7 Science-Backed Ways to Lower Your Cortisol Fast

Hey, let me ask you this. Do you wake up tired? Do you hit a wall at 3 in the afternoon and then you feel wide awake at 11 at night? Or maybe even wake up at 3 AM and you can't fall back asleep? Listen, that's not a willpower problem, and it's also not your age or genetics. It's your cortisol curve, and it's been flipped upside down. Now, here's the thing to know. Cortisol isn't a villain, it's a rhythm. And almost nobody has been taught how to reset it. And here's why this matters. In a study on nearly 29,000 adults, People under heavy stress who believed that stress was harming them had a 43% higher risk of dying early. And chronically high cortisol is tied to having excess belly fat, blood sugar problems, brain fog, and new scientific research actually shows that high cortisol actually shrinks the area of your brain tied to your memory. This is why you can't remember your keys. And cortisol is the hormone that decides whether you burn fat or store it, and whether you sleep or you stare at your phone. the ceiling all night. So in the next 30 minutes, I'm going to walk you through the 7 fastest ways to lower cortisol, and I'm scoring every one of them, giving them a Dr. Axe score so you know exactly what's the most effective. And also stay till the end because I'm going to show you the 3 herbs that have the biggest impact on lowering cortisol naturally, and the one thing I put on my calendar every week that lowers stress more than any supplement I've ever taken. And by the way, the fastest working method to lower cortisol on the list, it costs nothing and it only takes 5 minutes. Welcome to the Dr. Axe Show. I have a very exciting announcement. We just found out that Heal Yourselves is officially a New York Times bestseller, and that's entirely because of you. I just wanna say thank you for showing up, thank you for sharing this work, and thank you for believing in the power of cellular health. If you haven't grabbed your copy yet, you can find it on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, or your favorite book retailer. Also, if you've already ordered but haven't claimed your bonuses yet, make sure to go to healyourselves.com and enter your email and your order number, and we'll send you hundreds of dollars in free content Again, that's healyourselves.com. By the way, that free content includes a peptide guide, natural healing recipes, a masterclass, and loads of other free content. I'm so excited for you to read this content. I hope it's going to change your life. Real quick, before we get into it, if you're new here, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss what's coming. And if you want a full PDF breakdown on how to balance your hormones naturally, Go to the show notes and you can download that guide for free. So let's dive in. The first thing to note is cortisol isn't the enemy, the curve is. Cortisol is made by your adrenal glands and ordered by your brain via what we call the HPA axis. That's hypothalamus-pituitary axis. This connection between your nervous system and hormonal system is what drives cortisol production. And cortisol should peak about 45 minutes after you wake up in the morning, and then it should bottom out around midnight. Now there are many things that start to flatten or reverse your cortisol curve. Chronic stress, sleep debt, sugar, these all flatten it out and it will cause you to be low in the morning and high at night. So you can see here this cortisol curve, it should have this nice spike about 45 minutes after you wake up and then slowly drop throughout the day and then around midnight to 1 in the morning you are in a deep state of sleep and really it's around that 11 PM to around 3 AM, that's when you should be getting your deep sleep. Now, for many people, here's what happens. Rather than getting that nice spike in the morning, it just stays sort of level, and then it doesn't start to drop around that 6 PM time period. So really, after you eat dinner is really when that curve should start to drop a little bit more dramatically, and you should get tired and be ready to go to sleep, and you should fall asleep Soon after your head hits the pillow. But that doesn't happen to many of us. And then here's the other thing that happens. Oftentimes, if your cortisol curve is backwards, you get another little spike at around 3:00 AM to sometimes 5:00 AM, and you wake up too early, and then you don't sleep deeply or get enough REM sleep for the rest of the night. So then the next day you wake up groggy, you're tired in the afternoon, and overall your energy is just flatlined throughout the entire day. Now here are the top 8 warning signs that you have high cortisol. Number 1, you're tired when you wake up and you're wired around 11 PM. You have a hard time falling asleep at night. Number 2, stubborn belly fat despite eating well. Listen, you eat clean, you even exercise and move some, and your belly fat won't go away. That's cortisol. By the way, if you ever try to lose weight but your hormones are working against you, it can be one of the most frustrating things ever. Let me ask you if that's ever been you. Have you ever gone— again, you've gone to the gym, you've eaten really healthy, and you have body fat that's stuck around your belly or your hips and it's like no matter what you do