Cortisol is a steroid hormone made by the adrenal glands in response to stress and low blood glucose. It's part of the body's hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis and it plays a really important role in regulating metabolism by promoting gluconogenesis and fat breakdown. It controls inflammation and the immune response. Obviously, it's very important for managing the stress response, increasing things like alertness and blood pressure. And it's important for maintaining the circadian rhythm. So, cortisol peaks in the morning and it declines throughout the day. So, you shouldn't think of cortisol as an inherently bad thing. It has its role to play. But chronically elevated cortisol from poor sleep or overtraining or chronic stress can lead to things like muscle loss, fat gain, especially visceral fat around your organs, lower testosterone, poor recovery, and worse immunity. I won't waste any more time. You're here to learn about how to lower your cortisol. So, let's get into it. There are lots of things you can do to lower your cortisol. One of the most powerful ways to manage cortisol is to get good sleep. Sleep deprivation or insomnia will put you into a high cortisol state. And it's not surprising because cortisol, one of its jobs is to kind of give you more energy, help you be alert and awake. And just as important as sleep is getting your circadian rhythm in check. Sleep and circadian rhythm go hand in hand. Cortisol follows a natural circadian rhythm, reaching its highest levels in the morning to help you wake up and its lowest levels in the evening. If you mess up your circadian rhythm by blasting your eyes with bright or blue lights at night or screwing up your sleep schedule, or eating and exercising at totally random times a day, your circadian cortisol release will be disrupted. Fix your circadian rhythm and your sleep by going outside to watch the sunrise and the sunset every day. You should spend as much of the day outside as you can so you get that natural sunlight into your eyes. Block light after sunset and use very dim lights in your house. Even a small amount of light suppresses melatonin and makes it harder to sleep, reduces your sleep quality. Eat your meals at regular times each day. This helps your body get into a regular rhythm. And the same with your exercise times. Try to exercise at the same time every day. Don't eat a big meal or exercise within 2 or 3 hours of bed because there's a good chance that will keep you awake and worsen your sleep quality. And lastly, keep your bedroom cool, dark, and silent for the best sleep. Good sleep and circadian alignment will improve your cortisol levels and also improve all of the other metrics that you probably want to work on like muscle growth and recovery, those kind of things. Moving on from sleep and circadian health, stress management techniques are super important. Chronic psychological stress is one of the main causes of elevated cortisol. There have been lots of studies on this. Techniques like mindfulness or meditation or relaxation are all very effective showing a moderate decrease in cortisol. Starting with mindfulness or meditation. These involve focusing all of your attention on just one thing like your breath. Usually it teaches you to be present and to really improve your focus and to identify mind wandering because your mind will wander and that's completely normal. All that matters is that you notice and identify the wandering and you bring your attention back to your breath. Mindfulness has been shown to lower baseline cortisol. So you're less stressed in general throughout the day and it also reduces the size of the cortisol spike that you experience during acute stress. So if you're in a stressful situation like you're stuck in traffic, a regular mindfulness practice will dampen that cortisol response so you're not so massively stressed in those moments. Mindfulness activates the parasympathetic or rest and digest nervous system which is the opposite of the sympathetic fightor-flight nervous system. So, it really calms you down. And a good addition to a mindfulness practice is breath work. Breathing exercises really tap into your autonomic nervous system and they're very effective at calming you down. So, this is really good in the moment. Breathing practices would be things like box breathing, which is where you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, and then hold for 4 seconds again and repeat that. Another one is the 478 technique. So, you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, and then breathe out for 8 seconds. Or you can just slow your breathing down to about six breaths per minute. It's pretty hard to stay stressed and really hyped up. When you're focusing on your breath, you're slowing your breath down. It kind of automatically calms your nervous system. And while you're doing these, focus your intention entirely on your breath, and it will basically be a mindfulness meditation practice. Yoga, Tai Chi, and other similar mindbody practices are very good as well. They've been shown in studies to