Speaker A [00:00:00]:
Hi, everyone. So today we’re going to talk about cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. It’s a hot topic in nutrition. You may have heard that when your cortisol is high, your metabolism gets wonky and it’s harder to lose weight, which is true. But today we’re going to talk about cortisol and your gut, because so many of you with paralysis struggle with bowel issues. And so today I’m going to talk about cortisol and how lowering stress will make your gut happier, which will help you poop easy. So lots of scientific stuff today to discuss, so let’s get to it.
Speaker A [00:00:39]:
Welcome to the Paralysis Nutrition Podcast, where changing your eating habits is the key to losing weight, improving bowel health, and feeling your best. I’m your host, Fatima Fakouri. I’m a registered dietitian who’s married to a quadriplegic and specializes in nutrition for paralysis. Get ready to be inspired, educated, and motivated so you can take control of your health using the power of food. Let’s get started. This is the Paralysis Nutrition Podcast. So what is cortisol? It’s a stress hormone, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a steroid hormone that your adrenal glands, which are the endocrine glands on top of your kidneys, produce and release.
Speaker A [00:01:22]:
So cortisol affects everything in your body, almost every organ, every tissue in your body, and it has a lot of responsibilities. So obviously, being the stress hormone, it’s going to regulate your body’s stress response. It also is going to help control how your body uses different macros. So that’s metabolism, how your body uses fat, uses protein and carbs. So in that way, it has a big role in your metabolism. Cortisol is also really good at suppressing inflammation. Now, the caveat there is that when your cortisol is too high, it can cause inflammation. So it’s like when cortisol is nice and balanced, it’s going to help keep inflammation down.
Speaker A [00:02:16]:
But if you’re super stressed and your cortisol is always high, that’s going to increase the amount of inflammation in your body. Cortisol is also responsible for regulating your blood pressure and your blood sugar. So basically, if you don’t eat regular meals and your blood sugar drops, then your cortisol goes up, and that is not good for your gut. Cortisol is also responsible for your sleep cycle, your sleep and wake cycle. So it’s really important. Cortisol, it has so many different functions in the body, and so your body releases cortisol when it’s stressed. Now, this can be acute stress. Like, if you’re driving and, you know, you see a deer on the road, right? That’s acute stress.
Speaker A [00:03:05]:
But another type of acute stress is skipping meals, because skipping meals tanks your blood sugar and increases your cortisol. So having balanced blood sugar is going to help you keep your cortisol levels in check. More on that later. But there’s also chronic stress. So I’ve talked about acute stress, which is like, you know, stuff that’s like, right away, you know, the deer running in the road or whatever. But there’s also chronic stress. Like if you have a really high tension job or an unhealthy relationship or literally living your life as a wheelchair user with paralysis, that’s stressful. So chronic stress is like daily stress that is kind of underlying all the time.
Speaker A [00:03:57]:
And then there’s the third type of stress, which is traumatic stress. So most of my clients, I would say, like, 80%, had a traumatic accident, and that’s why they have a spinal cord injury. So basically, almost everyone I work with probably has a high risk of having high cortisol. So that’s why I wanted to talk about cortisol today, because I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on the podcast before. Always talking about weight and talking about pooping. But cortisol, which is something that you can actually work on, right? Cortisol can help you lose weight and poop easy. So, like I said, cortisol helps control how your body uses the different macronutrients, fat, protein, and carbs. So how your body uses those things for energy.
Speaker A [00:04:51]:
So cortisol, when it’s high, I mentioned it can increase inflammation in your body. That’s going to weaken your immune system. Having too much inflammation in your body tanks your immune system. Now, why is that important? One, because obviously we want a strong immune system. But two, what’s a really big thing that can be catastrophic for wheelchair users? Wounds and pressure sores. So just a reminder that wound healing, pressure sores, skin healing, this is part of your immune system’s response. So cortisol, when it’s high, is going to weaken your immune system, which can increase your risk of having things like pressure sores and also make healing very, very difficult. So when cortisol is high, it can cause a lot of problems.
Speaker A [00:05:42]:
And today I really want to focus on the problems that it can cause in your gut, Namely, it’s going to worsen constipation. So when I work with Clients on improving their bowel program. Of course I talk about nutrition, of course I talk about hydration and supplements. But I also really talk a lot about stress management. And the reason I talk about the stress management is because magical things happen when you lower stress. It’s easier for you to poop. Like literally, constipation gets better. It takes less time for my clients to poop when they start working on stress.
