What is cortisol, and why does it matter?

So let's talk about supplements that can help regulate cortisol. It's important to remember that supplements work best in conjunction with lifestyle changes, number one being ashwagandha. It's an adaptogenic herb and has been shown to lower cortisol levels and help the body manage stress. Study published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine found that Ashwagandha sometimes I always tongue-tripped over that one significantly reduced cortisol levels in chronically stressed adults. Number two omega-3 fatty acids. You've heard me talk about this before. There was an episode from Orlo. I had just an amazing conversation with them about their plant-based, fully sustainable omega-3 fatty acid, which they farm in a very carbon neutral way, which is also very cool.

Now, it didn't happen overnight, but within a matter of weeks I noticed significant changes. One listener shared how they started practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation and how that completely changed their stress and overall health. More importantly, it just affected their energy. They started to wake up with more energy, feeling more motivated to actually do the things that required energy of them. And this is the crazy part Sometimes you got to spend energy to get energy. Have you ever gone for a workout and then left that gym feeling better than you were when you got there, maybe feeling more energetic, more focused, more alive, like you can do something else?

It basically looks like a big honking rainbow, usually on top, you know, some cedar plank salmon. Oh yeah, I tell you I could eat it every day, all day, love it. Moving on to number three, I'm hungry though, but anyways, number three, all right, cut down on stress. Chronic stress is a killer, quite literally. It can lead to serious health problems like heart disease and diabetes. Meditation and mindfulness have been my go-to strategies for years now, and research from Harvard shows that regular mindfulness can increase your lifespan by reducing stress and its harmful effects. And we know what the harmful effects of stress I mean I think we recognize it impedes our sleep, it affects our psychological energy or spiritual energy I mean every aspect of us, right Also leads into additional cortisol, which is a very important stress hormone.

Welcome back to another episode of the 2% Solution. I'm your host, Dai Manuel, and today we're discussing a crucial topic for our health and well-being understanding cortisol how to thrive and not just survive. You might have heard of cortisol as the stress hormone. Did you know that chronic high levels of cortisol can wreak havoc on your physical, mental and even your spiritual health? That's right. When cortisol is out of sync, out of balance, it can lead to everything from anxiety and depression to weakened immune function and even spiritual disconnection. So if you've been feeling overwhelmed, constantly tired or uninspired lately, this episode is for you. Let's explore what cortisol is, its role in our health and, most importantly, how we can regulate it to start thriving. All right, let's get into it.

Moving on to question three how do I get rid of stubborn belly fat? Now, that's stubborn belly fat. We all have a story to tell, don't we? Stress, though, is probably the biggest and number one villain here Releasing hormones that love to hang out in your midsection. Cortisol is a prime one, and cortisol is a good steroid. Okay, it's a hormone, I should say, but we also see people get cortisol shots, usually to help with dealing with excess inflammation and sometimes chronic pain or pain. And so here's the thing. Cortisol is a wonderful hormone and it does have this dampening effect when it comes to pain and it helps us really amp up when we need to amp up.

So it's not just in your head. Stress really does lead to overeating. It's a biological response designed to help you cope, but it can backfire if it becomes a habit. All right, story time. You know I like to tell some stories. A few years ago I mean more than a few years, actually, now I think it's going back almost a decade Some of you may be familiar with some of my stories. I've talked about me being hospitalized through burnout and then also discovering I have an autoimmune condition. And just you know, there's been some pretty big health scares. But you know I look at them as more as wake up calls. They were these moments bringing my awareness to something that I obviously wasn't paying attention to. And as soon as I started paying attention to it and started changing certain things changing certain foods and how I moved, how I recover things slowly corrected itself.

Acting like a soothing melody amid the chaos, the serotonin boost provides a fleeting sense of relief and comfort, much like a lull in the storm. But here's the catch Just like a temporary lull doesn't end a storm, these comfort foods don't resolve the underlying stress. They offer a brief moment of respite, but the storm of stress continues to rage and the cycle of stress eating perpetuates. But don't worry, it's not all doom and gloom. The good news is that by managing stress and becoming more mindful of our eating habits, we can break the cycle. Think of it as learning to become your own conductor, gradually taking control of the orchestra and restoring harmony. By incorporating stress, reducing techniques and mindful eating practices, you can quiet the disruptive drums of cortisol and bring harmony back to your body's orchestra. So what can you do to stop stress eating and stop NIMH?

More importantly, what I've been doing to manage my cortisol levels more effectively, which has had a really big shift, especially on how much fat I retain as well as inflammation I retain in my body, and so if you want more on that, I'll include in the show notes the link to the cortisol episode. So if you want to do more of a deep dive on that, I definitely invite you to go check it out, because when we're stressed, your body releases cortisol, which triggering effect of cravings for, like sugary, fatty and often salty foods. These comfort foods temporarily make us feel better, usually by boosting some of those chemicals I was referring to serotonin, dopamine. These are like the feel good chemicals in our brains. Imagine your brain as a thermostat trying to maintain a comfortable temperature.

Most men who tell me they are exhausted are not sleep deprived. They are running a stress response that never gets switched off, and the body has quietly downgraded them to save power. FIG. 01 The part nobody photographs. I have had this conversation with more men than I can count. It usually arrives about ten minutes into a first call, in roughly the same words. I'm not unhealthy. I'm just tired. All the time. Then comes the list of things they have already tried. Going to bed earlier. Cutting coffee after noon. A sleep tracker. A blood panel their doctor called unremarkable. Sometimes a second panel, from a private clinic, because the first one felt like it missed something. Here is what I have learned from twenty years on my side of that call. Most of these men are not sleep deprived in the way they think.

Energy now, maintenance later. Run that for a decade and later arrives. That is the fatigue. It is the interest payment on ten years of borrowed energy. Gallup's most recent global workplace data puts 40 percent of employees experiencing a lot of stress on any given day, with only 20 percent engaged in their work. Those two numbers together describe a very specific exhaustion: high activation, low meaning. It is the most draining combination there is, and it is the water most of the men I coach have been swimming in since their early thirties. Nobody arrives at a coaching call saying they have chronic autonomic overactivation. They arrive with a pile of separate small complaints they have never connected. Not needing the bathroom. Just awake, jaw tight, with a work problem already fully loaded.

This is the tell, and it is the one that finally makes men do something. Any one of these means very little. Five at once is a pattern, and the pattern has a name. Partly, and I want to be careful here because this gets oversold constantly, including by me in older writing. The mechanism is real. Cortisol released under stress affects where the body stores fat, favouring the abdominal cavity, and visceral fat is the metabolically dangerous kind. It is the fat associated with insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk, not the kind you can pinch. Here is the honest caveat. The best-documented human work on stress-induced cortisol and central fat, including Epel's research at UCSF, was done primarily in women. The mechanism is well described there. The evidence base in men is thinner, and anyone telling you confidently that stress explains your gut is going beyond what has been measured.