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Now , I've done a lot of videos on cortisol , but I haven't done any videos on how to lure it with foods .
So that's the topic of today .
But cortisol is the main stress hormone .
There's another hormone like a compound called adrenaline .
It's not a true hormone .
It's a neurotransmitter and both adrenaline and cortisol work together .
And so if you ever look at the adrenal gland , you have an inside and an outside , the inside releases adrenaline and the outside releases cortisol and both of those compounds have crossover functions .
But in summary , they adapt the body to a stress state .
Now , the thing you need to know is that the body does not know the difference between mental stress and physical stress .
It reacts with these hormones and all the adaptations that occur with it for all stresses .
But mental stress and physical stress are not necessarily differentiated .
So nowadays , we're not being chased by a tiger , right ?
Trying to get our food , we are hit with a lot of chronic mental stress , which creates the same effect on these two hormones .
So today we're just going to talk about what foods you should be eating or avoiding to really optimize your stress hormones .
When we're dealing with the autonomic nervous system , we're dealing with a system that is on automatic .
And uh it's composed of mainly two things , the sympathetic fight or flight and the parasympathetic which is rest and digest .
So anytime that sympathetic system is activated by anything like mental stress , cortisol also gets activated .
So the the probably one of the most important things to know before we even dive into this is the condition called diabetic dis autonomia , which basically means your autonomic nervous system is messed up because of this high level of sugar in your bloodstream .
And that creates a lot of problems with all the different autonomic nerves , especially the peripheral nerves , the the nerves in your , your feet and your hands and other nerves too , like your vagus nerve that goes to your digestive system .
And so there's a lot of fancy words to describe those conditions too , like one being gastroparesis , another being diabetic autonomic neuropathy .
All that means is your nerves are getting messed up because you have high blood sugars because you are diabetic .
So the first thing to know is that sugar and starches really mess up that autonomic nervous system and they alter for the worse your cortisol as well as adrenaline .
In other words , sugar and starches keep you in a stress mode .
Now , of course , if you look at the opposite diet to a high sugar , high starch diet , that would be a ketogenic diet .
And there's an interesting study , I think it's the only study out there that looked at very low calorie and a low carb ketogenic plan .
And so they combine a low calorie , which could describe doing like ma one meal a day .
And you're also doing low carb , you greatly support the autonomic nervous system .
Ok .
So , in other words , if you have too much sympathetic nervous system , um it can help balance that out .
There's some other research that shows how fasting can support the parasympathetic nervous system .
And this is probably why people feel very calm when they start getting into this wonderful fasting state because the parasympathetic nervous system is kicked in .
And so when you go on a ketogenic diet and you cut out the carbs and you also combine fasting your mood changes , you can go from an irritable state or an anxiety state to a calm state because the shift in this parasympathetic sympathetic balance as well as the cortisol being lowered .
In fact , my cortisol was very , very high at one time and that was at the peak of when I was doing all the carbs , ok ?
Like I'm talking massive carbs to support this autonomic nervous system to help balance the stress state , you definitely need um B 12 and what foods would be high in B 12 , all the animal products , red meats , fish and organ meats because A B 12 deficiency can cause a problem with that part of the autonomic nervous system .
The next thing to talk about is this parasympathetic nervous system , that's your recovery system , the system that controls um sleeping and digesting and being calm and the neurotransmitter uh behind that system is called acetylcholine .
And so the precursor for acetylcholine is cline .
And guess what food has the highest amount of cline , you guessed it , egg yolks .
So eggs would be a really good thing to consume , to support the lowering of the stress and the lowering of cortisol and adrenaline .
But also you can get cline in organ meats , ok ?
Like liver , et cetera .
Other two key nutrients to support uh acetylcholine would be vitamin B one and vitamin B five .
Both of them .
And you can get both of those naturally from nutritional yeast as well as sunflower seeds and many other foods .
And this is why when people have that nutritional yeast , maybe they put it on their salad as part of the dressing with the olive oil and a vinaigrette or ranch whatever or they might just consume it in a tablet form .
But when they consume that nutritional yeast , they feel calmer about four or five minutes later .
But to have enough acetylcholine for your parasympathetics , you need B one B five and cline .
The other two key minerals that support the parasympathetics as well as calming down the sympathetics as well as lowering cortisol is both potassium and magnesium .
Both of these minerals are physiological relaxers .
Ok .
So they calm the body down and it just so happens when people go through a lot of stress , all that stress can actually deplete these two minerals leaving you deficient and so does sugar as well .
But taking more potassium and magnesium can calm you down .
It'll help to restate , it helps lower cortisol .
So the food that has the most potassium and magnesium together are deep leafy green vegetables as in big salads as in what I reckon men in a healthy keto plan .
All right .
The next nutrient that if deficient can create a big problem .
On the autonomic nervous system is vitamin D three .
So you can get vitamin D three free from the sun .
Ok ?
You can also get it from fatty fish like salmon while caught .
But what's unique about vitamin D and cortisol is this vitamin D is not really a vitamin , it's like a hormone and it has very similar functions to cortisol .
And when you raise cortisol , you tend to deplete vitamin D .
People that have high cortisol levels where they're stressed out , usually have low vitamin D .
And so to create a very similar effect .
Ok .
For stress , uh for inflammation or sleeping , you can take vitamin D .
So vitamin D can help uh modulate or regulate that cortisol .
Now , when we talked about the parasympathetic nervous system , that is um a part of the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve connects from your brain to your digestive system and other visceral organs as well .
So you can actually support and improve that vagus nerve by doing something to your gut by fortifying it with probiotics .
Ok .
Probiotic foods , which I will put some research down below in the description but sauerkraut Kiefer pickles Kimchi and probiotic supplements for the gut .
And that can support the parasympathetic , which could explain why some people sleep really good after they consume a probiotic or Kiefer before bed .
So that was six foods that support lowering cortisol and adrenaline to help you cope .
Now to be complete about this topic , there are other things you need to do to lower stress .
And if you haven't seen this very popular video on how to reduce uh cortisol using other methods than food .
Watch it .
I put it up right here .