reduce cortisol and other markers of stress. They're not quite as good as the mindfulness and the relaxation and breathing techniques, but they do work. And they're also obviously good for improving flexibility and balance and body awareness and focus. Laughter is actually very powerful for reducing cortisol, perhaps unsurprisingly. Laughing can reduce cortisol by over 30%. So, make sure you're not being a miserable git all the time. Have a laugh with your friends or watch some comedy or something. Other than these, just giving yourself some time to unwind, doing things like your hobbies, spending time in nature, hanging out with your friends and family, all of these are good things that will lower your cortisol. If you're not doing these things regularly, you're more likely to be dealing with cortisol problems. Moving on from stress management techniques, another way to lower cortisol is exercise. Now, in the moment, exercising will definitely spike your cortisol. It is a kind of stress. And some people see this as a reason to avoid exercising because they believe humans should avoid all forms of stress entirely and just live a totally sedentary inactive life devoid of anything challenging. But in reality, exercise within reason is a kind of hormesis. It's a good stress that produces desirable adaptations in the brain and body like lowering your baseline cortisol and improving stress tolerance. That is if it's done in moderation. Overtraining will elevate your cortisol. Most professional athletes, for example, train an insane amount and nearly all of them have elevated cortisol. For a normal person, you don't need to be doing double training days every day. Just provide the right amount of stimulus to kick off the adaptations that you want and then relax and recover. You don't need to be in the gym five or six days a week doing 2-hour sessions and 20 plus sets per muscle per week along with hard cardio. That's just a bit excessive for most people. But saying that, there is a part of me that wants to tell you to go hard while you're young and you're physically capable of recovering and handling it. I don't think life should be lived trying to avoid all stress or trying to avoid upsetting the perfect delicate balance of health or making sure that the number on the blood test is in the perfect spot. I really don't think that's what life is about. You should be resilient. You should be able to handle a bit of stress and push through and come out stronger. I'm not a fan of the fragile mindset of avoiding all harm and overoptimizing from a place of scarcity and fear. You should be aware of these stress management tools at your disposal. But your life really shouldn't revolve around avoiding stress and trying to achieve 100% peak health cuz really what is the purpose? I don't think the point of health is just to be healthy. It is to give you the ability to do something important with your life. Anyway, rant over. For exercise, you should just lift weights two to four times a week, do cardio two to four times per week, recover well, and don't totally destroy yourself in the gym. Now, let's talk about diet. What you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat can all affect your cortisol levels. You should avoid massive or prolonged calorie deficits. Fasting is definitely a stressor on the body. It can be a very useful tool for things like autophagy, and calorie deficit is good for fat loss and longevity. But these things do increase cortisol in order to kind of make up for the energy deficit. Deficits should be pretty gentle with slow and steady fat loss like 10 to 20% below maintenance calories with occasional higher calorie refeed days to signal satiety to your body. Carbs are very useful for lowering cortisol after a workout. They blunt the cortisol response and they obviously refill your glycogen stores. The body needs glucose. It can either get it directly from carbs or by the more energetically costly route of converting fats and proteins into glucose to make ATP. Either way, it can't really be denied that carbs do lower cortisol. You need to stay hydrated. Dehydration is a stressor that can increase cortisol. Don't overdo the caffeine. Hopefully, you've seen my last video on coffee. If not, give it a watch after this. Don't be drinking like over four cups of coffee every day. And don't have it too late in the day. Pay attention to your response to caffeine. If you get really jittery and it just doesn't seem to be good for you, then cut it down or cut it out entirely. Alcohol, even though it might relax you in the short term, can increase your cortisol and mess up your sleep, especially if you overdrink. It can even cause a state that's similar to Cushing syndrome, which I'll talk about a bit more later, but it's a disorder caused by prolonged cortisol exposure, and it leads to fat gain in the face and the abdomen, muscle weakness, thin skin, and easy bruising. But most people know you shouldn't be drinking a lot of alcohol if you care about your health. You need to get all of your vitamins and minerals every day. There are