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34. Cortisol - Is It Killing You?
Brain Chemistry - Cortisol - Page 73 of the book - 'How To Stay Sane In A Crazy World
Download the eBook here for $5
Cortisol is the stress hormone made by our two adrenal glands, one located on each kidney. The pituitary gland, located inside the brain, regulates the amount of cortisol released by the adrenal glands. Cortisol is essential for life and helps to maintain blood pressure, immune function and the body's anti-inflammatory processes. We share feelings of stress and anxiety with all other social animals. If we saw a herd of gazelle grazing and if one gazelle thought it heard a rustle in the grass, it would suddenly jerk its head up. This is what cortisol does.
Cortisol is designed to keep us alive. It is the first stage of fight or flight. It makes all of our senses hyper-attuned to look for danger and it injects glucose into our muscles so we are ready to go in case we need to fight or flee. Cortisol rapidly increases our heart rate and makes us start looking vigilantly to find the source of danger. The interesting thing about cortisol in a social environment is, if others sense that you are nervous, they get nervous too. So, all of the other gazelle go and jerk up their heads. They didn't see anything, they just saw that one gazelle over there startled. So, they all freaked out and all started looking for the danger. This is a good system! The gazelles who didn't even hear the rustle will see the lion, they will all run and will live another day! The same applies in the workplace. If we go to work and someone says, "I think there are going to be layoffs", we all panic. "What do you mean, where, when, who?" We all get paranoid. "Oh, I shouldn't have said or done..." We start to get crazy, our hearts start to race.
That is what cortisol does, it is trying to keep us alive. If we wake up in the middle of the night and hear a bump, what do we do? Jump and wake our partner up. What do they do? They jump also. As we are visual animals, we trust our eyes and go looking. If there is nothing there, we bend over and give a big sigh of relief. Cortisol then leaves our body, we relax and our heart rate goes back down. To increase our heart rate, cortisol shuts down systems, such as our growth and immune system, to gain energy to fight or flee. We are not supposed to have cortisol in our system all of the time. It's supposed to be present briefly for danger and then gone.
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By Trevor & Annie BoultonBrain Chemistry - Cortisol - Page 73 of the book - 'How To Stay Sane In A Crazy World
Download the eBook here for $5
Cortisol is the stress hormone made by our two adrenal glands, one located on each kidney. The pituitary gland, located inside the brain, regulates the amount of cortisol released by the adrenal glands. Cortisol is essential for life and helps to maintain blood pressure, immune function and the body's anti-inflammatory processes. We share feelings of stress and anxiety with all other social animals. If we saw a herd of gazelle grazing and if one gazelle thought it heard a rustle in the grass, it would suddenly jerk its head up. This is what cortisol does.
Cortisol is designed to keep us alive. It is the first stage of fight or flight. It makes all of our senses hyper-attuned to look for danger and it injects glucose into our muscles so we are ready to go in case we need to fight or flee. Cortisol rapidly increases our heart rate and makes us start looking vigilantly to find the source of danger. The interesting thing about cortisol in a social environment is, if others sense that you are nervous, they get nervous too. So, all of the other gazelle go and jerk up their heads. They didn't see anything, they just saw that one gazelle over there startled. So, they all freaked out and all started looking for the danger. This is a good system! The gazelles who didn't even hear the rustle will see the lion, they will all run and will live another day! The same applies in the workplace. If we go to work and someone says, "I think there are going to be layoffs", we all panic. "What do you mean, where, when, who?" We all get paranoid. "Oh, I shouldn't have said or done..." We start to get crazy, our hearts start to race.
That is what cortisol does, it is trying to keep us alive. If we wake up in the middle of the night and hear a bump, what do we do? Jump and wake our partner up. What do they do? They jump also. As we are visual animals, we trust our eyes and go looking. If there is nothing there, we bend over and give a big sigh of relief. Cortisol then leaves our body, we relax and our heart rate goes back down. To increase our heart rate, cortisol shuts down systems, such as our growth and immune system, to gain energy to fight or flee. We are not supposed to have cortisol in our system all of the time. It's supposed to be present briefly for danger and then gone.