Episode 343: Cortisol Face, Adrenal Cocktails & Cortisol Testing – Debunking Cortisol Myths & Facts
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Advice can be amazing—or a total miss—depending on who it is for and who it’s coming from. That’s especially true when it comes to hormones, where one-size-fits-all solutions from TikTok and Instagram don’t work. In this episode, Erin clears up the confusion about cortisol’s role in the body, addresses popular trends like adrenal cocktails and cortisol face, and discusses what high and low cortisol levels really mean for your health. Learn why lowering cortisol doesn’t always lead to weight loss and how to navigate testing options to get the most accurate results.
Gain access to our proven, easy-to-follow nutrition programs inside The Funk’tional Nutrition Collective! For those seeking additional support, you can also purchase hormone testing, a personalized lab analysis, a one-on-one appointment, and a custom hormone protocol.
In this episode:
Is cortisol always bad for you? [7:41]
Adrenal cocktails: are they legit and do you need to be drinking them? [15:53]
Most common reasons for high cortisol & low cortisol [20:49]
Cortisol face - is it real? [31:07]
Addressing the ideas that lowering cortisol can lead to weight loss [33:49]
Different methods to test cortisol [35:41]
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Collective (Join the waitlist)
Eat to Achieve™ (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Carb Compatibility Project™ (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
The Boundaries Course (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Body Intentions Breakthrough (Available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Your Hormone Revival™ (Only available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Kion Aminos (Get 20% off monthly orders and 10% off one time orders)
Qualia Life (Get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Hormones
Related episodes:
65: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Weight Loss
82: Cortisol, DHEA & Adrenal Testing, Part 1
83: Cortisol, DHEA & Adrenal Testing, Part 2
112: All Your Cortisol Questions Answered, Part 1
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Erin Holt [00:00:00]:
I'm Erin Holt and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us, but functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same. This show is for you
Erin Holt [00:00:46]:
If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change and of course keep coming back for more. Hello my loves. Today we're going to talk about Cortisol. Specifically, we're going to get into some myths, some trends, some hacks that are floating around on the Internet out there and we're going to debunk some of those myths and lay down the facts about cortisol. I've been talking about this hormone for a long ass time on this show. Today we'll cover a lot, particularly as it relates to those trends and common things that you might hear about cortisol.
Erin Holt [00:01:39]:
But if you're looking to do a deep dive, we'll link up the episodes that I've recorded in the past about Cortisol. Combined, they're kind of like a masterclass on cortisol. So if you're a health coach, if you're a practitioner, or you just want to learn as much as you can about your health, add these to your queue. Episode 82, 83, 112, 113 and 290. They'll all be linked up in the show notes. So my business advisor says this line often and it really applies to health as well. Advice can be good or bad depending on who is giving it and who is receiving it. So one piece of advice to one person might be really excellent advice and to someone else it might be really poor advice.
Erin Holt [00:02:25]:
That is so much of what I see with the hormone conversations happening online. Pro column. Hormone conversations for women are actually happening. That is a gift. That is the vibe. That is the whole damn prize. Love that for us. The downside of this is that I just see some straight up erroneous information, some kooky information and some advice that while for one person may be good, for another person, it is not good. And we're giving it out like blanket statements.
Erin Holt [00:03:00]:
So last week I talked about DIM as an example. Diindolylmethane. I always second guess myself on pronouncing that. But DIM is the way that we say it in practice. It's a compound that you can take as a supplement, and many people take it to help balance estrogen levels. And it's fantastic for that. It's really, really an effective tool and strategy. However, if you have low estrogen, then DIM is not the best bet for you.
Erin Holt [00:03:24]:
And so when we get information online, on social media, it doesn't always come with the context that we need for our individual bodies. And so some of the things that you hear about cortisol may or may not be true for you. So what we're going to get into today specifically is the idea that cortisol is bad for you. Is cortisol only produced during times of stress? Low cortisol levels are healthier, or lowering cortisol is always the objective, because online we hear a lot about lowering cortisol and strategies to do that. Cortisol diets, things to keep in mind if you want balanced hormones, including balanced cortisol. Adrenal cocktails. Let's talk about those. Are they legit? Do you need to be drinking them? The most common reasons for high cortisol and low cortisol. I think it's important to know that. Cortisol face.
