All posts tagged cortisol

STRESS: How It Affects Your Health

We’ve all heard it before.  Stress (and its associated hormone, cortisol) wears us down.  It lowers immunity.  It makes us unhappy, tired, angry.  It has us in a constant state of “survival mode.”  And it could very well be the source of all illness.

Let’s take a look inside the body for a minute.

The body is an amazing, intelligent machine.  It has healing powers rivaled by nothing in science or modern medicine.  Your body knows what it has to do, but is typically hindered stress and/or energetic imbalances.

In order to understand stress’ affect on the body, one must understand the autonomic nervous system, which breaks down into two types: the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).  The PNS is responsible for the growth, healing, maintenance, and repair of bodily systems, without our being conscious of it.  For example, when you eat a carrot, you don’t think much more about it–how it is being handled in the stomach, passed through various parts of the digestive tract, and having its nutrition extracted and sent to appropriate places in the body.

The SNS is different.  Think of it as responsible for your “fight or flight” response; its like an alarm bell.  There’s a fire in an office building, and everyone panics, dashes about, and either tries to put out the fire, or gets away safely.  Normal office routines don’t continue.  Papers are not being filed, calls are not being made.

When the body is in fight or flight mode, things don’t run the same way.  Blood flow changes; there is less to the stomach for digestion, less to the kidneys and liver for cleansing, less to the frontal lobes of the brain for creative thought.  The majority of the blood is directed to parts of the body that need it the most, in order to save your life (or family, or house, or career).  Blood, its purity, its nutrient density, its concentration of red and white blood cells determines a major part of optimal health and functioning (and how efficiently blood is pumped, by a well trained heart and unobstructed arteries).

This redirection of resources, over a short term, is necessary for survival.  But over the long term–due to periods of constant stress–it is detrimental to health.  Lack of blood to the organs can ruin the immune system.  It doesn’t matter how many good things you put in; if you can’t make good use of them, they are wasted.  When the body is in fight or flight mode, cells don’t receive nutrition, sufficient oxygen, building blocks, etc.   The cells also don’t eliminate waste products.  Everything stops, except for what is necessary to “survive.”

Our fast-paced, high-tech, high-speed modern lifestyles are wearing on the health.  Much of technology, which is supposed to make our lives easier, is making them busier, more jam-packed, more stressful.  There are more things to worry about, more demands for performance, for our time.  That’s stressful!

The name of the game is stress management.  It’s about work-life balance.  It’s about taking time for yourself.  It’s about winding down.  Rest, relax, recover.

Allow your body to heal.

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by demogirl06 on December 9, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Fitness & Lifestyle, Weight Management: Chemistry
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Posted by demogirl06 on December 9, 2011

http://mariamaestevens.com/2011/12/09/stress-how-it-affects-your-health/

Your Hormones & How They Respond To Exercise

Everything boils down to chemistry.  Energy, emotions, fitness…

Interested in which hormones are affected by exercise?  Here’s a brief summary:

Growth Hormone (GH) facilitates protein synthesis in the body.  as an anabolic agent, GH promotes growth, and cell reproduction and regeneration.  If, for example, you have an intense workout, your pituitary gland will produce more GH to accelerate recovery.  GH affects are mediated by insulin-like growth factors (IGF-1 and IGF-2), which are synthesized in the liver as a result of GH release during exercise.

Antidiuretic hormone (ADH), also called vasopressin, reduces urinary excretion of water.  By conserving water during exercise, it helps prevent dehydration.

Epinephrine and norepinephrine are released by the adrenal medulla as part of the sympathetic response to exercise (the “fight or flight” response).  These hormones play two major roles: to increase cardiac output (the amount of blood pumped by the heart) by increasing heart rate during exercise, and to cause glycogenolysis in the liver (breakdown of glycogen), so that more glucose (sugar) can be release into the blood stream. (Note:the body produces more norephinephrine when you eat protein-rich foods).

Aldosterone and cortisol are two main hormones released by the adrenal cortex.  Aldosterone limits sodium excretion in the urine so as to maintain electrolyte balance.  Cortisal is a glucocorticoid and plays a major role in maintaining blood glucose by release sugar into the bloodstream by the process of gluconeogenesis; cortisol, in other words, increases blood sugar.  Cortisol also inhibits the production of serotonin, possibly increasing cravings for carbohydrates (needed to produce serotonin).  Due to these factors, elevated levels of cortisol can lead to emotional eating.

Insulin and gluacagon are both secreted by the pancreas, but have opposite effects.  Insulin is released in order to remove glucose (sugar) from the blood, and to restore blood sugar levels down to normal.  But, when blood sugar is too low, glaucagon is released in order to release free fatty acids from adipose tissue (fat storage sites) so they can be used as fuel instead.

