Here’s what doctors want you to know about the link between stress and cortisol, when it’s time to bring your cortisol levels down, and the best supplements, foods, and practices to help keep the hormone in check.* “Cortisol is essential for living. It peaks at the beginning of the day to support getting out of bed and decreases throughout the day to allow ‘sleep pressure’ to build. Without cortisol, we would lack the motivation to get up and do things,” says Shera Raisen, M.D., a physician at concierge primary care center The Lanby. “Cortisol increases glucose in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose, and it also increases the availability of substances that repair tissues,” explains dual board-certified doctor Seema Bonney, M.D. This makes us feel more awake, alert, and ready to take action. So it makes sense that any time we’re faced with a perceived threat, the adrenals churn out some more cortisol to help all the organs in our body prepare to fight or flee the situation. The issue is that as cortisol revs our bodies up, it diverts energy away from the processes that aren’t essential for the fight-or-flight response, such as digestion and rest. “Typically, perceived threats pass quickly and the hormone levels return to normal resulting in a return to baseline for those nonessential systems,” Bonney explains. However, “when stressors are consistently present and you constantly feel under attack, this fight-or-flight response stays turned on.” This is when cortisol can start to negatively affect things like sleep quality, blood sugar balance, immunity, and digestion. Leber adds that getting adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals can also help keep the stress response in check. “It’s the equivalent of ensuring your car has enough oil and the tires have the right amount of air,” he tells mbg. “The vitamins associated with cortisol metabolism are B12, folate, magnesium, and vitamin C.” For more specific recommendations, check out our roundup of supplements for stress. Proactively work a handful of these self-care practices into your routine so that the next time a trigger arises, your body is ready to quickly come back to calm: Our team ensures that each supplement product is thoughtfully formulated–from the active ingredients to those “Other ingredient” excipients too. We are highly preferential towards clean formulas that are plant-centric (and oftentimes vegan or vegetarian) as well as free of GMOs, gluten, soy, dairy, major food allergens, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, synthetic dyes, and more. Overall, we recommend products with clean ingredients at efficacious doses in bioactive forms. Whenever possible, we celebrate and elevate plant-origin (i.e., plant-sourced) ingredients from a variety of botanicals. Ingredient source and innovation are top of mind for our critical reviews and selection of supplement products. We prioritize forward-thinking formulations and delivery formats that are genuinely helpful in transforming your health. We include supplement brands and products that prioritize quality. This includes robust manufaturing practices and comprehensive purity and potency testing. You can learn more about mindbodygreen supplements+ manufacturing and quality testing practices here. Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