Erin Holt [00:04:15]:
Is that real? Everyone wants to talk about it, but is it like a thing? We'll also address the idea that lowering cortisol can lead to weight loss. And finally, we'll get into testing and address the different ways to test cortisol. Because there's this idea that all testing is the same. Now. I've been doing this for close to 15 years now, which is crazy that I'm saying that. It's 2025. I kicked things off in 2010. So officially I'm saying 15 years, and it's nutso.
Erin Holt [00:04:45]:
And over the past 15 years, I have had the honor and the privilege of helping thousands of clients get healthy. The benefit that comes with that kind of experience is that I can help you focus on the right things that that really only comes with experience in the Collective, which is officially open for enrollment. What we do, one of my goals is to help you filter out all the noise, to give you exactly what you need to know for your health. When you take this approach, you will see much quicker results with a lot less stress than trying to figure it out yourself. When you google your symptoms or you put your health concerns into the search bar on TikTok or Instagram, there is a very broad spectrum of what you might find and you have absolutely no idea where the advice is coming from. So if you want sage advice, strategies that have worked for not just one person, not just one influencer, but legitimately, thousands of people, the Functional Nutrition Collective is for you. It was my goal to make this work, my programs as accessible and affordable as possible. So that's why we packaged it up in this health membership and we opened it last year, like around this time.
Erin Holt [00:05:58]:
We opened it up for the first time. So I'm going to share with you some of the things people came to the Collective with and some of the things that were resolved in their time in the collective. So you have an understanding of what to expect. So a lot of people came to us with weight gain and weight loss resistance. I don't really market my services as weight loss, but when you take care of your body, if you have weight to lose, that is typically a natural byproduct. So we saw pounds lost, we saw inches lost. We saw just overall reduced puffiness and bloating in some of our members, a lot of hormone imbalance, so heavy periods, mood swings, fatigue, low energy, brain fog, a lot of anxiety and mood issues.
Erin Holt [00:06:36]:
A lot of these things cleared up. We help women navigate perimenopause, we help them navigate the postpartum period. We saw autoimmunity, we saw Hashimoto's, metabolic syndrome, seasonal affective disorder, food sensitivities, gallbladder dysfunction and body image issues. So people came to us with a lot. And like I said, we did see weight loss. And somebody wrote, I have been able to lose the weight I wanted without restricting or feeling under fueled, which makes me feel so happy. Somebody else wrote, greater body awareness, clearer skin was something that we consistently saw. So those are some of the results you can expect to see if you join the Collective.
Erin Holt [00:07:15]:
And if you do want to join the Collective, head to the funktionalnutritionist.com forward/collective. We are closing in about a week here, depending on when you're listening to this show. So if you want to be Sharing those victories for yourself in the future. Do it. Sign yourself up. Can't wait to get started with everybody. All right, let's get into cortisol myths. The first one being cortisol is always bad for you.
Erin Holt [00:07:41]:
No, no, this is wrong. This is erroneous. Cortisol is not all bad. The way it's being talked about on TikTok and social media, it makes it seem like it's this awful thing that always needs to be lowered or suppressed. It's not. Cortisol is a steroid hormone, specifically a glucocorticoid. Most of your body's cells contain glucocorticoid receptors. Your body wouldn't have receptors on every cell or close to every cell for something that's always bad.
Erin Holt [00:08:12]:
Your body wouldn't create something that's overtly destructive. The body believes in efficiency and homeostasis. The body wants you to be in harmony. Okay? So it's not going to create something that's destructive. So as soon as you hear somebody talking about cortisol as a bad thing, I want you to run in the other direction because they don't know what they' talking about. Boom. I said it. Boom.