it won't come off, that is cortisol belly. Cortisol, which is your fight or flight hormone, it's your stress hormone, will cause your body to store body fat and your body will refuse to lose that body fat because it's storing it up in case of an emergency because your brain and body are always in emergency mode, in a fight or flight state. Another big warning sign your cortisol curve is off is A 3 PM crash. So again, it's sometime after lunch, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, but you just feel like you're about to fall into a coma. You're just so tired. And then you start craving sugar and caffeine. And maybe you're relying on those to get through the day. Number 4, you're anxious, you're irritable, you have a short fuse, especially in the evening. Maybe it's with your kids or family, but you feel so depleted by the time evening rolls around and dinnertime, you end up having a short fuse. Number 5, Brain fog, walking into rooms and forgetting why or forgetting your keys, just basically forgetting things easily and not being able to think very clearly. Number 6, waking up between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM and you can't get back to sleep. Number 7, getting sick more often. And number 8, cycle changes, low libido, low motivation, but you notice a difference. For men, it's your testosterone's gonna tank. For women, estrogen will be off and progesterone will decline as well. And then over time, if that gets bad enough for women, that's also gonna cause thyroid hormones to be thrown off. Now, here's how high cortisol hijacks your other hormones. The first thing cortisol affects is insulin, and this is a big deal because insulin is responsible for bringing sugar into your cells so you can make cellular energy. Now, cortisol raises blood sugar by design, and if blood sugar stays high, well, now insulin climbs, fat gets stored around the middle, and this is a road to insulin resistance and prediabetes and diabetes down the road. And I can tell you from working with tens of thousands of patients, helping them reverse diabetes and blood sugar issues, is that if it's not diet— okay, now diet makes a tremendous difference at reversing insulin resistance— but anytime I work with a patient and they'll see, let's say, a 50% improvement and they get stuck on fixing their blood sugar or insulin, it's because cortisol is so high even though they're eating a perfect diet that they cannot get insulin back into balance because cortisol is keeping it high. Next, testosterone and DHEA. Chronic stress tells the brain to dial down testosterone and DHEA runs low, and it's something actually called the cortisol steal. This is where cortisol starts taking all the raw materials your body needs from pregnenolone and from cholesterol. That's how your body makes hormones, and cortisol starts stealing all the resources, so now your body doesn't have anything left over to make testosterone and other sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone. Because your body's always making a decision. Do I make stress hormones like cortisol or do I make sex hormones? If you're in a fight or flight state all the time, your body decides to make stress hormones. If you are relaxed, if you're having a good time, if you are balanced in life, your body will make the proper amount of sex hormones and then you can balance your hormones naturally. Number 3, thyroid hormones. High cortisol slows the conversion of T4 into T3 and raises reverse T3. So your TSH reads normal and you still feel like you have hypothyroidism. This happens all the time and your doctor will still put you on levothyroxine or Synthroid or some thyroid medication, but it doesn't work. It's not getting to the root of the issue because again, the reason why your thyroid hormones are off in the first place is because the cortisol curve is off. And number 4 hormone disruption cortisol causes is estrogen and progesterone. And I see this a lot in women dealing with perimenopause, menopause, PMS, PMOS or PCOS, infertility. Progesterone drops first, that's what happens. Progesterone drops. By the way, progesterone is the hormone that allows you to feel calm, safe, secure. It gives you mental balance. When progesterone drops down, now you're gonna feel emotionally much more up and down. And progesterone brings balance to estrogen. So when progesterone drops, now estrogen can be all over the place and it's going to lead to heavier cycles, PMS, mood swings, greater risks of infertility, menopausal symptoms such as worse hot flashes, and poor sleep during menopause. Now here's the good news. If you fix cortisol, you fix every one of those hormones. And I see this happen all the time when patients come into my clinic and I do a blood work panel. at all these hormones, and oftentimes I'll have them say this to me. The women say this, they say, you know what, I think it's my progesterone, or I think it's my thyroid hormones. I hear the thyroid hormones the most. And I'll be sitting there looking at their hormone panel, and, and this is encouraging to most of my patients, as I'll say, listen, here's the good news. Estrogen is off, progesterone is off, you know, you have these 3 thyroid markers are off, and you have all of these health problems. Here's the good news. If we just fix cortisol, Every one of these blood markers is