Following yesterday’s article, http://rosiebrownrn.com/this-anti-stress-formula-works/, a friend wrote to me:

“Wow—you are right. . . I can see why you are excited. . . what if your Cortisol is low?????”

Low cortisol may signify that the adrenal glands are exhausted, again stress being the major player.

Per Dr. David Zava:

Stress is what both high and low cortisol have in common. Stress hits the adrenals and, in response, they either collapse in fatigue and do not produce enough stress hormones, resulting in a functional thyroid deficiency, or they can go in the other direction where they’re pouring out cortisol and it’s causing overall hormone resistance, including thyroid resistance. Either way, low or high cortisol, and thyroid hormones become inefficient.

When cortisol levels are low, caused by adrenal exhaustion, thyroid is less efficient at doing its job of increasing energy and metabolic activity.

David Zava, Ph.D. is a biochemist, breast cancer researcher, published author of multiple professional research papers, and the laboratory director of ZRT Laboratory in Portland, OR, which does state-of-the-art saliva hormone assay and blood spot testing.

This may be a good time to review the interconnectedness of the adrenal glands (which secrete cortisol in response to stress) to all the other body hormones.

Per Dr. Zava:

“A physiologic amount of cortisol—not too high and not too low—is very important for normal thyroid function, which is why a lot of people who have an imbalance in adrenal cortisol levels usually have thyroid-like symptoms but normal thyroid hormone levels.

Too much cortisol, again caused by the adrenal glands’ response to excessive stressors, causes the tissues to no longer respond to the thyroid hormone signal. It creates a condition of thyroid resistance, meaning that thyroid hormone levels can be normal, but tissues fail to respond as efficiently to the thyroid signal. This resistance to the thyroid hormone signal caused by high cortisol is not just restricted to thyroid hormone but applies to all other hormones such as insulin, progesterone, estrogens, testosterone, and even cortisol itself. When cortisol gets too high, you start getting resistance from the hormone receptors, and it requires more hormones to create the same effect. That’s why chronic stress, which elevates cortisol levels, makes you feel so rotten—none of the hormones are allowed to work at optimal levels.

When cortisol is high, the brain also is less sensitive to estrogens. That’s why you can have a postmenopausal woman with reasonable amounts of estrogen, but when you put her under a stressor and her cortisol rises, she’ll get hot flashes, which are a symptom of estrogen deficiency. She really doesn’t have an estrogen deficiency, the brain sensors have just been altered. If you then drive the estrogen levels up with supplementation to treat the hot flashes, she’ll start getting symptoms of estrogen dominance like weight gain in the hips, water retention, and moodiness. And the hot flashes usually don’t go away.

This is why you often can’t effectively treat someone with hormonal imbalance symptoms such as hot flashes by simply adding what seems to be the missing hormone, be it thyroid, progesterone, estrogen or testosterone. If your cortisol is chronically high, you’ll have overall resistance to your hormones.”

The bottom line is this: stress is often the root cause of hormone imbalance. One of the very most effective things you can do to keep your hormones in balance is to manage your stress. For me, one of the best aids I have found is a product called Confianza produced by a company called It Works. It really does work – see my web site www.beautyandfreedom.itworks.net for more information.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 6:23 am and is filed under Adrenal Stress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.