Erin Holt [00:08:32]:
Roasted. So cortisol is known as the stress hormone. And that's because your body uses this hormone to mobilize the resources it needs to respond to stress. When we perceive stress, any type of stress, physiological, so illness, injury, trauma, or psychological stress, the amygdala signals the hypothalamus, which activates the HPA access. HPA stands for hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal, hypothalamus and pituitary are in the brain. So it's something that your brain is perceiving, and then it's telling the rest of your body, hey, we're in stress. So hypothalamus releases CRH, which is a hormone. It triggers the pituitary to release ACTH, which is another hormone.
Erin Holt [00:09:19]:
And then ACTH stimulates the release of cortisol from the adrenal cortex. So the adrenals are little glands that sit on top of your kidneys, and they are responsible for pumping out cortisol in response to what the brain is perceiving. Once cortisol is released into the bloodstream, it helps the body respond to stress. And it does this by increasing fuel in the form of blood glucose. It also increases alertness, it increases cognition, it improves cell responses to inflammation. But this is all in anticipation of the body having to run or fight, so fight or flight response, which uses up a lot of body's resources to do. All of that that I just described is a really good thing. If we didn't have this system in place, it would be a major league issue. So again, cortisol is not bad.
Erin Holt [00:10:12]:
The problem is that your body, your brain, your mind doesn't know the difference between real physiological stress and perceived stress. So it can treat being worried about a work presentation as a severe life or death situation. And we all know modern day has a lot of these little low grade stressors. So this fight or flight cortisol response is being called on way more than it should. But it's not cortisol's fault. Cortisol isn't the bad guy. If you have a fire, you don't blame the firefighters for showing up, right? Cortisol isn't the problem. The problem is that your brain is constantly perceiving stress and cortisol is just doing what it's supposed to do in that situation.
Erin Holt [00:11:00]:
So this brings me to the next myth or misunderstanding, which is cortisol is only produced during times of stress. So we talked about that. Yes. During a stressful episode, extra cortisol is released to help you respond appropriately. Because think about what you have to do in a true fight or flight. You have to get or like a true stress response, a true life or death scenario, you have to get ready to fight or run. Those are the two big things that your body is getting you prepared to do. So it starts to pump blood to the extremities, it dilates the eyes, it does a whole lot of things to get you ready for that response.
Erin Holt [00:11:38]:
It's like, okay, it's showtime, like let's go lfg, here we come. And so cortisol is part of that response. So it is happening during times of stress. But cortisol is also produced daily as part of our body's natural circadian rhythm. We have something called the cortisol awakening response, or CAR for short. Your body is designed to get you into an alert state pretty quickly in the morning. This is by design, this is natural, this is normal, this should be happening. So in the morning we see cortisol actually rise, we see a cortisol spike.
Erin Holt [00:12:15]:
And it usually peaks roughly about 30 minutes after you wake up. And then it slowly falls, it slowly tapers off throughout the course of the day. That is called a diurnal rhythm. And cortisol is on that rhythm. It's on that pattern, this cortisol awakening response, having this surge of cortisol first thing in the morning influences our energy levels, our stress resiliency, our alertness, our memory recall, our cognition, our mood, anxiety, depression, worry. It plays a role in autoimmune development or progression. It helps to regulate inflammation and it also helps to regulate our response to infection. So if you don't have enough morning cortisol, what we can see is that you have a harder time getting up out of bed in the morning.
Erin Holt [00:13:01]:
You might feel like you need coffee or another stimulant to get going. It takes you a few hours to get going. You might feel really depressed or blue in the morning. You might wake up stiff or in pain. So your symptoms tend to be worse in the morning when you first get up. Cortisol to a certain extent is anti inflammatory. So like I said earlier, not all bad. If cortisol is in check, if it's imbalance, it helps to keep inflammation in check.
