Is this that “adrenal insufficiency” or “chronic inflammation” trash getting a new coat of paint on it? Cortisol is good, actually. Chronic stress is not, and if you don’t have sufficient cortisol levels when you’re stressed out, it worse for you than having a cortisol spike or whatever.
There’s no liberatory potential in this kind of neo-humoral pop biology. There’s no explicatory value either. Chronic stress is what’s bad for you. Cortisol has something to do with how it’s bad for you but has zero bearing on why, or what is to be done about it.
This is true for basically any biological explanation for anything more complex or generalized than a mechanistic description of what is occurring in a cell under laboratory conditions.
Are you RFK Jr.?
Reread what I wrote, please, and tell me exactly what’s giving you RFK, Jr. vibes. Something is getting lost in communication here.
There are a myriad of known issues which can cause elevated Cortisol levels, and the symptoms listed in the article are the real signs of elevated cortisol. These things could also be called chronic inflammation, or adrenal issues. But they can just as easily be called Cushings disease or Cushings disorder, both of which have many different potential causes, ranging from stress and PTSD to brain tumors, or cancers which produces ACTH. There’s also cyclical Cushings and pseudo Cushings which we don’t know the exact causes of.
But what really pisses me off is your willingness to dismiss the suffering of others because it is not revolutionary or because it could all just be in their head, but that doesn’t piss me off nearly as much as when I heard it from every doctor and specialist I saw for years until finally one of them found a tumor pressing on my adrenal gland, and if it weren’t for articles such as this one I may have just listened to those doctors. So unless you have some breakthrough in chronic illness to announce, please keep your mouth shut until you have something useful to contribute.
Cushings is exactly what I had in mind as a counterpoint. And adrenocarcinomas as well. I’m glad this article may have been helpful for you to keep looking for help instead of letting doctors roll over you.
I don’t have any “breakthroughs in chronic illness” to report. I’m not claiming anything is “all in one’s head” - read what I wrote again, please. My point is that pointing to “excessive cortisol levels” is, have been, a catch-all for all kinds of human suffering that is not reducible to a tidy biological cause. It was the explanation for all depression and anxiety for a while. I have seen it cause real harm in foster children who are being mistreated and cortisol levels (which no one is bothering to measure, people just jump right to "cortisol high so we can ignore everything else that’s going on in their lives), for example.
Suffering is real, full stop. Adjusting your diet to cure a tumor is RFK, Jr.-tier advice. That is not what I am offering. I hear you. Misdiagnosis is not at all uncommon, non-specific symptoms can mean something serious, and it’s an abdication by the medical profession to write it off as something else.
I’m not a doctor. I have a relevant background and I’ve seen real harm happen to real people because of the exact opposite problem that you had. What both share is a medical system that’s happy to disbelieve patients. Some of the people who love to talk about cortisol as the root cause of their kids’ issues while refusing them medical care are RFK, Jr. fans themselves.
I’m not interested in continuing this further, if you have any response to make, by all means respond but I’m leaving this here and disengaging.
My point is that pointing to “excessive cortisol levels” is, have been, a catch-all for all kinds of human suffering that is not reducible to a tidy biological cause. It was the explanation for all depression and anxiety for a while.
Isn’t that more of an issue of getting cause and effect backwards? i.e. high cortisol levels are not the cause of depression/anxiety, etc etc but that high cortisol levels they are caused by high levels of stress, and the stress is what’s causing the depression/anxiety. Measuring cortisol only tells us that someone is stressed, not why or how, so reducing cortisol is basically meaningless. What they actually need is a reduction in stress in order to treat the resulting depression and anxiety.
Like, I have disturbed sleep during the work week, and I sleep fine on the weekend. That’s obviously stress. If my cortisol levels were measured they might be elevated, but all that tells me is what I already know - I’m stressed.
I get where you’re coming from, there is an over-emphasis on cortisol in the wellness and fitness industries and you’re absolutely right that chronic stress is the real issue.
That said though, you’re kinda doing the same thing you’re fighting against, by oversimplifying a complex biological system into a neat little box. You’re clearly astute on the subject, so you know there’s nuance to it. You especially know that while the hormone itself isn’t bad, chronically high or persistently low levels are an issue. Given how knowledgeable you sound on the subject, I’m guessing you also know our bodies rely on a natural diurnal curve which spikes in the morning to wake us up and drops at night so we can sleep.
Please don’t think I’m saying you’re wrong, it’s not that. For example, you’re right to point out the underlying stress factor and that chronic stress breaks that diurnal curve rhythm, which causes very real physical damage. But I fear that you assume everyone is as well educated on the subject and so knows that.
All in all, it’s definitely not just pop biology. If someone is having severe symptoms that make them suspect their system is out of sync, they shouldn’t just brush it off by any means. It’s always best to get it checked out by a doctor. And I say that as someone that knows doctors have limited time, but we’re not talking about common cold symptoms here.
You’re right! I’m coming to this from a specialist perspective. The pop biology I’m pointing to isn’t necessarily what’s in the article, but it’s everywhere. It was everywhere in the 80s, too, in slightly different form. There are people who will find “cortisol overload” or whatever they call it in literally everything and they have a laundry list of supplements to sell you. Or self-help advice. Doctors having limited time is itself a systemic issue. My point is not “don’t seek medical attention”. There is a lot of bad pop biology. There is a lot of bad vade mecum biology that uses cortisol as a proxy for systemic problems to turn blame towards individuals and encourages professionals to throw up their hands and tell people to try doing mindfulness instead of doing something more productive, whatever that looks like.
Let me start out by thanking you. If more people took the time to put effort into their conversations the way you have, the internet would be a far better place.
Honestly, I’m not well-studied enough to get into the nitty-gritty with you and it’s a shame, because this is the type of conversation I make time in my day for. At the very least, I walk away a smarter man.
What I will say is that, with the advent of GLPs and peptides in general, especially in times where capitalism is exploiting people more than ever, people are pushing their systems more than ever. As you said, we need to look at fixing the root causes rather than the symptoms, but we’re definitely witnessing a rise in cortisol levels being out of whack as a result of it all.
No it happens when you get brutally facemogged by an ASU frat leader
Huh?
It’s probably a good thing that you don’t know. However, it’s a reference to a meme about streamer and looksmaxxer Clavicular who got embarrassed that another guy looked “better” than he did
Oh, I’ve seen Clavicular. He recently had a disastrous European tour 😂
You can track the feminization of society by this fear of cortisol. “Uh bro that spiked my cortisol.” Yeah bro cause you can’t deal with stress like a WOMAN. Me? I’ve been cortisolmaxxing for the past three years.
What did you mean by this
I’ve been injecting straight cortisone into my veins every day for over three years
If you have trouble falling asleep at night or tend to wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep, it could have something to do with your stress hormones. “Cortisol should be low at night, but if it’s spiking due to stress or blood sugar dips, it can wake you up in the middle of the night,” says Armstrong.
Yeah my sleep is disturbed during the workweek, then on the weekend I sleep soundly. It’s really consistent.