Testosterone and estrogen are the primary male and female sex hormones.  Testosterone is responsible for more “masculine” effects in the body, including anabolic (muscle-building) effects.  Estrogen is responsible for more “feminine” characteristics and play an important role in bone formation and maintenance.  High levels of chronic exercise training have demonstrated decreases in estrogen.

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by demogirl06 on November 15, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Weight Management: Chemistry
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Posted by demogirl06 on November 15, 2011

http://mariamaestevens.com/2011/11/15/your-hormones-how-they-respond-to-exercise/

Brain Chemistry and Hunger: What’s Making You Want To Eat?

Gluttony is a plague on Western society.

…But this isn’t exactly news.  We all know the “SAD” diet (Standard American Diet) is a disgraceful binge on saturated fat, trans fat, high-glycemic carbohydrates, refined and de-natured foods.  This is a recipe for fat bodies and poor health.

Oh, yes, and there’s plenty of advice about how to eat less. You’ve heard it before:

Chew your food thoroughly.  Don’t eat in front of the TV.  Avoid high GI foods that trigger cravings.  Chug a glass of water before your meals.  Avoid “grazing.”  Don’t dine out so often.  Give yourself “small allowances,” but stick to your plan!  Give it time, your stomach will “shrink” and you’ll feel more full on less food.

Blah!  Blah!  Blah!

This helps a few, but I’m interested in knowing why, when I try to re-duce my own calorie consumption (even modestly), it feels like some kind of switch has been flipped, and my brain screams, “Eat, dammit!  Eat everything you can find!”

Hunger is an extremely complex subject–too vast to cover in a single article.  But I would like to address the aforementioned “switch.”  The chemistry behind it…

Hunger and Brain Chemistry

Everything boils down to chemistry.  Your emotions, your metabolism, physiology.  Your relationship with food is one of chemistry.

1) Serotonin: The happy neurotransmitter!  It regulates mood, sleep, muscle contraction.  You know what else?  Hunger! It suppresses it.  Most of your serotonin is located in your GI tract, where it regulates intestinal movement.  This chemical is released when you eat carbohydrates.

Your overall diet has the greatest influence of your level of serotonin.  The amino acid tryptophan is the building block of serotonin, but ingested through protein-rich food, tryptophan has a hard time making it past the blood brain barrier, due to competition with other amino acids.  When carboyhdrates are consumed, thereby raising blood sugar and insulin release, those competing amino acids get directed to the muscles, leaving tryptophan free to do its work in promoting serotonin.

2) Dopamine, Norepinephrine: These neurotransmitters influence your level of alertness, which includes your ability to concentrate and your reaction times. Your body produces more dopamine and norepinephrine when you eat protein-rich foods. Proteins are chains of amino acids, and the relevant amino acid here is tyrosine.

That’s nice to know, but what’s it all mean?  Dopamine is an extremely powerful neurotransmitter, associated with all kinds of mood disorders and addictive behaviors.  It’s the “reward” chemical.  Your diet-related addiction to dopamine can have a severe impact on your eating patters–particularly in matters pertaining to hunger vs. satisfaction!

Hunger is physiology; satisfaction is psychology.

We love dopamine.  There’s no way around it.  And we love foods that contribute to our levels of dopamine.  Unfortunately, eating lots of protein-rich foods (filling you up temporarily) actually inhibits your gains in serotonin (the appetite-suppressing chemical). The body has a very difficult time deciding whether to digest carbohydrates or proteins, because these different foodstuffs require different PH balances in the stomach.

Ahh, but combine protein and carbohydrates (ice cream, anyone?) and you have a nuclear weapon against your brain. On the one hand, the serotonin derived from the sugar will give you a life, and on the other hand, the opioid behavior from the dairy protein with sedate you wonderfully.

3) Ghrelin: This is the only known “hunger hormone.”  It is extremely persuasive.  In fact, it is more persuasive that any of your satiety hormones.  Ghrelin is produced when the stomach is empty.  It says, “Fill me!”  Individuals who have had gastric bypass surgery end up with lower levels of ghrelin, because the surgery reduces the amount of ghrelin-producing tissue.

Production of ghrelin is part of your circadian rhythm (your “body clock”) and peaks and dips many times throughout the day.  Because ghrelin is strongly associated with an empty stomach, it gives one a compelling reason to eat smaller amounts, more frequently, ultimately regulating ghrelin’s influential power, not to mention your blood sugar (low blood sugar also triggers ghrelin release).

4) Neuropeptide Y: Watch out for this guy.  NPY’s effect is a desire to increase food intake, and promote the conversion of energy into fat storage. What causes elevated levels of NPY?  Stress, a high-fat and high-sugar diet, and high levels of abdominal fat.

