's something that a Lot of people do do not notice can happen, but it's based out of chronic stress, which is what he was talking about. So I want to give like a brief, brief, in-depth so information on how the adrenal plans work, so people understand what's going on in your body.
Speaker 3:So when the adrenal plans are stimulated, mainly by a stress response, initial firefight etc. They're active. They are activated either your parasympathetic or your sympathetic nervous system. So both of those systems are part of your automatic nervous system. So an is which is controlled by your CNS, central nervous system.
Speaker 3:The an is works by helping your body regulate non-voluntary actions. The somatic nervous system is responsible for controlling voluntary actions. So somatic, like you moving your muscles. Non voluntary an is so like digestion or like just overall sleep, breathing etc. Stuff like that. The an is a bit into parasympathetic, sympathetic, which is what he kind of briefly talked about. Parasympathetic to control of wrestling the jaws, while sympathetic is flight or flight. So we're supposed to you briefly spent some time in the sympathetic fight or flight. When it comes to like an initial stress response, like what he was saying, trying to survive, whatever, also like workout wise, it will simulate that. But we're not meant to be staying at that state long term, which is what's happening nowadays, which means that your body's not going into parasympathetic and it's not being able to rest and digest and do all the other non voluntary things that we're supposed to be doing to pretty much function as a healthy human being, and that's why we have all of these symptoms.
Speaker 1:You can mentally put yourself into a sympathetic state. So if you're mentally chronically overthinking that stress, your body's not going to be able to differentiate between physical and mental, so it's going to enlist it a sympathetic response. So the elevator heart rate, the adrenaline, the people dilation, all that stuff you might not even feel it, because we've been so like used to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not to it.
Speaker 1:Nowadays to eat. So I had a conversation with a client of mine and he was. We were talking about you know how he's doing, and he's like. I was like how are you doing? He's like oh, I'm good, I feel normal. And I was telling him I said, okay, well, that's good. But are you feeling good? He's like Well, I feel better than I used to. And there's a difference in between how he used to feel and how he feels now. So him and I have two different normals. How I feel normally is completely different from how he may feel normally. So how he experiences his stress is completely different from how I experience my stress. So I'm I'm aware of when I'm stressed because it's not because I don't stress a lot.
Speaker 1:But he started to become aware of how stressed he used to be because he realizes how much I'm not unstressed by how much he's managed to stress now. So just be aware that you may not even be aware that you're stressed because you're so used to being stressed. So if stress is your normal, you want to go to tell when you're stressed until somebody else points out to you how stressed you actually are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the thing is like nowadays we have like back in the day, it's just simple survive. That's it. Like pretty much our only stressor now is like social media. It's like even reading books, it's watching TV.
Speaker 1:It's anything.
Speaker 3:It's literally anything. Dogs, like bills, work, whatever it is so like those things are, you're still reacting the same exact way because your body does not know that it's not a tiger, it's just a bill.
Speaker 2:Like literally just not know, the difference has never evolved.
Speaker 3:It's just how it is.
Speaker 1:The bill is all tigers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, so that's why it's important to understand that, like I get, a lot of people are like, yeah, I'm not stressed, or stresses or personality pretty much, and like those things like they'll never get better unless we slowly like manage everything, how they react to stress, their stressors, everything like that. So response to stress and how it works. So the hypothalamus what we're talking about, the HPA hypothalamus releases hormone called cortical tropin releasing hormone and arginine vasopressin hormone releases those days. These hormones trigger their release of adenocortical tropin hormone from the pituitary. Hpa then triggers adrenals to release cortisol, epinephrine, neuroepinephrine and aldosterone from your adrenal medulla and adrenal cordous cord cortex. This increases the mobilization of fat, amino acids and glycogen within your body and your body starts responding. So it's something to like.
Speaker 3:Keep in mind Aldosterone is something that works very closely with your electrolyte balance and your water balance. So that's why when you're super stressed and you have a cortisol imbalance, you're going to be retaining water like crazy. You don't feel like like if you were lean before, you don't feel like you have enough pumps or whatever. That's the reason why, um, yeah, and then when it's when you have like increased stress, you're going to have like high blood pressures and heart rate too. So, like when we have a lot of clients that come to us that have high blood pressure, it might not actually be like what doctors say, like oh, it's your food, or because you're consuming too much sodium, or whatever it is, that's really.
