If you spend a lot of time in the health and fitness world, either frequenting workout classes with friends or reading the latest articles and research studies online, you’ve likely heard of cortisol. Even if you don’t, you might have heard chatter at a family dinner or out for drinks with friends. One friend’s doing a cortisol detox. An influencer on tiktok is claiming they have cortisol face. But when it comes down to it, what is cortisol? Do you want more of it or less? Should you even care. Today, we’ll be tackling all these questions and more, but let’s start with the basics.
What is cortisol? WebMD describes cortisol as “nature’s built-in alarm system”, adding “it’s your body’s main stress hormone”. Cortisol is related to managing your stress, to alerting your body that you’re in a stressful situation. Basically, when you’re stressed, cortisol sends a signal through your body to let your body know, and then your body responds accordingly. Scientifically speaking, cortisol is a steroid hormone made by your adrenal glands.
That all sounds good, right? Not the stress, maybe, but let’s be realistic. We’re all going to experience some levels of stress in our life, even if the amount differs greatly from person to person. It makes sense that we’d want a way to alert our bodies to that response. But, we want to alert our bodies with an urgency that matches the problem at hand. Think of it this way. If there’s a fire in your house, you want the fire alarm to go off. If you light a match, you don’t. It’d be bad if the fire alarm was overactive and set off the alarm for every candle, but it would also be bad if the fire alarm never went off at all. This is sort of what we’re talking about when we talk about cortisol levels. Your cortisol levels can be too high or too low, and either can impact your health.
When everything’s functioning as it should, cortisol affects almost every organ in your body. Usually, once a reason to stress has disappeared, your cortisol levels return to their resting state. Health Direct explains “your body releases cortisol in a daily pattern, peaking in the morning and decreasing in the evening”. So when your cortisol is still at normal levels, it will fluctuate at the day and that should be totally okay. But, your cortisol levels can get out of balance, and when they do this can come with a variety of health issues.
If you’re experiencing too much stress of if you’re living in a state of constant chronic stress, these are a couple reasons your cortisol levels might be out of balance. Symptoms that come alongside with low cortisol include fatigue, unintentional weight loss, loss of appetite, and low blood pressure. Addison’s disease is a condition related with having too little cortisol.
On the other end of the spectrum, Cushing’s syndrome is when your body produces too much cortisol. High cortisol levels can lead to symptoms like high blood pressure, weight gain in the face (hence – cortisol face), high blood sugar, purple stretch marks on the belly, and muscle weakness in upper arms and thighs. If you suspect you have eith too high of cortisol levels or too low, that’s something you might want to talk to your doctor about.
You might be wondering at this point – is there something working out can do to stabilize my cortisol levels? Or infrared heat? Surely there must be something, or else why would you be reading about it on our blog, right? The answer, of course, is yes.
Cortisol levels can be affected by many things, including temperature and exercise. Yoga specifically is thought to be good for cortisol levels because of its ability to lower stress levels. Even Vogue is talking about Anti-Cortisol Yoga Poses.
And while research is still underway, scientists are looking into potential connections between infrared heat and cortisol levels as well. For example, a study in the Journal of Athletic Enhancement looked at the effects of far infrared heat on the recovery of power athletes, including analysing concentration of cortisol. The study took athletes through intensive strength, power, and technique trainings over five days. Some participants also used whole body infrared bags each evening to see if and how these bags affected their recovery. The study found an increase in testosterone/cortisol ratio, which suggests that far infrared heat can help accelerate recovery. Likewise, Floating Point explains in a study into infrared sauna bathing found reduced cortisol levels in men who had just exercised.
There are some studies, such as this one on post-exercise infrared sauna sessions which have found no correlation between infrared heat and cortisol levels, which is why more research is still needed. But, even this study still hasn’t pointed to negative effects, so worse case scenario you’re getting benefits from yoga but not the heat specifically.
While this area of research is still developing, one thing seems clear – cortisol levels can have a major impact on your health and it’s worth learning about how your workout routine affects these levels. Follow along with our blog to learn more about yoga’s effect on cortisol and for updated research on how infrared could help stabilize your cortisol levels as well.