Is Your Stress Hormone Cortisol the Missing Link To Healing Your Gut?
You may have heard how cortisol imbalances can affect your hormones or make you feel stressed out, BUT did you know cortisol is also an important hormone for gut health?
The New Year is a great time to reassess our habits and behaviors especially if you are on a gut healing journey. After all, our habits and behaviors have the greatest impact on the balance of our cortisol hormone and the health of our adrenals.
So let’s dive into the basics of our cortisol hormone and how it impacts the health of our gut.
Stress Hormones 101: Cortisol and the Adrenals
Cortisol may be referred to as our “stress hormone” but it plays a much greater role that just managing stress in the body. It plays a significant role in regulating digestion, immune function, hormones, blood sugar management, mood, inflammation and more. Cortisol is a master hormone in our body and its balance throughout the day plays an important role in our overall health.
While cortisol is crucial for allowing our bodies to adapt to stress, chronically elevated or depleted cortisol levels can have a negative effect on our health, especially in the optimal function of our gut.
Cortisol is produced and released from the adrenal glands, which are small but important glands that sit on top of the kidneys. However, the signal to produce cortisol starts much higher up than the adrenals - it starts in the brain, the hypothalamus to be exact. The brain communicates to the adrenal glands how much or how little cortisol our bodies need. This line of communication is also referred to as the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal). Optimal cortisol production is highest in the morning, stimulated by morning light to wake us up and turn on our daytime active energy systems. And it is lowest in the evening, to allow for melatonin to be expressed and for our bodies to feel calm and prepare us for restful, recuperating sleep. This high to low pattern of cortisol is called our diurnal cortisol pattern and if this pattern is thrown off, we can experience health symptoms as a result.
The greatest influence over our HPA axis and our diurnal cortisol pattern is our habits and behaviors around our circadian rhythm, sleep schedule, optimal caloric intake and exercise balance. The HPA axis and cortisol response are built around what we practice consistently and when we have consistent foundational health practices we see a healthier, more balanced HPA axis.
That is why when we are working to heal the gut, we must start with building a strong foundation. We teach you step-by-step how to build your strongest foundation inside of the Nourished Gut Guide (NGG).
What does Dysregulated Cortisol Feel Like?
How would I know if dysregulated cortisol is part of what is driving my digestive symptoms?
Recognizing the symptoms of cortisol imbalance is essential to better understand if this is an area you may need support and how it can be related to your GI symptoms.
It is important to now that cortisol symptoms are not always cookie cutter, so in our 1:1 practice the best method to understand the story of your cortisol and HPA axis is to test. We use the DUTCH test, a comprehensive hormone test that measures both sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone and testosterone as well as cortisol to understand the whole hormone environment.
But without testing, here are some big picture symptoms that you might experience if you are struggling with either low or high cortisol patterns.
Low Cortisol
Not feeling rested upon waking
Fatigue or feelings of burnout
Low mood or motivation
Lightheadedness, dizziness or fainting
Slow gut motility or constipation
Impaired immune function
Low appetite
High Cortisol
Feelings of anxiety, depression or panic attacks
Insomnia or difficulty winding down at night
Weight gain
Brain fog
Inflammation or pain
High blood pressure
Blood sugar dysregulation
Bloating no matter what you eat
Loose stools
Hair loss
Since our cortisol levels are regulated by circadian rhythms, our daily habits and lifestyle practices play a major role in maintaining optimal levels. The foundations of nutrition, sleep, movement, and nervous system work synergistically and are all essential to fully healing your gut.
You might be tired of us being a broken record, but the lifestyle tools we teach inside of NGG, is the medicine we have seen make a lasting impact on our clients. When clients strive for consistency versus perfection with these lifestyle tools, it allows them to fully heal their gut and resolve their GI symptoms for good!
Cortisol Imbalances Effect on Gut Health
Cortisol plays a significant regulating role in the digestive system. It is a master hormone that regulates our circadian rhythm, so it tells our body and our gut when to perform specific functions. If our cortisol is out of balance, the timing and smooth operating of our gut can also be out of sync leading to various digestive symptoms depending on if we are experiencing elevated or depleted cortisol levels.