Erin Holt [00:13:28]:
There's this interplay with cortisol inflammation in your immune system. So the basic way to put it is if cortisol is dysregulated, inflammation might not be as well regulated and the immune response might not be as well regulated. So this is why chronic stress can put you at a greater risk for infections, for inflammation, for illness, which is what we see very, very commonly. So I want to address that myth that low cortisol levels are healthier. It's not actually true. Your levels should never be at zero. You need cortisol for life. Inflammation, immune function, even sex hormones.
Erin Holt [00:14:02]:
You want to talk about hormone balance? It starts with balanced cortisol. Low cortisol is not balanced cortisol. Okay, so let's just put that myth to bed that low cortisol is always better.
Erin Holt [00:15:53]:
You also need cortisol for metabolism and blood sugar regulation. Remember I said earlier that cortisol is a glucocorticoid. That means one of its main functions is to mobilize energy in the form of glucose to fuel action. So when blood sugar levels drop, blood sugar is just another way of saying blood glucose. When those levels drop in your body, your body releases cortisol to maintain blood sugar levels.
Erin Holt [00:16:50]:
The most basic and simple way to think about this is if blood sugar drops, cortisol rises. If you're dealing with blood sugar regulation, if you are not able to regulate your blood sugar through diet, through lifestyle, you're constantly calling upon cortisol to regulate the blood sugar. But again, remember, cortisol isn't the problem. We're not blaming the firefighters for showing up to the fire. We're thanking them for doing their job. So with all these cortisol hacks that we're seeing on TikTok, we should also be talking about the eating enough hack or the eating to regulate blood sugar hack. If you're looking to eat a diet that helps to balance cortisol, this is a major league part of it. One is getting lots of micronutrients in because stress does burn through a lot of nutrients and then two is eating in a way to regulate your blood sugar.
Erin Holt [00:17:42]:
I have two foundational nutrition programs. I consider them like sister programs because they really play into each other. In Eat to Achieve, I teach you how to eat in a super nutrient dense, anti inflammatory way without restriction, because food restriction can lead to elevated cortisol levels. I have seen it time and time again in my practice and then in the Carb Compatibility Project. I teach you exactly how to eat to balance your blood sugar. And part of that is understanding your unique carb threshold. So both of the programs, those programs you can access inside the Collective. But speaking of cortisol diets, let's talk about the adrenal cocktails.
Erin Holt [00:18:19]:
Are they legit? Do you need to be drinking them? I do want to say that adrenal cocktails are not new. These have been around the real food community for well over a decade. So this is not new stuff. It's just having a surge, a revival, if you will. But the idea behind this combination of nutrients. So it's basically a drink that you make with certain ingredients that give you certain nutrients. And the idea behind them is that they can replenish the adrenal glands after a period of chronic stress, which is actually not off base. When your body is under stress, it burns through certain nutrients.
Erin Holt [00:18:57]:
Like I said, the stress response is a big ask on the body. It's a big ask of body resources to constantly be in a fight or flight response. So certain nutrients we may see depleted. If somebody's under constant chronic stress. B vitamins can take a hit. Minerals, especially magnesium, vitamin C. And so this adrenal cocktail is created with some of these in mind. So it usually contains orange juice for the vitamin C, sea salt for sodium, coconut water for potassium and other electrolytes, and then sometimes coconut cream or coconut milk for healthy fats to counteract the sugar.
Erin Holt [00:19:35]:
When you consume sugar with fat, it blunts the blood sugar response. And so sometimes you'll see coconut cream thrown into the mix for that. So if you're under stress, could this cocktail potentially replenish nutrients lost? Yeah. Are adrenal cocktails problematic? No. This is one trend I can absolutely get behind in cosign on. When I did a Google search, I mean, you gotta love AI for what they bring up when you search stuff. But a lot of it was like, these can be dangerous. And I'm like, okay, let's not get crazy here.
