The Cortisol Negative Feedback Loop -Gorge

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Did you read in my last about about how cortisol can get stuck way too high, even when the stressor has gone. Below is an interesting article about what may cause depression. So, learning to relax can lower your tendency to depression and reduce your weight. You might find this interesting:

Cortisol, Stress, Depression and Omega 3

Cortisol levels in the body have for a long time been linked to stress and depression. It is the stress hormone that is involved in a vicious feedback loop when one is chronically depressed. When threatened or under pressure the body increases the level of cortisol in the blood, which causes the body to produce Adrenal hormone ACTH. This in turn stimulates more cortisol. For a healthy person, it can be easy to step out of the feedback loop when one is threatened but when one is continuously under pressure or stress, this becomes more difficult and a negative feedback loop prevails where one becomes more and more heavy.However there are ways out. Reducing the consumption of caffeine, alcohol can help along with increasing the consumption of Omega 3

From another site:

http://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/article/does-stress-hormone-cortisol.html

With major stressors in early childhood, the HPA axis feedback loop becomes stronger with each new stressful experience. By adulthood this can produce an extremely sensitive stress circuit where the person overreacts hormonally to comparatively minor situations.

It's largely accepted that chronic stress and its released cortisol are related to depression. Cortisol is produced in excess in depressed people and has a toxic effect on the hippocampus. Chrousos finds that people with depression can turn on the fight or flight response, but can't turn it off again, producing constant anxiety and overreaction to stimulation. This can be followed by "learned helplessness," where they give up trying to improve. Some neuroscientists believe that the major changes in serotonin and other neurotransmitters seen in depression are not the cause of depression, but secondary to changes in the stress response.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is also generally accepted as a stress-related disease and a dysfunction of the HPA axis but with lower levels of cortisol; even though people with difficulty sleeping had higher cortisol levels in the evening. Practicing regular deep relaxation helps lower the cortisol to enhance sleep.

Dr. Chrousos concludes that chronic stress shouldn't be taken lightly or accepted as a fact of life. "Persistent, unremitting stress leads to a variety of serious health problems. Anyone who suffers from chronic stress needs take steps to alleviate it … by learning to relax and calm down."

To minimize your own mounting physical problems consider that stress management can be as important as any medication you take. Employers who want to control health-care and workers' comp costs provide support for your employees to manage their stress better; the sooner the better for your mental and physical health.

On Food Cravings:

Your neuroendocrine system doesn't know that you're not physically fighting or fleeing, so it still responds to stress with the hormonal signal to replenish nutritional stores making you feel hungry. This can lead to weight gain and a tendency to store "visceral fat" around the midsection.

To complicate matters, the "fuel" your muscles need during the fight or flight response is sugar, a reason you crave carbohydrates when stressed, says endocrinologist Perfetti, M.D., Ph.D., of Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "To move the sugar from our blood to our muscles requires insulin, the hormone that opens the gates to the cells and lets the sugar in," says Perfetti, who directs the outpatient diabetes program. And high levels of sugar and insulin set the stage for the body to store fat. "So people who are under stress, metabolically speaking, will gain weight for that very reason." (Can this at least in part explain the obesity epidemic in America?)

Kv