Speaker A [00:06:27]:
So when you lower stress, you’re lowering your cortisol as well. So that’s really the crux of why I wanted to talk about cortisol on this episode. Because, you know, I want you to obviously to know what it is, but how can you decrease it so that you can have an easier, shorter bowel program? Because that’s really what a lot of people are after. You know, they’ve spent years doing the same thing with their bowel program and it’s not going well. So let’s talk about it. How can we. Now that you know about what is cortisol, right? It’s that stress hormone. You know that it’s affecting every, everything in your body, almost all your organs, all your tissues.
Speaker A [00:07:10]:
And it has a lot of responsibilities. You know, the metabolism, the inflammation, the blood sugar. That one is really, really important. And so how can we do everything in our power to have an easier bowel program? I think the focus, traditionally when you go to rehab, the focus is on medications and things like that to help you manage the neurogenic bowel symptoms. But I think that that’s really short sighted. I think that we need to live in a healthy pattern, have an overall healthy lifestyle, right. In order to improve your bowel program. So cortisol is one thing that we can focus on to help you poop easier.
Speaker A [00:08:04]:
So I want to go through some ways that you can work on improving, probably lowering, right, because most people probably have high cortisol. How can we better manage our habits in our life so that our cortisol is balanced, right. And so that you can have an easier bowel program. So the first thing is going to be about the blood sugar. You need to eat regular meals. I’ve done episodes on this before. I know I did an episode on breakfast because so many people skip breakfast. And I did another episode on intermittent fasting, which is essentially just skipping breakfast, rebranded.
Speaker A [00:08:49]:
If you didn’t catch those episodes, you can go back and listen to them. But eating regular meals is how you balance your blood sugar. So when your blood sugar is low, meaning that you didn’t eat your cortisol goes High. So in the morning, if you wake up and you’re like, oh, I’m not hungry. If you don’t have an appetite in the morning, it could be that one, your body’s just used to it, and two, it could be that your blood sugar is not balanced, your cortisol is wonky and now your metabolism is wonky. So it’s not healthy. It’s not, I should say it’s not a sign of a healthy metabolism when people don’t wake up hungry. Because really, let’s say I’ll use myself for an example.
Speaker A [00:09:38]:
Say I eat dinner at 6:30pm and I wake up around 6:30am it’s been 12 hours since I ate. I should be hungry. I may not have, you know, the same hunger for breakfast as I do for lunch or dinner, but you should be a little bit hungry. And that’s actually a sign of a sluggish metabolism when you’re not hungry in the morning. So how do we fix that? We have to fix your blood sugar. So no skipping meals. If you’re not a breakfast person, I don’t care, eat something. I’m definitely not a breakfast person, but I am a person who wants to stay in good health.
Speaker A [00:10:20]:
So I’m going to do what the research has told me time and time again, which is eat breakfast. So no skipping meals. And on top of that you’re going to want to balance your meals with protein, fat, fiber. So this one thing alone can really help improve your cortisol levels. So eating regular meals. So breakfast, lunch and dinner. I also think that snacks have a, have a place depending on your schedule. So like for example, I eat lunch around 12:30, around 3:30, 4:00, I’ll have something, something small.
Speaker A [00:11:02]:
Recently it’s been like a string cheese and like a couple of almond flour crackers or maybe like a handful of grapes. I’m talking about like just something small so that I’m not dipping too low with my blood sugar so that my cortisol doesn’t go up. And also so that I don’t overstuff myself at 6, 6:30. Right, because 12:30, lunch, 6:00, dinner. That’s a long, that’s a long time to wait. So let’s eat regular meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, maybe even a snack. No skipping meals because that is not going to help balance your blood sugar. Balanced blood sugar means balanced cortisol.
Speaker A [00:11:39]:
So you know what, I should have said this before. So in the morning, your cortisol, it’s not that it’s going to Be low. It’s that it kind of has like a flow throughout the day. So when you wake up, it’ll be at a certain level, and then it should kind of slowly go up and then come down. And there’s this. I mean, this is a podcast, so I can’t show you, but there is a pattern. It’s, you know, it kind of starts off slow, then it goes up high, and then it comes down. And there’s normal ranges for where your cortisol should be at different times of the day.
Speaker A [00:12:14]:
I have actually done this type of testing on myself. It’s a urine test. So you have to pee on these strips at like four or five times, different times during the day, and then you send them in. It is a functional medicine test. So this is not something that your doctor can do. This is something that actually a fellow dietitian, a colleague of mine, who’s now actually my dietitian, she did this test on me, and I actually found out that my cortisol went high at certain times of the day, and then at certain times it was kind of too low. And now that I have been working on balancing my blood sugar, my cortisol is getting better. So eat regular meals.
