3 Ways Chronic Stress Disrupts Your Hormones
3 Ways Chronic Elevated Cortisol Disrupts Endocrine System Balance:
Elevated cortisol means there is chronic overstimulation of stress on the body.
The stress could be from the food you eat (sugar), emotional stress, or immune stressors or triggers like heavy metal toxicity or infections. These cause a burden on the adrenals. The adrenals are not only in charge of stress but also sex hormone function, especially prior to puberty and after menopause for women.
After adrenal malnourishment and exhaustion, the body will often have low progesterone, low DHEA, low thyroid, and abnormal progesterone-estrogen ratios. You might not realize these hormonal imbalances are happening, but if you have mood disorders, sleep, weight, energy problems, chronically elevated cortisol could be a significant factor in your health concerns.
Elevated cortisol also affects the liver and burdens its function.
When the liver is burdened it can’t do all of its functions (it has thousands) as efficiently as is required. The liver gets stuck in the function of converting protein to glucose and cannot fully conjugate hormones or detox as it should. This can cause PMS and toxins to build throughout the body leading to cancer and immune dysfunction.
Elevated cortisol also takes a toll on the pancreas.
The pancreas is one of the major organs for digestion. It helps breakdown foods with enzymes and it helps regulate blood sugar levels from getting too high. Chronically high cortisol prevents insulin receptors on cells from responding to insulin which causes insulin resistance (a metabolic condition that precedes diabetes type 2). At this point, the pancreas has to keep producing more insulin to try to continue to lower blood sugar levels.
The pancreas is signaled to do this by the hypothalamus and pituitary. These hormone managers are the ones in charge of receiving the correct information about hormone levels in the body. When the cells aren't getting the glucose it needs due to insulin resistance, then the hypothalamus thinks the pancreas isn't doing its job and tells it to keep making insulin. Glycation of hormone receptors ultimately affects the pituitary and thyroid metabolism (the HPA axis).
All the more reason to reduce stress in your life. I talk about 11 ways to reduce stress here.
Food can also cause stress on the body.
Grab my free food list to help reduce stress with easy to digest foods!