Erin Holt [00:20:11]:
Just because something is a TikTok trend, it doesn't mean it's bad or harmful. If you're guzzling a gallon of OJ a day. Probably not great from a blood sugar perspective, but I don't think we should be fearful of repleting nutrients lost with whole food, real food ingredients. Okay. With that said, are these adrenal cocktails going to solve the underlying issue of why you're chronically stressed? No, they will not do that. So let's get into that because I am a root cause practitioner, which means I search for the root cause of your symptoms and your health issues. If we determine that cortisol imbalance or adrenal fatigue is at play, some folks might stop there and be like, okay, this is the, the root cause. And they might not be wrong because the HPA axis is kind of like the Achilles heel of the entire body, meaning it can kind of take the rest of you down.
Erin Holt [00:21:12]:
The H in the P, the hypothalamus and the pituitary are kind of like command control in the brain and they affect every system in the body, the immune system, your gut, they affect inflammation, mood. So if the mind is constantly perceiving stress and the HPA axis is constantly being activated into a stress response, yeah, that could absolutely be a root cause for what's going on with you from a health perspective. But for me as a practitioner, I like to say I get to the root of the root of the root. So we want to know and understand why is cortisol, whether it's high or low, why is it imbalanced in the first place? The underlying reason has to be addressed. So I want to discuss some common reasons. In case you're unfamiliar with these, I would love to put them on your radar. We can see high cortisol levels and the main reason for elevated cortisol levels is stress. Right, Duh, we talked about that.
Erin Holt [00:22:11]:
So that could be physical stress, that could be mental, that could be emotional stress. The biggest contributors that I see contributing to this ongoing relentless stress is perfectionist tendencies and over functioning. We discussed that in episode 290. It's a great listen if I do say so myself. Especially if you identify with a people pleaser, a perfectionist and over functioner, a caretaker, go listen to that show 290. We can also see high cortisol with acute inflammation, acute infection, acute pain. So if you are actively fighting off a virus, let's say, we can see cortisol levels go up. That is a natural normal part of the, the inflammatory and immune response.
Erin Holt [00:22:54]:
We can see high cortisol levels with ongoing insulin and glucose problems. So that's something that would need to be addressed as a root, if there's constant coffee, caffeine or stimulant use, we can see that elevate cortisol levels. Poor sleep hygiene, just poor sleep in general can really drive up cortisol levels. So those are some of the ones that are pretty common that we would see. We also discussed under eating that be a contributing factor to elevated cortisol levels. Now, if you have low cortisol, something to understand is there is this feedback loop where if you have had high cortisol for a long time, it feeds back to the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. And so we can see those hormones, CRH, ACTH, decrease, we can see cortisol levels decrease. So if we're looking at a true low cortisol picture, and I'll talk at the end about what a true low cortisol picture actually looks like, if we're seeing that it might have actually been high cortisol for a while.
Erin Holt [00:23:53]:
And so we always want to understand where we are on this continuum. By the time we're attempting to quote, unquote, work on our cortisol, are we looking at high cortisol, low cortisol, or is it low cortisol because the cortisol has been so high for a long period of time? But reasons for low cortisol, there are certain medications that can suppress cortisol production. Prednisone, steroids, opioids, accutane, an acne medication can really affect cortisol levels. So that's just something to be aware of in case you take any of those meds. Long term stress and burnout, like we talked about, psychological burnout, so we talked about perfectionist and overachieving tendencies can raise cortisol. But over a long period of time, we can actually see cortisol suppression with those. Poor sleep, same deal, long term inflammation, pain, infection. So for acute in the moment, we can see cortisol levels rise. But if that long term inflammation has never been managed, if the long term infection has never been managed.
Erin Holt [00:24:59]:
So for example, we do a lot of stool testing in our practice and we can see evidence that there's a gut infection and it just has never been dealt with. And so we can see cortisol levels start to take a turn with that, start to suppress with that. And then also head trauma, TBIs or anything that can affect the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland and the hippocampus can suppress cortisol production as well. But for the most part, the most common is that when we're seeing true low cortisol, it is a depletion picture. This person is depleted. So if you have low cortisol, you really have to do the work of understanding how did you get depleted in the first place. Because you can't get well or find your way back to balance by doing the exact same things that landed you in a depleted state. You can't balance your hormones doing the same thing that led to imbalanced hormones.
