Humans vs. Bears: Cortisol Production

At Fitbloggin last year the awesome Holly Perkins from New Balance spoke at a breakfast to debunk science myths. Since Fitbloggin is largely a weight-loss bloggers conference due to the story of its founder, Roni Noone, Holly mentioned that weight loss bloggers need to address CORTISOL in the stories of their journey. I must admit, I have not seen people write too much about cortisol since the conference. I am not a weight-loss blogger (seriously, how often do you see a scale pic here?) so have not gone near the topic myself.

However I want to address it today. #1) Hormones are fascinating and in my journey to start a family they were my starting point to prepare my body for conception (we are deciding if we want to try again in a year – so this is the place to start again). #2) With my recent back and leg injury I was sidelined and found myself reaching for sweets for a couple of weeks – which is very uncharacteristic of me. It was like an alien was controlling my urges, but even more powerful than an alien… it was hormones.

THE STORY OF CORTISOL – Production

Cortisol is known as the STRESS HORMONE.  Think about it… stress -> emotional eating… it is a pretty major hormone if your body is unbalanced.  Our brain is a big sensory interpretation center.  At the base of our brain is the hypothalamus which is tiny compared to the big head of cauliflower the brain resembles.  However in the tiny hypothalamus is the pituitary gland which connects directly to our nervous system and thus our endocrine system (mucho mega hormone production in this system).  As nerves send messages to the brain the hypothalamus is able to respond to them before the rest of the brain can logically process what is going on.  It is an organ that allows us to react before we can think about what we are reacting to.

This is a good thing.  Think about living in the wild frontier – what if a large beast spotted us and was coming after us.  In the moments we would take to decide whether to run or do something else a grizzly bear may have already crushed our skull.  Thanks to our hypothalamus and its connection to our nervous system we would already be in “fight or flight” mentality as soon as we noticed the bear noticing us.  Now think of our modern day stressors – our adrenal gland still gets excited by things that stimulate us but instead of running some of us reach for cookies.

Wait… I just jumped ahead about a million steps didn’t I?

When stressed the pituitary gland in the hypothalamus stimulates the adrenal gland mounted on top of our kidneys to produce the hormone cortisol.  Cortisol is awesome for regulating blood pressure and cardiovascular function.  In a “fight or flight” scenario these are some pretty major systems you want regulated to produce at their maximum if you had to run faster and longer than you ever had if your life depended on it.  Some crazy physiological things happen in survival situations (like dropping your bladder and bowels 0_o) that most of us sitting in a cubicle or at home dealing with kids really do not ever encounter.  Yet our body has this insurance policy in case we ever need it.

Next Tuesday I’ll go into exactly what cortisol is and how it affects our metabolism.  The Tuesday after that how cortisol affects our weight and other stress-related lifestyle issues.

I am not a doctor but I taught Human Biology Labs to undergrads while working on a PhD in Biology.  My emphasis was ecology and environmental issues but I loved teaching this class to make better informed people in our communities.  Hope I can share some of that with you.