When our body is in a stressed out state and experiencing elevated cortisol levels, blood moves away from our GI system reducing the energy and resources our gut needs for optimal health. This can lead to digestive motility speeding up causing loose stools or urgency for many. However if someone is experiencing depleted cortisol levels, they are more likely to experience constipation as cortisol plays a role in signaling the release of key neurotransmitters that lead to morning bowel movements and healthy motility.
Elevated cortisol can suppress optimal stomach acid production due to an elevated stress response impairing our nervous system settling into the digestive supporting “rest & digest” side of the nervous system. Having low stomach acid makes it more difficult for our digestive system to optimally break down food. This maldigestive experience leads to uncomfortable GI symptoms like gas, bloating, acid reflux, early fullness, constipation and the feeling that your food is sitting in your stomach. This low stomach acid environment can also lead to mineral deficiencies and more opportunity for infection in the lower GI system as stomach acid is part of our innate immune system protections.
Elevated cortisol can also break down the gut lining. This can lead to dynamics such as leaky gut or intestinal permeability that can produce symptoms such as bloating, GI pain, loose stools or constipation as well as increase in food sensitivities. We can also experience non-GI symptoms as well such as acne, eczema, rosacea, increase in an autoimmune condition or a higher risk of developing an autoimmune condition.
The thing about high cortisol, is that if it stays high for too long it eventually becomes low cortisol. It is a protective mechanism in the body, that until put back into balance will continue to dysregulate. Being in a prolonged state of stress is where we see an onset or worsening of GI symptoms. Inside of the NGG course we show you how to take a whole body approach to healing your gut.
High Cortisol & Constipation Case Study
Don’t take it from us, here is an experience of one of our clients and how supporting the foundations lead to supporting their overall health and fully healing their gut symptoms.
Our client came to us experiencing:
Chronic constipation
Bloating & gas
Fatigue
Poor sleep
Poor focus & ADHD
Anxiety
Irregular periods
Brain fog
Hair loss
After running several functional tests we identified that the first place we need to start in this client’s healing protocol is to support the elevated cortisol levels. This client experienced elevated cortisol levels most specifically in the first hour of waking which is called the Cortisol Awakening Response or CAR. This morning period gives us insight into the clients nervous system and suggests a high level of anticipatory stress that helps to explain this clients feelings of anxiety, brain fog and poor focus through the morning period and fatigue that sets in the afternoon as her cortisol levels quickly fall. This client has a history of stressful events that can be a significant contributor to cortisol dysregulation such as life events, low caloric intake, heavy antibiotic use to treat recurring infections and periods of over exercise.
Our first place we started was to strengthen her circadian rhythm, replete her depleted minerals especially focusing on sodium and potassium first and bringing in very specific nervous system exercises to help balance the elevated cortisol response in the morning. Within 2-3 months, this client was no longer experiencing brain fog, had more consistent energy throughout the day, was having a daily bowel movement with ease and her sleep has significantly improved. This client felt that she regained so much resilience in her body already even though we had a little more to work on.
This client did test positive for some inflammatory infections in the gut and past exposure to mold toxins which all played a role in creating more stress in her body. However, those first 2-3 months of supporting her cortisol and nervous system were imperative for us to be able to build up resilience so that we could address the deeper mold and infections. Without having supported this client’s foundations, trying to address those deeper dynamics would most likely have created more stress and exacerbated symptoms significantly. This is why no matter what dynamics present in the body, the foundations are always where we need to start especially when the dynamics involve cortisol and the adrenals.
If you are not focusing on the foundations of nourishing and supporting your cortisol and adrenals as part of your gut healing journey, healing your gut might feel like an uphill battle. Inside of the Nourished Gut Guide we guide you step-by-step through how to implement the essential foundations that are necessary to help heal your gut. Enroll today in this self-paced course to kick off your New Year right!
