5 Ways to Lower Cortisol, Stress, and Inflammation This Year

It’s been a pretty rough few years to say the least. We’ve all gone through difficult situations and circumstances and if you’re someone who’s been trying to stay on top of your health, you’ll know how challenging it’s been to prioritize that through it all.

Thankfully, it’s not impossible.

Even when we go through stressful situations in life, we can still make space for our healing.

When we prioritize our well-being first, we’re actually better able to take care of those around us. We become more productive, more approachable, more centered, and have more purpose.

On the other hand, when we neglect our health and needs, we actually signal to our brain that we’re operating under stress. Even if it’s saying yes when you mean no, or putting off your healthy habits, or staying up late to answer emails, you’re telling your brain that you cannot rest yet. And that puts your nervous system under a Sympathetic (Stress) state.

When you operate in the Sympathetic Nervous System, your blood vessels constrict, eyes dilate, breath shortens, and blood pressure raises. This raises cortisol and inflammation. In the short term, acute inflammation is useful and beneficial. However, when you operate like this for longer periods, this can downregulate your thyroid and shut down your reproductive system. Your body will always prioritize survival over reproduction.

So how can you prevent from staying too long in the Sympathetic state and lower stress and inflammation?

Here are some of my favorite ways to support your nervous system and lower system inflammation:

1) create healthy boundaries with yourself and others

2) get plenty of sleep, uninterrupted

3) create a holy space or ritual for your meals

4) exercising according to your needs and not by obligation

5) letting go of things out of your control

The last one is probably my favorite because it has the biggest impact on your nervous system.

When you try so hard to make sure things go your way in life, you restrict yourself from the freedom and peace you can have, both in your mind and body. And in that case, you can entrap yourself with negative thoughts or feelings when life doesn’t happen the way you want. Our thoughts and emotions influence our responses and it all goes back into the same stress feedback system. Negative thoughts and emotions trigger the Sympathetic System. Healthy thoughts and emotional regulation trigger a balance between the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest state.

I know it can be hard in the beginning, learning how to rewire your thought patterns, but it could completely change your health and your life.

Many things, as we know now, are out of our control. But one thing we can control is how we respond to that and how we choose to prioritize our own health and mental well-being.

If you have been struggling to find that balance, or don’t know where to start with your health journey, reaching out for support may be the first step! It’s an act of surrendering and knowing that you cannot do it all nor control it all.

Spaces are filling up soon, but book a free call or apply to my Stress & Energy Reset if you’re looking for immediate 1:1 support for your health today.

Do I have 'Adrenal Fatigue'?

What is Adrenal Fatigue and how do I know if I have it? Here are some pointers in how you can tell at what stage of stress you are in and what you can do about it.

Adrenal Fatigue

You may have heard of the common term ‘adrenal fatigue’ when it comes to understanding the reason why you might be feeling low energy and overall mojo.

Well, the term ‘adrenal fatigue’ is technically not a medical diagnosis, but what is essentially happening is that they’re actually being overused. When you’re stressed, you produce more cortisol to meet demands. However, over long periods of stress (high cortisol output) or sympathetic nervous system dominance (fight or flight mode), your adrenal function becomes taxed and are unable to keep up with this demand.

What are the Adrenal Glands?

The adrenal glands are these little glands that sit on top of your kidneys and they work with your Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland to control and monitor stress levels and energy production. This is something called the HPA Axis (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis).

The adrenal glands produce glucocorticoids when the body signals the Hypothalamus that there’s a stress input. These glucocorticoids are essentially cortisol-driven glucose, which are released when the body needs sugar in the body to meet physiological demands. This is also what raises the cortisol hormone in the body to signal fight or flight mode.

Cortisol is used for many functions, but the most important is for energy and stress. It’s what helps you manage daily life demands.

What’s the significance?

When your body is under repetitive, consistent stress, [whether that comes from physical stress (exercise), mental stress (anxiety), or pathological stress (infection or virus)], or a combination of stressors over a long period of time, your adrenal function gets taxed. Your HPA axis feedback loop is no longer able to keep up with the stress induced by physical, mental, emotional, pathological, or environmental demands.

All things play a role into how much stress your body may be filtering through. Diet, lifestyle, exercise, heavy metal exposure, emotional balance, trauma awareness, and environmental toxins all play a role in the ‘stress bucket’.

This is why it’s so important to assess and manage stress levels every single day, regularly.

How do I know if I have healthy adrenal function?

Well, let’s take a look at how many of these things you can relate to:

• I feel ‘tired but wired’ especially at night

• It takes me a while to fully wake up in the morning and have energy

• I don’t really feel hungry when I wake up

• I tend to crash midday

• I can’t seem to lose weight even if I train 5-6x a week

• I am noticing hormonal fluctuations like irregular periods and hair loss

• I am noticing muscle weakness or loss

• I tend to get constipated

• I have a hard time focusing or concentrating

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, it could be a sign that your adrenals need extra support.

Your body is no longer keeping up with your stress demands and is depleting the essential minerals and amino acids in the body in order to keep up. This may explain muscle weakness, hair loss, hormonal imbalances, and lack of energy to do the things you used to do.

Your energy stores are being used up, even though your adrenals are working overtime, pumping out cortisol! Overtime, this may lead to burnout where your 4-point cortisol levels flatline. When this happens, you don’t have enough cortisol, minerals like calcium and magnesium, or amino acids to give you the energy you need to function properly.

What can you do about adrenal fatigue?

1. I recommend running a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis Test (HTMA) to check for mineral levels, which indicate which phase of adrenal stress you’re in.

2. If you’re also experiencing gut and hormonal imbalances or symptoms, try running a Functional Medicine Detox to open your detoxification pathways for healing.

3. Prioritize sleep hygiene and get to bed around the same time within a 30min window. This helps reset your diurnal rhythm, which works in conjuction with cortisol levels.

4. Balance blood sugar throughout the day and before bed to also support your cortisol/diurnal rhythm. You want cortisol to be highest in the morning and lowest at night. Having a nutrient dense breakfast can help, so quit fasting!

5. Work with a certified practitioner who can help you run and interpret lab results and offer individualized feedback in terms of what supplements to prioritize and how to optimize your nutrition and lifestyle to reset your adrenal function.

If you’ve been struggling with fatigue, hormonal imbalances, and overall lack of mojo for more than 6 months, it may be time to take a deeper look at what’s going on.

In my Integrated Healing Program, we use Functional Medicine Lab Testing to pinpoint the root cause of why you may have resistant stress, fatigue, or adrenal dysfunction. You’ll have a chance to work 1:1 with a certified Integrative Health Practitioner to address nutrition, lifestyle changes, functional supplementation, and more. To get started, go to kelseychen.com/integrativehealth.

To learn more about how to support your body, follow me on IG and Tiktok @tinybutmightywellness