This is huge!  Think about it.  Most people stressed out about losing weight want to stop their high-fat, high-sugar diets!  And yet, as a result of their lifestyle, they have uber-high levels of NPY circulating in their bodies, encouraging them to eat all the time!

5) Galanin: This is a neuropeptide is associated with your intake of fatty foods.  When you eat fat, you produce more galanin, and galanin in turn increases your desire for fatty foods.

Oh, and it gets better.  Alcohol consumption increases galanin, and galanin also increases your desire for alcohol. See “Why Alcohol Makes You Chubby.”

6) Cortisol: This is one of the most widely-reference culprits.  With good reason.  Cortisol is the “stress hormone,” released by the adrenal gland.  Stress is a fact of life, no doubt.  But excessive stress (hence, elevated levels of cortisol) is more powerful than even the best diet and exercise program.

I’m serious.  Even if you’re doing everything by the book, stress alone will make you retain weight.  It makes you hungry.  It inhibits the production of serotonin. It interferes with sleep.  And it promotes the storage of abdominal fat! Happiness and balance in life cannot be stressed enough!

See, “Your Hormones: How They Affect Your Weight (part 2: Cortisol)”

Wow, so in light of all this information, what should we do?  Stay tuned.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Resources:

http://www.balancedweightmanagement.com/Understand%20Brain%20Chemistry%20and%20Weight.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin#Effects_of_food_content

http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Met-Obe/Mood-Food-Relationships.html

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/88/7/2999

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropeptide_Y

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/17856.php

2 Comments
by demogirl06 on December 19, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Weight Management: Chemistry
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Posted by demogirl06 on December 19, 2010

http://mariamaestevens.com/2010/12/19/brain-chemistry-and-hunger-whats-making-you-want-to-eat/

Why Alcohol Makes You Chubby: And How It Sabotages Weight Loss Goals

Beer belly.  Why not beer body?

It’s interesting how alcohol tends to go right to the tummy.  Okay, it’s true that alcohol goes other places, too, over time; but the nice thing about beer weight is that it can come off about as quickly as it came on, unlike other fat.  All you have to do it change your habits.

Allow me to explain why cutting out alcohol will yield an almost immediate shift in body fat; this information supports my observations of my clients’ (and my own) body compositions when alcohol was given up for at least two weeks.

There are three macronutrients with which we are all familiar: protein, carbohydrate, and fat, (some people include a fourth, water).  Each gram of protein and carbohydrate yields 4 calories; each gram of fat yields 9 calories.  Alcohol, it’s own entity, yields 7 calories. But alcohol isn’t a nutrient, as it generally kills everything with which it comes into contact.  A nutritionist who worked at the ARCO Olympic Training center once said to me during my stay, “I can’t think of one good reason why an elite athlete should ever consume alcohol.” It hinders your other metabolic pathways, and it destroys.  It dehydrates, and it slows you down.

Okay, great.  But who cares?  Most people aren’t training for the Olympics.  Booze is awesome in other rites, and can provide emotional (arguable) and social benefits.  Alcohol, after coffee, is the second most abused mood-altering substance, and some version of an alcoholic beverage has infiltrated just about every human culture.  It’s popular, it’s accessible, and it is sanctioned by society.  It relaxes and relieves stress for people who are probably more stressed now than ever before.  No wonder many of my clients are so unwilling to quit drinking, even for a little while!

“I don’t really drink that much.  Maybe 2 to 4 drinks in a week.”  Okay, let’s break that down.

A glass of wine has 100 calories.  That’s a four-ounce glass.  That’s 1/2 cup.  Find your teeny weeny measuring cup in your kitchen drawer.  That’s 100 calories! I cannot remember the last time I ever poured myself, or had someone else pour, only four little ounces.  More like 6.

A beer might pack at least 120 calories (unless it’s some awful light beer, which is closer to 100).  Most have 140 up to 200.

An ounce of spirits will pack 80, but few people drink liquor straight; some kind of sugary mixer comes with it.

Let’s crunch some numbers.  You’re a light drinker, and keep your habit to the weekend, over dinner.  You drink 3 six-ounce glasses of wine over your weekend.  That’s 450 calories (people often fail to count the calories they consume through beverages, and they also do a poorer job of compensating for liquid calories later). That 450 calories is an entire workout! That would be 1/5 of your week’s effort down your throat, and if your goal is to lose 1-lb per week, that is 1/7 of a pound.

Okay, big deal.  You made sure you had enough space left over for the booze.

So PAY ATTENTION HERE.  Alcohol, once ingested, breaks down into two compounds: fat and acetate.  The fat will go into storage, and the acetate will be burned as fuel.  The body, which had been slowly and steadily burning fat while you were at rest (and if you are working hard at the gym, you were enjoying your sweet “after-burn” of fat metabolization), slams down the E-brake on fat burning and starts burning the acetate instead.  You literally put a halt (or at least significantly slowed, up to 75%) to your fat burning metabolism; not only that, the fat derived from alchol went right into your storage!