some that are especially important for managing cortisol like magnesium, vitamin C, and B vitamins. I give you the best most bioavailable sources of every vitamin and mineral in my ultimate nutrition guide, which I will link in the description. And lastly, a generally anti-inflammatory diet will lower cortisol. foods that are high in omega-3s, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding foods that mess up your gut. All of those are going to be good for cortisol. There are some more targeted tools that you can use to address cortisol as well. These can be pretty powerful. Adaptogens are natural substances that help the body adapt to stress and lower cortisol. The most notable are ashwagandha and rodeiola rosia. Ashwagandha especially has lots of evidence to support it. Definitely don't overdo them, though. These should be short-term tools used for a few weeks while you're addressing the root causes of your high cortisol before you cycle off them. You shouldn't take these like every day forever. Another substance is phosphatidal serereine. This is a phospholipid found in high levels in neuronal membranes. It's especially good for lowering the cortisol spike that's caused by exercise. It is found in some foods like egg yolks, but that's in very low doses. So, it is better to supplement this if you're going to use it. If you're in a very intense period of training or you're really stressed, this can be a useful short-term tool. As I mentioned a moment ago in the anti-inflammatory diet section, omega-3s are very useful and you can supplement them. I'm not a big fan of fish oil supplements because they can oxidize quite easily when they're exposed to light and heat and air. I prefer using foods that are high in omega-3s like fatty fish. If you're going to supplement, obviously get a good quality fish oil. Don't cheap out on this. And again, as I mentioned, magnesium. I highly recommend supplementing magnesium because it's not easy to get from food and most people are lacking it. You should take 300 to 500 milligrams a couple hours before bed which will help you sleep better, help you relax and lower cortisol. Eltheonine is an amino acid found in green tea. It can increase alpha brain waves which will calm you down and it can reduce cortisol and blood pressure under stress. It's a good idea to take 100 or 200 milligrams of eltheanine for every 100 milligrams of caffeine that you consume, especially if you get jittery from caffeine. There are some other herbs that have some evidence for calming and lowering cortisol, like lemon balm, chamomile, which is one of my favorite ones to have before bed. Valyan root, and holy basil. Hopefully, it's obvious, but you shouldn't use all of these tools I've just mentioned together at the same time in an attempt to nuke your cortisol. You do actually need some cortisol in your body. Make the lifestyle changes like good sleep, reasonable exercise, a nutrient-dense diet, and stress management. And then consider one or two of these supplements if you're still struggling with high cortisol. And for most people, just the lifestyle changes will probably be enough. And I just want to quickly touch on medical interventions for people with clinical cortisol imbalances. Cushing syndrome, like I mentioned earlier, is a condition of chronically elevated cortisol, usually caused by a pituitary or an adrenal tumor. Symptoms are rapid weight gain, especially in the abdomen, muscle weakness, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and mood disturbances. If it's caused by a tumor, you'll probably need a surgery to remove it. And if the surgery doesn't fully fix it, then medications can be used to suppress cortisol production like ketoconazole, metropone, or osteodraat. In cases like this, although natural remedies are good to assist, this is a serious clinical condition that needs some pretty drastic intervention to fully heal. On the opposite end of things, Addison's disease, also known as adrenal insufficiency, means you have a lack of cortisol. And this is usually treated with gluccocorticoid and mineralorticoid replacement drugs. And in some less extreme cases of hypercortisolism, doctors might use drugs temporarily like ketoconazol, which reduce cortisol as a side effect. So medical interventions are reserved for clinically diagnosed cortisol problems. And most of you guys will never need to worry about this. I'll put a quick summary on screen now of the main tools that I've talked about to lower cortisol. Remember, you don't want to completely tank cortisol to zero. It absolutely has a purpose in the body. But if it's elevated and you're chronically stressed and you think you would benefit from lowering it, the things that I've talked about here will definitely help you. If you want to learn about more stuff like this, sign up to my email newsletter where I send a few emails a week on health and performance topics to help you get the most out of your health, your training, and your cognitive performance. Let me know your favorite tools for lowering cortisol or relieving stress in the comments.