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stooliepidgin | 4 years ago

How would someone control their cortisol levels? Maslow's hierarchy of needs, medical/pharma interventions, and/or something else?

discuss

order

specialist|4 years ago

Having done it, I still honestly can't say what worked. Per @rojeee, this list is more or less the kind of stuff I did.

"11 Natural Ways to Lower Your Cortisol Levels"

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ways-to-lower-cortisol

Additionally:

1)

My naturopath prescribed supplements. Lots of stuff for night time, going to bed. Like chamomile tea, melatonin, magnesium ortate (for muscle pain), ashwagandha, and L-theanine. And some stuff to perk up in the morning, like DHEA drops. The general idea is to over time nudge the daily cortisol and adrenaline cycle back to "normal".

I'm not recommending this stuff. Just relating what I did, experimented with. For all I know, all the benefits were due to placebo effect. And being very motivated to fix my sleep.

I had first read up on each supplement. I figured none were harmful (to me). So the worst that'd happen is I'd waste some money.

2)

I'm skeptical of naturopathy and against homeopathy. In the future, I believe we'll call the good (useful) bits "nutrition", which will just be rolled up into wellness and eating right.

Probably the biggest benefit of having a naturopath (that I liked) was life coach stuff, being accountable to someone. In that way, I got lucky with the 3rd practitioner. The first two I consulted were total quacks.

3)

I did test my daily cortisol level cycle. Spit tests. At the time, the support for the accuracy of these tests was pretty thin. Even so, my tests before, during, after adopting my sleep hygiene regiment seemed to indicate that my cycle became "normal".

These tests seemed to correlation with my lived experience. Which means almost nothing. Self reporting is notoriously unreliable, which I've experienced many, many times.

YMMV.

rojeee|4 years ago

Thanks, very interestering to hear about your experience.

rojeee|4 years ago

More aerobic exercise, less anerobic exercise, more meditation, etc.

jbotz|4 years ago

Magnesium helps with that as well [1] (see my comment above in this thread). In general, magnesium is involved in lots of biological processes, but especially those involving hormones.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33030273/

misev|4 years ago

Anaerobic exercise may have a temporary bad effect on cortisol, how are the long-term effects though? In moderation I suspect it is a net positive long-term.