Speaker 3:That's really consuming too much, so yeah, yeah, um, it can be just a water imbalance or just because they're too stressed or you're in more than likely, you're not consuming enough potassium.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's not like method what we talked about. A lot of doctors will not do this. They don't even recognize dust test is a thing they don't recognize pretty much looking into cortisol as a blood marker either. And those are two things that you will use to determine if you have a cortisol imbalance and how to address it. They only recognize it when you're falling into Addison disease and Cushing's disease, which is like the very extreme once you're autoimmune condition, and that's when they're like, okay, well, you need to take like steroids or whatever it is, but those are very, very extreme things for them to recognize it. Other than that, if you have all the symptoms that we mentioned before, they're still won't recognize it as a cortisol imbalance whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I said this in previous podcast. But the things with the doctors is they don't diagnose you unless they can pinpoint an actual problem with you. So if you have a high cortisol imbalance, a high cortisol, if you have a cortisol imbalance and you go to the doctor it was a list of symptoms it's going to be harder for them to give you a diagnosis. So I'll probably give you an umbrella one and then prescribe you medication to help with that issue. Now us, on the other hand, we track trends over time. So have you come to us and say your cortisol is like 11, right and say 12 is when you start to reach a threshold of high cortisol Mm?
Speaker 1:hmm, we're looking at that and we're already doing stress management brain on your activity, cleaning up your diet to prevent you from getting to that 12. They won't do anything until you're at that 12. When you're at that 12, then it'll take action.
Speaker 3:Then I'm like it has to be like over 40, I believe, for them to recognize they as a high cortisol yeah, which is absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:Doctor, most doctors are reactive, so that we act to the problem. We are active and we actively address the problem before it comes a problem. And if it's already a problem, then we actively address the root cause of that problem and not just the medication at that symptom. So that's the difference between us and doctors. But regardless, we're going to talk about how to lower your cortisol. My cell factor is not effective cortisol levels. When it comes to lifestyle factors that affect cortisol, but these are how you lower your cortisol as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but anyway, we can talk about that.
Speaker 1:Okay, adequate sleep If you don't get enough sleep it's gonna affect everything, not just your cortisol levels, but sleep is how you balance your hormones. Okay, when you go through all your stages of sleep, each stage does something differently. So if you're missing stages of your sleep, say, for example For an example, say, light sleep is what balances out your, your cortisol If you're not getting enough light sleep, then your body doesn't have enough time to go through that full process Again your cortisol and metabolizing it and getting it back down to a normal level. So when you wake up in the morning, you get that natural peak so that peak could be blended or disrupted because you didn't get enough light sleep. And then we have nutrition. Yeah, so you want to have a balanced diet now, the standard American diet or the sad diet, whatever you want to call it. It's a big Problem with 70% of our population, probably more now over week, over week.
Speaker 3:Well, it's our hard for him today, over a week and 40% obese.
Speaker 1:The the food pyramid one is a scam. So if you're going off of the food pyramid, you're already wrong, but there are a lot of foods and this would. This is what we believe is that omega 6, the seed oils, is in the excessive amount of carbs. I Think 60% of the American diet is carb based Ultra processed carbs. Then you stack on the seed oils, the omega 6 and balance. Then you have a wonderful recipe for CRP going up and quarters all going up. Then you tack on all the mental stress that people are dealing with and all the freaking toxins and all the.
Speaker 1:Zeno estrogens in the toxic environment that we're dealing with, then you just, you're literally, we're all walking stress bombs, just Anything to set us off. And that's another sign of being too stressed, that if anything sets you off then you're too stressed. But and then we have exercise exercise.
