questions about cortisol

selfmom5

I recently read that said working out over an hour raises testosterone levels in women causing your body to release stress hormone cortisol.if that's the case then should you work out in say 30 minute increments twice a day? or not to work out more than an hour a day? and has anyone ever heard of this as well?

cwolfman13

working out in general raises cortisol levels...exercise is very good for you...but it's also a stress on the body. This is one of the big reasons that it's stupid to crash diet (stress) and then do incessant amounts of exercise (more stress) and why it's important to learn to fuel your fitness properly (de-stress) and take appropriate rest days (more de-stress)

ndj1979

that sounds bogus to me. The only adverse affect I have heard of cortisol is that if you are over training then the amount of cortisol in your body will put it into "shock" and make weight loss more difficult.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/

What’s Going On: Let’s Talk About Cortisol

Cortisol is one of those hormones that I imagine everyone reading this has heard about and about which a lot of misinformation exists. Simply cortisol is a stress hormone, released by the body in response to nearly all kinds of stress. In the fitness/bodybuilding world, cortisol has gotten an almost exclusively negative reputation (cortisol is ‘bad’ in the way that testosterone and thyroid are ‘good’) although this is simplistically incorrect.

Rather, whether cortisol does good things or bad things in the body depends on how it’s released. Simply (and I’d simply, ha ha, refer folks to Robert Sapolsky’s amazing book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers for a detailed look at this; I also talk about cortisol in The Stubborn Fat Solution), acute pulses of cortisol tend to do good things and be adaptive and chronic elevations in cortisol tend to be bad and be maladaptive.

For example, the morning cortisol pulse helps to promote fat mobilization. In contrast, a chronic elevation of cortisol (especially in the face of high insulin levels) tend to promote visceral fat accumulation. As a non-fitness related topic, acute pulses of cortisol tend to be good for memory (why we often remember stressful situations in such detail) while chronic elevations (as often seen in depression) make memory go down the toilet. And there are endless other examples of where acute cortisol pulses are good and chronic elevations are bad; again see Sapolsky’s book for details.

In any case, dieting in general is a stress. And of course training is a stress. And the more extreme you do of each, the more of a stress occurs. And I suspect that a lot of what is going on when folks try to combine excessive caloric deficits with massive amounts of activity is that cortisol just goes through the roof (there’s another issue I’ll come back to at the end that relates to this). Simply, you get these massive chronic elevations in cortisol levels.

Tangentially, this is also one reason I suspect that various types of cyclical dieting help with some of this issue. For at least brief periods, when calories are raised to maintenance or above, you break the diet/training induced elevations in cortisol. This of course assumes that the person isn’t mentally stressed to the nines by raising calories like that but I’m getting ahead of myself.

marmaladepixie

I tested with high cortisol levels several times years ago. I was very deficient in certain vitamins and had a very physical job, was overtraining, and stressed out. One thing I noticed is that I could not build muscle, no matter how much strength training I did, and I would wake up a lot during the night. So, in short, a combination of things caused it. If I had been eating properly, was well rested, and less stressed, I probably could have handled more training. Stimulants and caffeine can also raise cortisol if you are already spread thin and not getting quality sleep

AllanMisner

Cortisol is a hormone that is released associated with stress. It is designed to give us the flight or flight response when we’re threatened. Intense exercise can create cortisol, but it is doing it for the right reason (to break down muscle allowing you to change your body in relation to the workout you just did). So, if you tell your body you need to be able to run at a high heart rate for long periods of time, you probably don’t need that fast twitch muscle you have. Notice how professional marathoners are very thin and sprinters are more muscular?

Cortisol is only a problem when it is brought on by continued stress (like a stressful job or relationship) that is providing hours of consistent stressors that don’t go away. Normally, we’d face a risk, we’d run or fight, and it would be over soon after. But the current environment provides a lot of pervasive stressors, which cause metabolic issues.

Set your fitness goal, and then design your exercise program to provide that stimulus and recovery.