Bast being a woman and having a social media account, to have heard of it as the cause of (almost) all evil: cortisol, “the stress hormone”. At least judging by the rants of influencers and content creators, it is responsible for: weight gain and anxiety; difficulty sleeping; acne; concentration problems; hair loss… These are just some of the problems that are placed upon him, to be fought by dint of (expensive) supplements, superfood smoothies, ice baths and so on…
Yet, cortisol is not at all the “bad guy” portrayed by social media. It is produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress, it is true, but this does not in itself make it an enemy, precisely because it is necessary for an adequate and effective response to what we experience as a threat. It was he, in times long gone, who saved us from predatorsand for this reason today it happens that we rear up when we have to face a difficult moment in the office. But continues to remain useful for facing everyday challenges.
«Cortisol is produced when the muscles need a surplus of energy and it is necessary to silence the pain that could come from a blow, a wound» explains Annamaria Colao, past-president of the Italian Society of Endocrinology. «To this end, activates endocrine pathways which release endorphins with analgesic effectworks on the immune system by helping to reduce inflammation and also acts on the metabolism, because it must improve muscle performance: to make the muscles more efficient it promotes the transformation of all the other nutrients into sugars, so as to use them as “gasoline”.
A reliable energy supplier
This hormone it is also the “emergency warning light” that comes on whenever something threatens our physical or mental health for longer periods of timefor example due to an infection or bereavement, and which helps us react. It has a decisive role in modulating the presence of sugars in the blood as needed and in regulating blood pressure: when it raises it it is so that all the muscles receive the nutrients and oxygen they need to function at their best. And it is also the hormone that “turns us on” in the morning: every day we have a cortisol peak right before waking up, to face the start of the day by providing immediate energy to the body.
Photo of a young woman lying in bed at night, wide awake with a case of insomnia
In short, it is a necessary hormone, but accusations are raging on the web: if we wake up between two and four in the morning it’s cortisol’s fault, the same goes if we feel tired in the morning and hyperactive in the evening, if our mind is clouded and it’s difficult to make decisions. Not very specific symptoms which, according to the endocrinologist, cannot be attributed only to an unspecified cortisol imbalance.
But above all, is it really his fault if we are victims of anxiety and stress? «No, the opposite is true: cortisol increases if we are anxious and stressed, the opposite does not happen» replies Colao. «When we say “you are stressed, you have too much cortisol” we are not stating something that is necessarily true: it can only be true in the case of chronic stress».
When we are always under pressure we live in “alarm” mode and this is really reflected in an increase in cortisolwhich can promote imbalances related to chronic stress. But this is only part of the picture: it is true that a high level of cortisol contributes to disturbing sleep; however, it is not the only one responsible for the feeling of tiredness, irritability or difficulty concentrating typical of those who are constantly stressed.
As Nadia Maalin, a psychologist at Birmingham City University in England, recently stated, «The right key is to fight chronic stress and the reasons that cause itthreatening physical and mental health, don’t think that acting on the levels of a single hormone is enough to solve everything and perhaps even improve the aesthetics of the body and face.”
The weight of the hormone on the scale
Cortisol, in fact, has been put on the grill by “healthfluencers”health influencers, also and above all as the main culprit of weight accumulation: water retention or “love handles”, but also always craving sweet and savory foods or a slightly swollen face, are all considered unequivocal signs of excess cortisol.
From a metabolic point of view there is some truthbecause, as written above, the hormone transforms proteins and fats into glucose to have energy ready for use. Then, the sugars that your muscles don’t use are stored as fat. If your waistline gets bigger, however, it’s again not all this hormone’s fault.
«You don’t get fat or feel hungry all the time just because you have high cortisolapart from pathological situations. This is also true in premenopause and menopause, when weight gain depends mainly on the increasingly marked lack of estrogen and the changes that this induces on the metabolism: cortisol may, if anything, be a supporting role” says Colao.
Oversimplification instead runs on social mediawhere according to Camelia Hostinar, of the University of California at Davis, hashtags like #HowToReduceCortisol and #CortisolLevels have over 140 million views and promote the idea that cortisol is “bad”; corollary, measuring its levels is at least necessary, even more so from middle age onwards.
Another false myth not to be believed: «It doesn’t make much sense to measure cortisol, first of all because the dosage is complex and not all laboratories are equipped to make a reliable assessment, secondly because the test should only be performed if there is a concrete suspicion that there is a real pathology due to excess or deficiency of the hormone” explains the endocrinologist. In other cases, it is hardly reasonable to hope that the cortisol dosage and above all the remedies that are popular online, such as the “cortisol cocktail” to be taken in the morning, which mixes lemon and orange juice with salt and magnesium powder with viral success, or the 30-day social challenges in which, among other things, you give up morning coffee to rebalance the hormone and find a flat stomach.
Gwyneth and the factory of false myths
It is best to be wary of overly simplistic solutionswarns Colao. Rather “Better to focus on physical exercisewhich in addition to being fundamental for weight management and muscular well-being, is also a very powerful and underrated mood balancer, which fights anxiety and stress.”
However, we should not give too much credit to the various “cortisol resets”.also because they will soon probably be overtaken by some other social trend: blaming excess cholesterol is simply the other side of the coin of the “adrenal fatigue” that was all the rage a few years ago, when even Gwyneth Paltrow on her (discussed) wellness site Goop had launched a supplement to solve it.
The theory, then, was that the same symptoms that today depend on too much cortisol were the direct consequence of chronic stress which on the contrary “exhausted” the adrenal glands that produce it, leaving us short of the hormone. Endocrinologists have never officially recognized adrenal fatigue as a real pathologyjust as they now point out that the cortisol reset is a social myth.