Erin Holt [00:25:56]:
In functional medicine, we have this tack analogy that we talk about often. And if you're walking along and you step on a tack, you have bare feet, you step on a tack, the tack is in the heel. There's a lot of different things that you can do to soothe that pain or to make yourself feel better, but the actual problem is never going to resolve until you remove the tack. So in functional medicine, we are looking for the tacks and this is why I say I try to get to the root of the root of the root. If we discover that you have hormone imbalance or cortisol imbalance, I want to understand why that imbalance happened in the first place. And we can do things to make you feel better in the short term, but long term we really need to understand the root cause. So if it's chronic dieting, if it's under eating, if it's over exercise, over caffeination, under sleeping, constantly being the caretaker, perfectionism, never feeling like you're doing enough, if all of these things or some of these things led to cortisol imbalance, you're going to need to look at that in order to rebalance your cortisol levels. This is root cause work.
Erin Holt [00:27:02]:
This is my life's work, is helping people understand this. And this is exactly what we do. This is all of the things that we help you explore in Your Hormone Revival, which is a three month hormone program also available in the Collective. And no matter what you determine to be your unique root cause or root causes, we have specific support for you. That's the benefit of being in the Collective. So if it's food, great Eat to Achieve. If it's blood sugar, awesome Carb Compatibility Project. If it's people pleasing, amazing Boundaries Course is for you.
Erin Holt [00:27:35]:
If it's more of a mindset and belief that needs to change, that's what Body Intentions Breakthrough is for. So we have all of the support that you need. And here's the deal. I think adrenal cocktails can be great, but an adrenal cocktail isn't going to do all of that. And that's the real work that you need to do for balanced cortisol, unfortunately it's like not that fun to Talk about on TikTok.
Erin Holt [00:30:26]:
Anyway, let's move on to cortisol face. Is this real? Why is this a thing? Now we are really talking about cortisol face.
Erin Holt [00:31:10]:
So this term describes the facial puffiness and swelling attributed to elevated cortisol. Allegedly. Anyway, now I do want to say that Cushing's disease is a real thing. This is a diagnosable condition when your body produces way too much cortisol. Really, really high levels. And it can change your face. You can see fatty deposits in your face and neck. It's not uncommon to see a hump on the back of the neck with Cushing's disease, but it is pretty darn rare.
Erin Holt [00:31:43]:
Cortisol imbalance is not rare. Very common in modern day. Cushing's disease is still pretty rare. And so when I see people on social media talking about their cortisol face, I'm like, that is especially when they do the before and afters. I saw one that was like, back in the day I had cortisol face and now I use the supplement and I don't. But they were showing photos of like, college. I was like, that's actually baby fat.
Erin Holt [00:32:08]:
That is too much beer pong. My lady, I don't mean to tease, but some of the things that I've seen are just like bonafide silliness. I'm like, is this real? Are people really buying into this? Anyway, I digress. So there's another condition. Hypothyroidism can also lead to some swelling in the face. It's often described as moon face, so you can Google that one. Now if you just feel swollen in the face, which is not uncommon, sometimes I wake up and I'm like puffier in the face.
Erin Holt [00:32:39]:
It's not weight gain in my face. I just look puffy. That more often than not, is more of a lymph issue. So there's fluid built up in your face. And I've talked about this a bunch on the show, but doing some type of lymph Massage or lymph drainage, just like a DIY thing can be really helpful. I have a lymph brush from Cecily Braden that I use and I just like brush my face. So, you know, dry brushing for your body, you can do that on your face. And that can be really, really helpful too.
Erin Holt [00:33:06]:
If you're truly gaining weight in your face, you are probably gaining weight in other places too. And so this is where we would want to look at your food intake. This is where we would want to look at blood sugar and insulin resistance, looking at your stress. All of these things are important here. But the reason that I'm kind of like hot to trot on the cortisol face is just because I see it consistently used as a way to sell supplements to lower cortisol. And that is not how it works, baby girl. Or it's just paired with some information that's like wonky at best. And the idea that lowering cortisol can we lead to weight loss or even like specific weight loss, it's just a really wonky way to think about things.