going to improve and get back into normal range. And by the way, if that last description of hormone imbalance struck home for you, you think— you're thinking to yourself, hey, that's me, you know, the belly fat issues, the thyroid that reads normal, the low drive. I put together a free guide for you that's all about balancing your hormones naturally. So the foods to eat, the supplements to take, the daily rhythms I use with patients to get cortisol Thyroid, insulin, and sex hormones working together again. This is worth $100. It's free. If you go to the show notes, you can go and download this for free for today, the Balance Your Hormones Naturally PDF guide I put together just for you. Again, it's free. You can grab it at the link in the show notes. Listen, if you've started over more times than you can count, maybe it was another diet, another protocol that works for 3 weeks and then it stops working. You're not missing discipline; you're missing the foundation. That's what our cellular healing protocols build at the Health Institute. We've got hundreds of five-star reviews on Trustpilot from folks who finally stopped guessing and actually discovered lasting healing. The first step is a cellular blood work analysis, which is our at-home blood work kit, followed by a full hour review with a senior health advisor who will map out your patterns and show you exactly how we can work together. If you're ready to finally stop the cycle, go to. mybloodwork.com. That's mybloodwork.com so we can help you regain your health. Now let's dive into these 7 ways to fix the cortisol curve. Number 1, get sunlight before you jump on your phone. Listen, light hits cells in your retina. Your retina, your eyes, are wired directly straight to your brain and your circadian clock. That clock tells your adrenal glands When to release cortisol. And the earlier you get outside in the morning, typically ideally within 1 hour of waking, that will help that cortisol to start climbing up because you want it to have a bigger spike in the morning and that will then allow it to drop deeper at night so you get better deep sleep and REM sleep. And deep sleep is very important because that's when your body repairs itself. REM is when your brain resets and heals. And so you want to be able to get that curve going. first thing in the morning. Now, here's why it's so critically important to get outside. When you are standing in outdoor light, even when it's cloudy out, you're getting something called 5,000 lux. Okay, that's the amount of light that your retina and your brain are seeing. If you're standing in your kitchen, it's 150 lux. There is a massive difference in terms of how your brain interprets outdoor light compared to indoor light. So if you can get outside for about 15 minutes first thing in the morning, it'll wake up that cortisol curve and get that cortisol curve into balance much quicker. Listen, according to one study, one week of natural light moved melatonin 2 hours earlier. And I've noticed this myself. If I have a weekend where I go, or a week where I'm outside almost all day on a vacation, I start getting tired earlier in the evening. I go to bed more easily. Because natural light is one of the number one ways to reset your circadian clock and balance cortisol. So again, start with getting outside first thing in the morning, 10 to 20 minute walk, no sunglasses, no phone. And even if it's cloudy, it's way more effective than indoor light. And listen to this study. University of Chicago researchers exposed people to bright light, about 5,000 lux, which is the amount you get outside, or dim indoor light in the early morning. The bright light groups in the study cortisol ran roughly 50% higher. Guys, I'm not talking— listen, I didn't say 5%, I didn't say 10%, 50% higher. That is radically higher. And so getting a lot of bright light early in the morning is critically important to your hormonal health. I give this an evidence-based score of 8 out of 10 and an impact score of 8.5 out of 10. This is a very effective way. to balance your hormones. The second way to start to balance your cortisol curve is consume more of the mineral magnesium. Magnesium works by blocking NMDA receptors. This turns down the brain's excite signal. It also supports GABA. This is your nervous system's brake pedal to say, whoa, we need to get out of this fight or flight state. It also dampens that HPA axis and lessens cortisol. Again, this is magnesium. Here's why it works is stress burns magnesium. The more stressed you are, the more your body uses up the magnesium it already has. And you actually lose it in your urine when cortisol runs high. Low magnesium raises cortisol, high cortisol lowers magnesium. It's this vicious feedback loop. And 48% of Americans don't get enough magnesium. The magnesium I typically recommend is a magnesium glycinate or a sucrosomyl magnesium. This is like a liposomal magnesium. Those are the most effective for sleep. You want to take it about 1 hour before you go to bed as a supplement. Now, you can also get it as a food and eat some of these foods in the evening. Pumpkin seeds, green leafy vegetables like sautéed kale and spinach, a little bit of dark chocolate. Those are the foods highest in magnesium. Now, listen to this study on magnesium. It cuts stress scores nearly in half. A study done on 264 stressed