Speaker A [00:12:57]:
Let’s balance that blood sugar. Another way that we can improve our cortisol levels is to get quality sleep. I know that this can be a big issue. I mean, for all adults, but especially clients of mine that have paralysis, they tend to have chronic sleep issues. I don’t have the number off the top of my head, but I do know that sleep apnea, so, like obstructive sleep apnea, is something that a lot of people with C level injuries deal with. And I can’t quite remember why, but I know that the prevalence of sleep apnea is higher if you’re a quad. Also, insomnia, know mental health issues. These things are obviously going to affect the quality of sleep.
Speaker A [00:13:47]:
And if you don’t have good quality restorative sleep, you will have higher cortisol levels. Sleep is something that I think now it’s being talked about, but it really wasn’t talked about enough for decades. Sleep is a really important thing for your health, for your overall health, and for your longevity. Yeah, you know, people who have chronic sleep issues literally don’t live as long as people who sleep well. So get quality sleep. It will help you with your cortisol levels. And the next thing is learn to limit your stress and stressful thinking patterns that you may have been in for years. You know, so many people that I work with who had a traumatic injury.
Speaker A [00:14:36]:
They have a big shift, you know, in the way they think about things. I’ve noticed. And so be aware of what’s going on in your mind. You know, do you catastrophicize things? Do you make things? Do you. Do you make a mountain out of a molehill? You know, none of this is your fault. It’s. It’s your thinking pattern. It’s like you’re wired from your environment and your experience to think and feel certain ways.
Speaker A [00:15:04]:
So if you notice that you’re breathing and your heart rate and, you know, maybe other signs of tension, like I grind my teeth a lot, so I know that that’s definitely like a big sign of stress. Even just recognizing when you’re doing these things is helpful. It’s the first step in managing stress is first even acknowledging that you have it. Get used to it, and it becomes our. It becomes our normal. Like in my 30s, I think I started to recognize that I have a nervous energy. And, you know, is it helpful? In some ways, yes. It helps me be productive, but it’s also exhausting, you know, so now when I recognize stress in my body, a lot of times I’ll notice that I’m holding my breath literally.
Speaker A [00:15:54]:
Like, I’m just holding my wrap for no reason or clenching my jaw for no reason. So if you start to recognize stress when it begins, you can kind of help yourself rein it in. Taking deep breaths. So limiting stress, you know, how do you do that? You know, I’m a big proponent of therapy. I think in a perfect world, everyone would go to therapy. I think that living with a disability is a. Well, I shouldn’t say is. Can be.
Speaker A [00:16:25]:
Living with disability can be an added stress factor. Just overall, every day, you know, I think that the deep breathing exercises are probably your best bet in learning to limit stress, because that’s the biggest thing in our body, is the breath. The breath is life. So when you sense yourself getting anxious, you’ll probably notice that your breathing becomes quicker, maybe more shallow. So learning to harness the breath, I mean, they literally call it breath work. You can. You can go on YouTube or wherever, and you can put in the word breathwork, and they have all these, like, kind of free resources out there. It’s really powerful, you guys.
Speaker A [00:17:07]:
And I think that we as a society tend to. I don’t want to say look down, but we don’t put enough emphasis on the basic human things like breathing. And we put too much emphasis on things like a super green powder that’s gonna, you know, make Us live till we’re a hundred, you know, so let’s focus on things that we know are proven and things that we can do at all times. So taking a green powder once every other week because you’re motivated in the mood to drink something yucky that promises to fix is not going to be helpful. Practicing controlled breathing throughout the day will. Because what happens when you take control of your breath? You are taking control of your nervous system, of your feelings. So when you do that controlled breath work, it’s going to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. That’s your, you know, we call it the rest and digest system.
Speaker A [00:18:15]:
It’s the opposite, or I should say it’s like the yin and yang with the fight or flight. Most of us are in fight or flight. I’m in fight or flight, like, I don’t know, 18 hours a day, probably just like, not when I’m sleeping. We’re working on it. I think that most of us would benefit so greatly from breath work. You know what? And I actually, I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do a future episode on breath work. Maybe I’ll find somebody who specializes it and bring them on. Because breathwork is really powerful and it’ something that everyone can do every day for free.
