The Secret to Low Stress: Cortisol Management

Serenity now, serenity now, serenity now, serenity now, serenity now, serenity now, serenity. So, that hilarious character is Frank Costanza from the TV program called Seinfeld. And, if you’re too young to know it, you should go look it up and enjoy the programming. But, Frank is shouting out “Serenity now,” which is obviously some technique he’s learned somewhere that’s supposed to help him be calm. But, in the presentation of the way he’s using it, it’s too late. He’s already flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, and he’s stressed right out, and his technique is virtually useless. But, having said that, there are methods to manage cortisol, to manage this stress hormone that is very real in our lives and can actually be our friend at times. And so, this video is all about managing stress, and specifically the hormone cortisol. So, stay tuned, you’ll learn all about it.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So, cortisol is a completely natural, normal part of our hormonal system. We benefit from it in all kinds of ways, and it’s, it follows like many other hormones in our body, a circadian rhythm. That for a typical person, we start the day with our highest peak of cortisol and its many benefits. It gets us going, we get memory improvements, it boosts our immunity system, and we even have less pain sensitivity when we’re doing things that are demanding. Like, so let’s say we’re playing a sport or something, and our pain sensitivity goes down. So, hard stuff becomes easier to do when cortisol is there. But then, the cortisol, running its normal natural pattern, becomes less and less present for us, and diminishes to very low quantities about the time we go to bed. And it’s at the minimum level a couple hours after we go to sleep. And, that’s the normal cycle, and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s part of our healthy living. But, we all know the experience of being flooded with cortisol. And, and you know, if there’s a lion attacking you, you want to be flooded with cortisol and adrenaline and be ready to, to run away or fight for your life. And, that kind of flooding experience as I say, is is beneficial and helpful to us in genuine survival situations.

The tragedy, of course, is that for us humans, where most of our scariest moments are imagined in our heads. They’re, they’re scenarios that we make up. They’re often interpersonal relationships. So, if I’m talking to the tech support person and I’ve [__] had it, that I might have a cortisol flooding. Or, if I’m talking to my spouse who’s frustrated with the socks on the floor, and we’re in some kind of combative battle. Or, your boss, or whoever, interpersonal flooding of cortisol is common for us, tragic big brain humans. And, in those circumstances, it tends not to be very helpful to us, right? We’re not fighting or fleeing for our lives. And, if we have chronic high levels of cortisol, cortisol flooding that occurs over and over again because of the high levels of stress and aggressiveness, uh, assertiveness that’s in our life, combative nature of many relationships, or just this perceived idea that we’re persecuted, in the world out to get us, then there’s very serious detriments to having high cortisol. Some of those detriments include weight gain. It’s because when we’re getting that injection of big blood to our big large muscle groups, so we can run away or fight. And, we also get these huge secretions of glucose that flood our muscles with energy. Again, great if you’re running from a lion, lousy if you’re chronically doing this from relationship issues, and then you get weight gain. You also get suppressed immunity, which is interesting because cortisol is associated with improved immune system functions. But, when we’re chronically dealing with it, too much cortisol is forcing more activity in the parts of our body associated with survival, and less with day-to-day maintenance of body repair and health. And that, it goes to your heart as well. So, there’s heart disease associated with cortisol. And even something associated with kind of brain decay, if I can put it that way, a less functional brain.

There’s something called BDNF, Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor, and it’s the hormone that basically builds our brains, and repairs brain cells, and gives us new brain cells. And, if we’ve got a lot of cortisol in our body, a lot of the time, that ain’t happening. The BDNF goes way down, and we’re less healthy. So, what do we do? How do we manage this? Well, I remember watching a National Geographic video many years ago where there’s this leopard up in a tree, overseeing the savannah. And the leopard’s just sitting there, waiting. And, there’s great photography showing it. And, this um, herd of some kind of hooven animal comes up, and gets pretty darn close to this tree where the leopard’s hanging out. And, eventually, the leopard makes its leap to get some animal. And there’s this dramatic chase, and the, the photography again is amazing. And, the the deer or the antelope or whatever it was gets away. And, to my surprise, the leopard just turns around, climbs back up the same tree, and goes back to resting on this limb that it had been at before. And, I thought that was probably not a very strategic thing for it to do. But bizarrely, this herd of antelope, eventually and not all that long, worked their way back to the exact same place. Until some of them are directly underneath the tree. And this time, the leopard jumps out and goes directly onto the back of its prey, and gets a kill, and gets fed.

And so, what the antelope did is they got this huge injection of cortisol and adrenaline. They ran away for survival. And, because they aren’t humans and don’t have the best brains, they relax, the cortisol leaves their bodies, and they forget the threat that came from that tree not long ago. And, they, in less than a few hours, are back under the same thing. So, we humans don’t have that

So, we humans don’t have that benefit because we keep reliving in our minds the thing that caused the cortisol flooding in the first place. So, the secret to remove a cortisol flooding is genuine, deep distraction for 30 minutes or more. It has to work its way through our bloodstreams, and it’s not going to work its way through any less than 30 minutes. So, if you were in a moment of great rage with your spouse, or your boss, or something, there’s no point in trying to stay in that conversation. In fact, you were very wise to walk away, and you may say, “Well, I’ll walk outside the room, breathe heavy for one minute, or yell ‘Serenity now! Serenity now!’ and then get back into it,” but don’t bother. You’re going to need a more protracted period to release the cortisol and get back to a more relaxed state of mind and body, so that you can engage in a meaningful conversation.

But the trouble is, for a lot of us, me included, is that if I get fueled with all that cortisol, then I go out and try to get some space from the tense situation I was in, but my mind keeps churning it over and over and over. Unlike those antelope that forgot all about the threat, and so long as we keep thinking about the problem, we may not be processing the cortisol because we’ll remain highly activated. So, for a lot of us, especially for something that’s really provoking, we need to either process it through talk with a friend, get some perspective, see a therapist, I don’t know, it’s gonna take more than a half an hour, or become highly distracted so we’re not thinking about it at all. That might be playing a sport or engaged in a hobby, or reading a really engaging book, something that takes our mind away from the incident, so that we can process the way the antelope do: not thinking about leopards anymore, and get the cortisol out of our systems. Does that make sense? You need 30 minutes at minimum of a genuine distraction to be released from that flooded experience.

And more generally, to have a healthy cortisol system and process it well in our bodies, a lot of the general health habits are important. Eating well, particularly antioxidants, so get your dark chocolate fix in. Sleep well, sleep is super important for those circadian rhythms. Um, getting some regular exercise, a good meditation or relaxation technique that you use routinely, music, hot tub, reading, those kinds of things might all be good. Meditation perhaps is the best, but generally speaking, a bunch of these good healthful habits and laughing and playing is maybe the best of all. So there you go, there’s your short course on managing cortisol and the flooding that we can sometimes experience. Hope this was helpful. If you like this kind of video, click the like button and share it with your friends and family, gets more happiness into the world generally if you do. Bye for now.