Speaker 1:Like I said, 70% of the population is overweight, 40% obese, so there's not a lot of exercise going on in America and exercises been scientifically proven to release certain what's the word for metabolites into your bloodstream that literally Literally literally bring down depression and anxiety and help you sleep, just by Contracting your muscles. Okay, so exercise is extremely important and it gives glucose a place to be Disposed of. So if you're not exercising, you're gonna become insulin resistant. And once you become insulin resistant and that blood glucose levels starts to rise, guess what rises with that cortisol. Guess what rises with cortisol.
Speaker 3:Everything else but also with that Over exercising CrossFit hit, those costs a cortisol imbalance. Yes, so you don't want to do too much of exercise, so right, you're lifting Awesome, some cardio, great. But our bodies were not meant to be exposed to like hit classes, where bodies were not meant to be exposed to cross fit, that kind of stuff. It's also very important to keep in mind because when I see a lot of people that come to us with like across a background hey, cost background, etc. And they have all these symptoms, that's the reason why it's caused by that. So Some of that hormonal effects of cortisol. So, like he said, insulin cortisol, that kind of played a role. Cortisol poses insulin actions, so promotes gluconeogenesis and inhibits glucose uptake by itself. Prolonged elevations of extreme chronic stress will cause insulin resistance, which happens a lot. So a lot of people will kind of blame on your overeating and carbs. Does not necessarily mean that it's because of that. It might be just because you're over stressing all the time and that's why you're insulin resistant. Cortisol will play a role in sex hormones because it inhibits the release of gonna go not atropins go, not atropins impacting your reproductive hormone system. So when we're in flight or flight, our body's not meant to be reproducing, having sex, whatever it is like it's, it's our body. That's not what we want to do ideally pretty much, and the problem with that is that that lowers your hormones. So when you're in chronic stress, technically your body is just not producing enough hormones because of that reason. So it's gonna play a role within your periods, within your fertility, within your like low testosterone, so your male, etc. And and also, if your male is gonna be converting Incorrectly, so you're not gonna producing enough testosterone, it's gonna be converting into estrogen, making you more fat, having man boobs, all that stuff. It also inhibits the release of growth hormones, which affects the growth and repair process. So again, I see this happen a lot. After a while of cross-fitting, hit classes, etc. You get to a point that you're not building any muscle, you're actually wasting muscle. You start getting like skinny fat, etc. And that's why because your body can no longer keep up and it's not a nutrition issue, it's more so because of a cortisol issue. Your body just it's just chronically stressed and Most people that get to that point like you're not gonna.
Speaker 3:I Need them to understand that going back to CrossFit after you healed Might not be the best thing because your body already has that trauma and it's gonna respond the same way. So it's very important to keep that in mind. It also yeah, okay, cortisol resistance is also a thing. So I have clients that want to go back to the lythola cost them to have very high or very low cortisol. The problem with that is your body already has that resistance to it, like it has already respond that way and they cannot go back to that lifestyle. We have to literally forever alter your lifestyle for you to be balanced. It's something that's very hard for people to understand mentally, because they just want to go back to something that costs them to be dysregulated. But the faster you come to terms with that, the easier it will be for you to do things that will help you get to your goals physique goals, health goals, etc. Without harming yourself. We'll talk about the effects on the gut.
Speaker 1:So, like I said earlier, when you're doing your firefly in your site mode and your body is going through and just pressing all the nutrients to where you need to go, though one of the main things that is downregulated is digestion and everything that's going to gut, fertility, everything in that area. So cortisol, like I said, suppresses the release of digestive enzymes, slows down digestion. Now think about being chronically stressed out all the time, and then you wonder why, for example, you're constipated? Because your digestion is just so slow and you're not. You're probably not drinking water and you probably live on caffeine, you probably skip breakfast. There's a lot that plays into it.
Speaker 1:But your digestion is so slow because you're always stressed out. So you're constipated. And then you're chronically fatigued because your body cannot uptake the nutrients, because your digestive tract is f'd up and you're not able to uptake nutrients. So when you're not able to do those types of things, you run into other problems like leaky gut. So when you have a damaged gut, lining from your chronic stress, that's when food particles or molecules start to seep through the gut, lining into the bloodstream, and now they're seen as foreign antibodies in your immune system, unless it's a response. And now you're getting sick. You have random food intolerances, immune problems and things of that sort. Like I just said, your immune system is activated during the stress response, so an elevated presence of that. Then you start to run into the issue with autoimmune disease because your immune system is just freaking, attacking everything now because it's been elevated for so long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so with that it also can cause gut imbalance, the microbiome imbalance, which then causes like an overgrow.
