What is cortisol

Cortisol is a steroid and this is , what you might hear about in the news as being a stress steroid .

Cortisol is increased at times of stress for your body , and by stress , I mean severe illness or sickness , or some of the other types of stress that you hear about , like stressful situations at work .

This is kind of one of the fight or flight hormones in the body .

When there's too much cortisol , an excess amount of cortisol for too long can cause major changes in your body's metabolism .

It can cause diabetes , it can cause obesity , there are several different things that it causes .

When there's too much cortisol , we have to look for causes of why there's too much cortisol .

One reason is for a tumor in your adrenal glands that we would then remove surgically .

Another reason is that you have too much of a hormone from your brain telling your adrenal glands to be overactive .

That one is not as easily treated with surgery though .