Speaker A [00:18:51]:
And it works. So when you activate that parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest system, you’re helping your body lower cortisol levels, right? So high cortisol, no good. High cortisol is going to make your metabolism, your pressure, your blood sugar, everything wonky. And it’s going to worsen the symptoms that you have around bowel health. And so we need to do everything that we can in our power, right, to take care of ourselves from the inside out. And so as much as you can, you know, be cognizant of the things that stress you out, if there’s a relationship or a person. I know you got one of those. We all do.
Speaker A [00:19:41]:
Or maybe more than one of those, you know, practicing healthy boundaries, doing things that you enjoy, literally. There are studies that show that laughing is good for you. Laughing lowers cortisol. It actually. Laughing will suppress cortisol. Laughing releases endorphins. You know, they. You always hear that exercise releases endorphins.
Speaker A [00:20:09]:
So does laughing. Can we talk about laughing? We’re always talking about cardio laughing. You can do that every day. You can do it right now. Laughing is going to help you release endorphins. So any activity, any hobby that you like, you need to make time for it. Because anytime that you are doing something enjoyable, something that puts a smile on your face. It’s going to help lower your cortisol levels.
Speaker A [00:20:35]:
It’s going to make your body healthier with less inflammation. It’s going to help you in the end, have an easier bowel program because what you’re doing is releasing stress, right? So again, on the, you know, the healthy relationships thing, like human beings are like really impacted by relationships, right? So if you have like tense arguments or, you know, I don’t know, there, you know, you know, there are some stressful people out there who don’t know how to act, don’t know how to mind their business, whatever it is, having, you know, irritation and tense relationships with anyone, you know, kids, partners, co workers, doctors, anyone your neighbor, this is going to cause you to have higher cortisol levels. So I hope that this was helpful because I think the nutrition part, right to, you know, paralysis. Nutrition is all about nutrition. But I do think that it is worth spending some time focusing on the lifestyle in addition to what you eat, right? What you eat is part of your lifestyle. But your stress, your cortisol, your relationships, your hobbies, how you spend your free time, your breath, breathing, sleeping, all of this is going to help you not just feel better, but have a better bowel program. And so I’m always going to try to contextualize when I talk about different things. So today I wanted to talk about cortisol because I am into nutrition and the body and wellness.
Speaker A [00:22:24]:
And so for me, cortisol and blood sugar are like so interesting for you who are listening, maybe it’s interesting to you, but what do you really care about on a daily basis if you’re spending two hours in the bathroom trying to poop, I think that’s a bigger problem than, oh, let’s talk about cortisol, you know, because it’s interesting. So many people, you know, clients who start with me in my programs or people who comment on things on social media or who I chat with. So many of you are spending hours, two hours, three hours, five hours trying to poop on a bowel program. No one should be spending that much time spending hours and hours in the bathroom every week feeling frustrated, feeling hopeless, feeling confused, like, why is this happening this way? And so many of you are just used to it. Like you may have heard, I mean, when, if you have a 90 minute bowel program and you just heard me say five hours, you may be thinking, oh, wow, you know, I’m pretty good. Like, that’s pretty good. Well, if you can go in 90 minutes. I bet you you could go in 45.
Speaker A [00:23:34]:
You know, I bet you could do better. So don’t compare yourself to other people, right? There’s always going to be, you know, people at different levels of injury, people who eat differently. There’s going to be different, you know, times that are tolerable to you. I have people who for years have had a three hour bowel program and when they get it down to like an hour and 20 minutes, they’re thrilled and they don’t want to touch it because that’s such a huge improvement. I want to push them to get better, but they’re like, you know what, this is going great. Don’t touch it. So only compare yourself with yourself. And if you want to spend more time doing things that you actually like, that means you’re going to have to spend less time on your bowel program if it’s taken you more than, you know, 30, 45 minutes.
Speaker A [00:24:21]:
So let’s use our knowledge of nutrition, of the body, of the gut to make things easier for you. Okay, so today it was about cortisol and blood sugar, right? And I hope that this was helpful. If you are out there and you are feeling so frustrated and stuck about your bowels, just know there is proven evidence based stuff that can help you have an easier bowel program. Spend less time, feel less bloated. Okay? So thanks for listening guys and I will catch you next time with a fresh episode. That’s our episode for today. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
Speaker A [00:25:02]:
Remember, if you want to lose weight with paralysis, improve your bowel health and feel your best you can. It’s possible you just have to change your eating habits. If you need inspiration on how to get started, check out the paralysis Nutrition Cookbook 101 recipes to help you lose weight and improve bowel health. The cookbook comes with a bonus 30 day meal plan and is the perfect way to start a eating healthier. You can find it online@paralysisnutrition.com cookbook. I’ll talk to you again soon.