Speaker 1:Which we see happen a lot. Yeah, it's probably.
Speaker 3:So the fact that the physique that we were talking about. So, apart from like over exercising it, causes a promosive breakdown of muscle protein into amino acids. So instead of you wanting even if you're consuming all the protein that you're supposed to, and getting your BCA, whatever it is, it's still going to burn through muscle. Pretty much. It's just going to see it as something that we're not, we're not meant to be. Building muscle. Pretty much it's not something that's like a luxury, but the first world luxury pretty much. So that's one of the first things that's going to go. And then we're going to start soaring more body fat. Because of that reason Also, your exercise performance in general is going to go down because your body is just not going to be recovering correctly, it's not meant to be getting stronger, et cetera. So it's something that's very important. And then the abdominal body fat. So, like you'll see, a lot of people have a lot of body fat in the lower stomach area. That's part of the reason why insulin resistance in that. Okay. So managing cortisol levels so these are the things like that we'll start with if we see that client has a cortisol imbalance, before we did blood work or before we get into protocols, because these things have to go into effect before we start protocol. However, cortisol in general, most of the time, once it's super dysregulated, these things alone won't actually fix the issue. It's just going to help if that makes sense. So one of the main things stress management. Depending on the client, then we'll kind of find something that can help them stress manage. Oftentimes we pull back a lot of their exercise, even the walking they can do, like breathing, meditation, breathing, whatever it is that can help them relax, depending on their personality. Sometimes that can be a lot. So it just really depends.
Speaker 3:Sleep important Sleep is like number one priority for a lot of people should be, honestly, if you're not getting enough sleep, you're not regulating your security and rhythm and then your body is going to think that you're stressed for something like you're trying to survive, et cetera. So something that's very important Nutrition balancing out your not only macros, because when the new clients come to me they're consuming way too many calories, nine up protein, way too many carbs or fats, et cetera. So balancing that out, but also making sure that they're eating correctly. So whole food base instead of all these processed stuff, because your body needs all these nutrients. You actually start regulating your body not thinking that you're stressed, you're trying to survive and then also exercise and recovery, so making sure that your training program is according to your lifestyle and what you're supposed to be.
Speaker 3:For some of my clients, when they're going through protocols, they can't lift whatsoever because their body's just too much for them. Some of my clients we managed to be able to keep some training in, but it's not what they used to be, and then some of the clients like they can't really go back to their crossfit, et cetera. So it's very important to be realistic with that. But in terms of protocol in general, we go through phases once we get blood work or dust, dust or whatever it is that we need, and then final stages. Pretty much is cortisol, which will be addressed by all these things healing the body before, but also supplement specific as well. You can't skip the steps. You can't skip steps of the phases. You can't just go straight into managing your cortisol Just things that need to go in effect first before we address your cortisol balance. All right.
Speaker 1:So that was a very informative podcast. Hopefully you guys learned a little bit more about cortisol and its importance and just how it affects you. Overall, and before we close this out, I want to ask you guys a question, honestly, over the past few years, therapy has been on the rise. Like therapy is all the rage and all the craze, and everybody talks about how to say love therapy and all. They just can't get enough of therapy.
Speaker 1:I've been going to my therapist for years, so why is it that people are quick to hire a therapist for their mental health but not as quick to hire a coach for their physical health? Because you can't have one without the other. What's going to happen if you're mentally healed but not physically healed? What's going to happen if you're not physically healed or mentally healed? So in order to be whole and have a great well being, you need both of them. So in 2024, make it your mission to have mental well being and physical well being. And if you need the physical aspect, the HALA athletics is a place for you where we focus, duly noted, on both aspects mental and physical to get you to your peak body.
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