Alcohol also is an appetite stimulant (ever heard of an aperitif?).  Drinking before or during dinner makes you want to eat more.  It also makes you care less about how much you are eating (irresponsible eating).  Calories sneak in, and because your body is busy metabolizing the acetate, sit back and let the other nutrients entering your blood stream get shunted into storage. One drink can stunt your fat metabolization for several hours. That sucks, especially when you are winding down at night, and your metabolism is already running a little slower.  The idea behind exercise is it raise your rate of fat metabolization.

Alcohol dehydrates.  Water is an essential nutrient, and it is involved in countless catalytic processes within your body.  One of these is the metabolization of fat.  Another is muscle building.  Few people make sure to drink a glass of water for every glass of booze they consume.  Dehydrating your body even a little bit slows down your fitness goals!

Finally, alcohol raises cortisol, your stress hormone that encourages the retention of fat.  It also hinders testosterone production, the “skinny” hormone generally produced in higher quantities after interval and strength training.

So let’s summarize:

1) Alcohol has lots of calories.

2) It increases fat storage, and halts fat metabolization.

3) It tends to make you eat and drink more.

4) It dehydrates you.

5) It produces more “fat” hormones, and hinders to production of “skinny” hormones.

…Stop drinking alcohol, and there will be less to retard your body’s fat metabolization.

Ready to give it up for a while?

4 Comments
by demogirl06 on July 26, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Nutrition, Weight Management: Chemistry
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Posted by demogirl06 on July 26, 2010

http://mariamaestevens.com/2010/07/26/why-alcohol-makes-you-chubby-and-how-it-sabotages-weight-loss-goals/

Your Hormones: How They Affect Your Weight (part 2: Cortisol)

Hormones are powerful things; they affect everything. Different hormones, of course, directly affect different things. Here’s what you need to know about cortisol, the stress hormone.

Cortisol is produced by the adrenal gland and is released during times of stress; if, for instance, you are nearly hit by a car, your body’s level of cortisol will spike.  Such spikes tend to be brief, and then cortisol levels go back down.  Long-term stress, however, allows for sustained, elevated levels of cortisol in the body, and this is a key condition that must be considered by anyone trying to achieve long term weight loss and management.

How does an elevated level of cortisol impact weight? Cortisol is also a glucocorticoid, that is, a hormone partly responsible for the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins; glucocorticoids increase blood sugar.

This makes sense.  Cortisol spikes when you are stressed or freaked out and it increases the amount of sugar in the blood.  This gives the body a burst of energy for survival situations, gives your brain more food (glucose) to operate as effectively as possible.  Cortisol also increases blood pressure and decreases your immune system, two more adaptations that help in the flight response.

But chronic stress will lead to chronic high levels of cortisol, which will yield chronic levels of higher blood glucose, chronic high blood pressure, and lowered immunity. Cortisol, by elevating blood glucose levels, spurs the body to metabolize fat for fuel, and blocks the entry of glucose into the cells so that it may be burned out of the blood stream.  It’s job, to increase blood glucose, is opposite of that of insulin, which is to push glucose into the cells.

For fear of getting too technical, let me explain as simply as possible how the effects of cortisol can contribute to weight gain. The more glucose there is in the blood, the more insulin the pancreas produces.  At long last, when insulin succeeds in flushing the sugar out of your blood, you crash.  Crashes lead to cravings, and you eat to restore blood sugar–particularly, foods that have a high glycemic index, as those foods enter the blood stream more quickly.  This is what we call stress eating. You crave and eat to restore blood sugar, but you’re still stressed out, so cortisol is also helping to increase blood sugar.  This two-fold effect can be overwhelming, especially for people who are stressed out about their weight, of all things!

What to do?

Calm down.  It is important to take steps to reduce stress.  Many people, when stressed out, try to control as much as possible.  But no one can control everything, and inevitable blips in the plan will also increase stress.

Avoid stressful situations by allowing yourself to be flexible.  Employ stress management activities (such as yoga, meditation, or prayer).  Physical activity (exercise!), in adequate amounts, also helps to reduce stress; but over-training increases it.  Low calorie or restrictive diets (especially in response to stress-induced weight gain) also increase stress, so make efforts to eat adequate calories.  Set yourself small, time-bound, attainable goals; when you achieve these goals, you will feel empowered.

3 Comments
by demogirl06 on May 28, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Fitness & Lifestyle, Weight Management: Chemistry
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Posted by demogirl06 on May 28, 2010

http://mariamaestevens.com/2010/05/28/your-hormones-how-they-affect-your-weight-part-2-cortisol/

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