adults who tested low in magnesium took 300 milligrams of magnesium for 8 weeks. Their stress scores dropped by about 44%. At the start, roughly 60% scored as severely stressed. By week 8, that was down to about 12%. From one mineral most people are already short on, I'll give this an evidence score of about 7.5 out of 10, impact 7 out of 10, still very effective, maybe the most effective supplement you could take for cortisol. The number 3 way to reverse your cortisol curve is every sugar crash is a cortisol alarm. We have to balance blood sugar. Here's what you need to do. Increase your protein and fiber intake to balance blood sugar and lower your carb load. Blood sugar drops, your brain reads that as an emergency, and then your adrenals produce more cortisol. Eating a sugary breakfast actually at first would look like it might help, but then it causes your cortisol curve to crash down and flatline. Protein, fat, and fiber create the ideal rhythm for that cortisol curve. And what I see all the time is people trying to fix this low energy in the morning with sugar and coffee. Okay, that's a double hit. I mean, caffeine is doing a very similar thing. It's putting your body in a more alert, amplified state, causing cortisol to stay too high throughout the day. And the reason it does this is cortisol, when you drink it, let's say you're drinking it at I don't know, 10 AM, it's not completely out of your system until 10 PM. And if you're drinking coffee in the afternoon, it's even worse. Because let's say you do coffee, you're tired at 3 PM. Well, now it's not out of your system until 3 AM, and it's going to impact your deep sleep at night. So do this every morning, 30 to 40 grams of protein. It could be eggs, maybe grass-fed beef, maybe a plant protein or collagen protein, but high protein. And then also include some fiber like berries in there. That's the ideal breakfast. And here's the way to think about this. Sugar turns the volume up on cortisol. Protein doesn't. It keeps it balanced. By the way, I give this an evidence score of an 8 out of 10. I give this an impact score of a 9 out of 10. Overall, if you can eat high protein and high fiber and lower your sugar intake, it's going to make a tremendous difference, not only on your cortisol curve, But also on your weight loss efforts, your metabolism, your longevity. Number 4 way to balance your cortisol curve is to train the right amount. Okay, you want to walk a lot, you want to work out a couple days a week, and you don't want to overtrain. Here's what they found according to studies. If you are exercising at 60% of your max effort, especially when doing cardio, it lowers cortisol. Above it? Cortisol can climb with energy and duration. Also, walking improves insulin sensitivity. And here's why. You don't want to under-exercise, but you also don't want to over-exercise. If you are over-exercising, training for marathons, training for triathlons, doing CrossFit, not taking days off, doing HIIT training constantly, fasting, undersleeping, doing too much caffeine, these are all forms of stress on your body. Your body's already stressed. So now you're adding more stress to it. And the type of exercise that causes the biggest problem here tends to be endurance athletes. Cortisol gets way too high. So your goal should be with exercise is to walk a lot, strength train 2 to 3 days a week. And if you're going to do cardio, do a max effort 1 day a week where you're really doing something like HIIT, but don't go over that. I give the right type of exercise an 8.5 score out of 10 on evidence and an 8 out of 10 on impact and benefit. All right, the number 5 way to balance your cortisol curve is to increase your vagal tone with slow breathing or gargling or meditation, doing something, some sort of exercise to go from sympathetic to parasympathetic quickly. The best way to do this with deep breathing is doing long inhales and longer exhales, and that's going to impact your vagus nerve, slow your heart rate. And your brain then reads this as you're in a safe environment. Again, deep breathing, humming, gargling, cold water, using a NeuroPod, all impact that vagus nerve, getting you out of the fight or flight response. Yeah, again, you could do a deep breath in for about 5 seconds, hold for 1 to 2 seconds, breathe out for 7 seconds, and do that for 2 minutes. It's amazing what that does. It's ideally 5 minutes is what you'll do, or try this back to back. Try do deep breathing for 5 minutes and gargling for 2 minutes, so that's 7 minutes a couple times a day, and you will be blown away at how you feel your entire physiology change. Listen, you can't think your way out of fight or flight, but you can breathe and gargle your way out of it. And by the way, there's some great studies on how effective this is. There was a study done where they compared deep breathing via meditation, and deep breathing beat out meditation. 8 weeks of diaphragmatic breathing Doing 20 sessions significantly lowered salivary cortisol versus the control group. Then a Stanford team put 5 minutes a day of structured breathing against 5 minutes a day of meditation. Breathing won. People that did deep breathing had better moods, calmer physiology, and better cortisol levels. The evidence score for this is 8.5 out of 10. The impact, 9.5 out of 10. 