Erin Holt [00:33:49]:
It's not completely wrong. It's just missing a ton of context. So some supplements can absolutely help with cortisol clearance. It can help to lower cortisol. But saying just lowering cortisol will get you to lose weight is like saying, just turn off the check engine light and then the engine problem is resolved. Obviously, we know that that's not true, but it's kind of the same situation here. Back in the day, episode 65, I did an episode called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Weight Loss. And I really talked about the interplay between stress in weight.
Erin Holt [00:34:22]:
And so that is a very, very good listen. Still very true, very relevant today. So you might want to go back in time and listen to episode 65 for a deeper dive on this. So in regards to cortisol face, what I can tell you is real is that chronically elevated cortisol levels can contribute to oxidative stress, which can cause cellular damage. There's an increase of ROS, reactive oxygen species, and that can absolutely age you faster. We know this. There's also evidence to suggest that elevated, chronically elevated cortisol levels can break down collagen. And this is because excess cortisol, so cortisol, outside of the natural rhythms of your body, if it's constantly elevated, it is catabolic.
Erin Holt [00:35:05]:
It puts your body in a breakdown state, it puts your tissues in a breakdown state. So we can see faster aging in the face with chronic long term stress. And that is real. And that is true. And so I do advocate for looking at the underlying causes of your stress to help mitigate this cortisol face. But what is not really gonna move the needle for you is just taking supplements in order to smash your cortisol levels down to the ground. Okay, let's close ourselves out by talking about testing, because this is a huge question that I get a lot. And there's this idea that all cortisol tests are the same.
Erin Holt [00:35:45]:
Or somebody's like, how do I test cortisol? As though there's like, one really easy answer. There's not, because there's different ways to measure cortisol. One is through the blood, one is through saliva, and another one is through urine. Yes, your pee. And the results, what we see really depends based on what test is being run. It depends on what time of day we're testing cortisol, because, remember, cortisol is on that diurnal rhythm. And so it's going to naturally be higher at certain times of the day and lower at others. So you really need to understand when you're testing and use that.
Erin Holt [00:36:22]:
That information sort of plotted out with the norms for that time of day. And then, of course, it's also going to like any test you order, it's going to depend on who is interpreting that and what kind of questions they're asking in context that they're trying to understand about you, the human being behind that test. So let's talk about different ways to look at cortisol. One, like I said, is through serum or blood. And this is what you'd get if you asked your PCP or your endocrinologist to test your cortisol. Most likely, it is not bad.
Erin Holt [00:36:56]:
Definitely it could help us to see Addison's or Cushing's disease, like we talked about earlier. But it's not the best reflection of what's actually going on with cortisol because it doesn't show that diurnal pattern. It doesn't give us a ton of information outside of ruling out some rare diseases. So, again, it's useful. There's utility to the test, but it's probably not the type of test that you're looking for. The next one is saliva. That's going to measure free cortisol, and that will show your diurnal pattern. So what you do with most saliva tasks is you spit in a tube four times during the day.
Erin Holt [00:37:30]:
And so then it's plotted out. Your cortisol levels are plotted out throughout the course of the day. So you can see, do you have that nice cortisol awakening and that cortisol curve? And then finally, we have dried urine. That's what the DUTCH test is. It stands for dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. And that's through a company called Precision Analytical. And so essentially, you pee on paper, little strips of paper, four times throughout the course of the day. And that can capture a lot of hormones, not just cortisol.
Erin Holt [00:37:59]:
So it's a pretty extensive test. We're not just looking at cortisol. With the dried urine test. And the unique value of urine, it shows us things that blood or saliva wouldn't show us. It shows us cortisol metabolites, which can be considered a better marker for overall production in glandular output. The best way to get the most information, and what I like to see is a combination of dried urine plus saliva, because, again, that saliva is going to show us that cortisol awakening response, which is really, really important for overall health. So when we run a DUTCH test, we're seeing all of this. We're seeing the urine and we're seeing the saliva, which shows us both free cortisol and metabolized cortisol. And the way that they plot this information out on the test is there's two different dials.
