Discover 5 cortisol-lowering foods to reduce stress naturally. Learn how B vitamins, omega-3s, magnesium, and gut-friendly foods help manage cortisol levels.
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Managing stress involves a lot of things, a healthy work life balance, good boundaries, sleep, exercise, but changing what you eat can also have a big impact on your stress levels, and that’s because what you eat impacts cortisol levels.
Cortisol is known as the stress hormone, it is part of the activating energizing response in your body, and it triggers the fight or flight response. It plays a lot of other important roles in your body too. Cortisol helps regulate everything from sleep cycles and inflammation, to blood pressure and blood sugar levels.
Cortisol is released by the adrenal gland in response to a physical threat (like an injury) or a mental threat (like a deadline). Cortisol isn’t inherently bad, it’s helpful in the short term, but being exposed to it for too long can lead to a chronic stress response which includes more anxiety, depression, fatigue, inflammation, weight gain, higher blood pressure, a decreased immune system, higher chance of diabetes and heart disease. So you can see how decreasing cortisol can have a big impact on physical and mental health.
When researchers explored how diet impacts cortisol, they found that people on a traditional American diet (high fat, sugar, and carbs) had much higher cortisol levels than people who were eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and polyunsaturated fats. An anti-inflammatory diet can counteract the impacts of cortisol.
Inflammation is essentially a low level stress response in the body, your immune system sends out macrophages and cytokines to kill off pathogens, but the side effect is that it also damages healthy tissue and leads to chronic stress on the body. Inflammation also increases intestinal permeability, aka leaky gut, which allows bacteria into the bloodstream and triggers even more inflammation to counter it.
When we eat foods that cause inflammation, we essentially trigger that stress response in the body, but you can choose foods that lower cortisol, inflammation and the stress response. As we go through this list of foods, you may recognize it as having a lot in common with the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet has been found to be quite effective at decreasing inflammation and it’s been shown to improve mental health.
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[Music] i’m emma mcadam i’m a licensed marriage
and family therapist and today we’re going to talk about foods that naturally decrease cortisol
managing stress involves a lot of things a healthy work-life balance good boundaries sleep
exercise but changing what you eat can also have a big impact on your stress levels and that’s
because what you eat impacts cortisol levels now cortisol is known as the stress hormone it’s part
of the activating energizing response in your body and it triggers the fight or flight response but
it plays a lot of other important roles in your body too cortisol helps regulate everything from
sleep cycles and inflammation to blood pressure and blood sugar levels now cortisol is released by
the adrenal gland in response to a physical threat like an injury or a mental threat like a deadline
and cortisol isn’t inherently bad it’s it’s helpful in the short term but being exposed to it
for too long can lead to a chronic stress response which can contribute to more anxiety depression
fatigue inflammation weight gain higher blood pressure a decreased immune system a higher chance
of diabetes and heart disease so you can see how decreasing cortisol can have a big impact on both
physical and mental health so when researchers explored how diet impacts cortisol they found
that people on a traditional american diet of high fat sugar and carbs had much higher cortisol
levels than people who are eating more fruits vegetables whole grains and polyunsaturated fats
so an anti-inflammatory diet can counteract the impact of cortisol inflammation is essentially a
low-level stress response in the body your immune system sends out macrophages and cytokines to kill
off pathogens but the side effect is that it also damages healthy tissue and leads to chronic stress
on the body inflammation also increases intestinal permeability which is known as leaky gut and this
can allow bacteria into the bloodstream and that can trigger even more inflammation to counter
it so when we eat foods that cause inflammation we essentially trigger that stress response in the
body but you can choose foods that lower cortisol inflammation and the stress response as we go
through this list of foods you may recognize it as having a lot in common with the mediterranean
diet the mediterranean diet has been found to be quite effective at decreasing inflammation and
it’s been shown to improve mental health okay one last thing before we jump in while you
can supplement with many of these nutrients you’ll almost always be better off eating
whole foods that are nutritionally dense and not just supplements that’s partly
because your gut health depends on the fiber from the whole food and also because the nutrients
in foods are more diverse and complex than the simple concentrated supplements okay so
let’s talk about foods that naturally decrease cortisol first foods high in b vitamins can
help metabolize or burn off cortisol and this is especially true of foods that are high in b12
and these include organ meat beef chicken eggs nutritional yeast and fortified cereals so this is
when they add b12 to cereals okay next foods high in omega-3s these reduce inflammation now fish
are often the best source but you can get omega-3s from plant-based sources as well so these include
walnuts avocados salmon chia flax olive oil tuna mackerel herring anchovies etc next is magnesium
rich foods magnesium is essential for tons of bodily processes but it’s especially essential
for relaxing muscles reducing inflammation and metabolizing cortisol it also helps regulate
the heartbeat and decrease blood pressure when we’re stressed we excrete magnesium and
potassium in our urine and low levels of magnesium can intensify stress which can create a vicious
cycle now getting enough magnesium has been shown to help decrease anxiety and stress you can find
magnesium in pumpkin seeds and other seeds like almonds and pistachios it’s also you can also
find magnesium in broccoli bananas avocado artichokes spinach also dark chocolate it’s got
magnesium and it has high amounts of flavonoids which lower stress reactivity in the adrenal
glands so yeah chocolate right the next thing that you want to think about is foods that help
regulate blood sugar so these are also important to decrease cortisol if you let yourself get
too hungry by going too long between meals that can actually be quite stressful
for the body so eat regular meals and protein-rich foods especially beans and
legumes which have antioxidant properties another thing that’s helpful is foods that
promote a healthy gut microbiome now i’ll make an entire video on how important your gut
bacteria is for mental health but long story short most of the serotonin in your body is in
your gut and having good bacteria in your gut can really improve mental health now there’s two
ways to do this first eat lots of high fiber foods and a lot of variety fiber comes from plants so
fruits and vegetables are really important and the fiber the different fibers from the different
fruits and vegetables is what the good bacteria eat so having lots of fiber keeps them happy and
keeps your gut healthy fiber is called a prebiotic one dietitian i spoke with recommends that you
eat 30 different types of plants per week and that’s going to help keep the probiotics happy
in your gut and so that’s what we’re talking about for number two is probiotics these are
foods that have good bacteria in them these are things like live yogurt kimchi kombucha kefir and
sauerkraut okay and lastly just stay well hydrated dehydration is a stress around the body so
one study showed that young soccer players who were more dehydrated also had higher cortisol
levels so just drink enough water every day also it’s important to know some foods that can
really increase cortisol include alcohol caffeine saturated fats simple sugars like sodas and
candy but also simple carbs like white breads can you know contribute to more cortisol now not all
carbs or sugars are bad for you you can eat them in moderation you just want to be you know mindful
of how they’re impacting your stress levels okay so there are five types of food that can
help you decrease cortisol and stress levels now like i said before you can’t just rely on
food for stress management it’s better to take a whole body approach but knowing what foods to
eat and not to eat to manage cortisol can be one really important piece in your treatment puzzle
i hope you found this video helpful if you’d like to learn more about how to calm the stress
response in your body check out my free course grounding skills for stress anxiety and ptsd i
teach about 20 skills to soothe anxiety in your nervous system and the link is in the description
okay thanks for watching and take care [Music] you
