What causes increased cortisol? - overtraining, sleeplessness, extreme muscle soreness, elevated resting heart rate, overall fatigue, depression, chronic fatigue and life stress. - Exercise does cause an increase in cortisol, but if we relax and eat adequately afterwards, often this is enough to counteract the effects, as well as the endorphins released during exercise can counteract. - When we exercise moderately long term we actually help to control our cortisol response. How can we decrease our cortisol - Have 6 g of protein for every 30 grams of carbs post workout. This replenishes the glucose in the blood and brings cortisol back to normal. Incorporate yoga or meditation into your physical activity routine. Don’t overtrain or skip the carbohydrates. Overtraining and eating too low of carbs for your body both elevate cortisol levels. - Dancing and laughing decrease our cortisol! - By keeping your training sessions less than 40 minutes you don’t reach the cortisol peak that happens at 40 minutes! - Also, if you are a highly stressed person you actually don’t want to do a super high intense workout. If you already have cortisol flowing through you and then you work maximally on top of that you are probably doing more damage than good! - Take lots of recovery after activity, listen to your body! - If you are super concerned about your cortisol level because you are stressed out in your life, stick with walking and yoga, activities that keep your vo2 max at less than 40 %. - our cortisol naturally peaks in the morning and decreases at night. If you exercise in the morning, or before 12 pm you don’t counteract the cortisol patterns. If you exercise at night you just spike the cortisol again! - Fancy monitors- that track heart rate variability. If you have a worse HRV that day, take it easy! Don’t push as hard! - Go for short bouts of high intensity exercise.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 14:25:17 +0000
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