Erin Holt [00:38:45]:
So one looking at free cortisol, one looking at metabolized cortisol. And ideally, these two dials are pointing in the same direction. They're matched up because the body is all about efficiency. It wants to make exactly as much as it needs. It wants to use what it makes. It wants to be balanced out, super efficient. So if we see both dials pointing toward low, that's a true low cortisol picture. If we see both dials pointing toward high, that's a true high cortisol picture.
Erin Holt [00:39:10]:
So we can say, yep, you've got low cortisol, or, yep, you've got high cortisol. Now, if they're not pointing in the same direction, something is off. There's an underlying reason for it. For the sake of time, I'm not going to get into all of the different underlying reasons, but I've done that on previous shows before. So that is sort of the benefit of a DUTCH test, is that you're getting to really, truly understand what your cortisol is doing. The DUTCH test also looks at DHEA, which is another adrenal hormone. Everyone's talking about cortisol. Nobody's talking about DHEA, but this is a bfd.
Erin Holt [00:39:44]:
It's a big freaking deal because it functions with more anabolic activity. So I said cortisol is catabolic, it's breakdown. DHEA is like the yin to the yang. It's, it's anabolic. It builds things up so it can reverse immune suppression caused by high cortisol. It helps to stimulate bone stimulation. Stimulate, stimulate. It increases muscle mass, it can decrease fat mass.
Erin Holt [00:40:11]:
It helps the conversion of T4 into T3 active thyroid hormone. It can accelerate recovery from acute stress. DHEA is huge. It is a huge hormone necessary for vaginal health, pelvic floor health, sexual health, breast health, bone health, brain health, resiliency, vitality. We want all of those things. So DHEA is money, baby. And it can decline, unfortunately, with age, it really peaks in our 20s. And so we get to see DHEA levels on this DUTCH test as well.
Erin Holt [00:40:43]:
Now if we see high cortisol and high DHEA, this is a normal stress response. Your body's under stress, both of these stress hormones, these adrenal hormones are going to raise up together. The problem becomes when DHEA starts to drop, that's when we get a little bit worried because we don't have it as that buffer for cortisol effects. We want the balance of the catabolic to the anabolic. So in my opinion, if you want to have the cortisol talk, you got to have the DHEA talk too. So the DUTCH test that we use looks at cortisol, DHEA, it also looks at estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, your sex hormones. It looks looks at melatonin, it looks at hormone metabolism, how you're breaking it down and clearing it out of your body. It looks at some nutrient markers, oxidative stress markers.
Erin Holt [00:41:31]:
So it's a pretty robust lab. You can order it right from their website. I'm pretty sure they still allow that. I don't recommend doing it because it's a pretty complex test to interpret. And so you want to know what the heck you're looking at. You're just going to get a bunch of data and you're gonna be like, what do I do with this? You want somebody that knows how to analyze the test for you. And so that is what we do in our one to one practice. We do a lot of hormone labs, as you might expect.
Erin Holt [00:41:57]:
But I do want to share that you also have the option to purchase this lab plus an analysis, plus a one on one appointment, plus a hormone protocol made just for you based on this data. You can do all of that in the Collective. Okay. I just banged my desk with my Aura ring. That was that noise, but I wanted to go out with a bang. So here we are. Join the Collective. It's a vibe.
Erin Holt [00:42:21]:
I hope that this really helped you understand some of the more complexities with cortisol. It's not all bad. We shouldn't be taking fistfuls of supplements to try to suppress our cortisol. Instead, we should be really looking at the root cause drivers of why our body perceives stress all of the time. And let's do some of that work together. It's my secret sauce. It is my specialty and I would love to help you with it. All right, friends, I'll see you next week.
Erin Holt [00:42:54]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.