5 out of 10. It's one of the single greatest things you could do to impact that cortisol curve is do a deep breathing practice for 2 to 5 minutes, gargling for 2 minutes. You will feel a noticeable difference right away. And what I do when I'm gargling is I'll grab a glass of water, I'll gargle 30 seconds, breathe for about 10 seconds, gargle 30 seconds, and I do that for about 2, a little bit over 2 minutes. And then I just sit there and I literally feel my entire body calming down, getting out of fight or flight. The number 6 way to balance your cortisol curve is balancing your sleep and circadian rhythm timing. Deep sleep is when your body repairs. You get deep sleep when cortisol drops and melatonin rises. Having a consistent wake-up time and consistent bedtime is the key to this curve, along with getting outside first thing in the morning, and ideally about 60 to 90 minutes before bed, no screen. And what I do as a practice is I put on my blue blocker sunglasses after dinner, or let's say by the time the sun sets, let's say it's maybe 7 o'clock, And then I get my kids in bed around 8, and then I'm in bed by 9 PM. But really between 7 and 9 for myself. I mean, Chelsea and I, you know, we may watch one show, let's say it's 45 minutes a night, and then after that I'm either reading a book or listening to an audiobook or playing with the kids or talking with Chelsea. And that allows my cortisol to drop and my melatonin to come up. And according to one study, a screen before bed cut melatonin by 50%. 55% and push the sleep clock back by 1.5 hours. And by the way, it is a total myth. I've heard people say this, well, I'll catch up on the weekend. By the way, it never works. Science proves it does not work because it takes too long for your body to find the rhythm again. And studies prove the less sleep you get at night, the higher your cortisol is the next day. And studies show if you just had one very poor night of sleep a week, just one poor night of 4 hours, It elevates cortisol by 37%. Getting 8 hours of sleep is the single most effective thing you could do to balance cortisol naturally. It's a 10 out of 10 evidence score. It's a 10 out of 10 impact score. Nothing will make a bigger difference on cortisol levels than following good sleep habits. And a lot of that has to do with routine, waking up at the same time, going to bed at the same time, having that wind-down routine in the evening. The number 7 way to flip that cortisol curve back to where it should be is with prayer and gratitude. Gratitude and prayer help ground you. They give you a sense of calm, peace, safety, security. And studies even show that it allows your body to release more oxytocin. We call that the love hormone, and it actually suppresses cortisol. Some studies show that isolation, isolating yourself, actually keeps this alarm on versus connecting with other humans via church, deep conversations, groups via friend groups, church growth groups, whatever it is to where you can have a deep, meaningful relationship. This has a tremendously beneficial impact on cortisol. This is why something I'm very conscious of is having other couples that Chelsea and I connect with, having other men that I deeply connect with, and having really close personal relationships with family and others to fill up my tank and help fill up the tank of others. And this is also why I found for myself every morning, my greatest habit is spending about 30 minutes reading the Bible, maybe doing a prayer walk, but my spiritual time. You know, I love what Philippians 4:6 says, do not be anxious about anything, but with everything, with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God that transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. It's such a powerful scripture because it helps remind us that in all situations, Go to prayer, connect with your Creator. And I think the reason it gives us peace is knowing it's not all on us. There's a higher power. There's a God that loves us, that's for us, that's working things out for our good. It takes the stress off us just knowing we're a steward here. We're not called to change people. We're just called to love people and care for others and use our God-given gifts to make Earth a heavenly place. And by the way, there's a great study on this. Gratitude cut cortisol by 23% in one month. So part of when I'm walking and praying, another thing I'll do is I will praise and I'll let God know everything I'm grateful for. And it literally changes my physiology because when you're focused on how bad things are, the emergencies you have in life, you're playing victim. That puts you in a fight or flight state if you're operating in a victim mentality. Versus when you are grateful and praising God, everything changes hormonally. Cortisol drops, oxytocin rises because you're safe, you're secure, and you're living with purpose. I would give this an evidence score of 8 out of 10, an impact score of 9 out of 10. Ideally, first thing in the morning, before bed, you know, read your Bible, spend some time in gratitude. You can listen to the Bible as an audiobook, even for 5 to 10 minutes. These things make a huge impact.

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And so the 7 strategies here ranked by impact are sleep. Again, getting good sleep and balancing your circadian timing, that is the most effective way to balance your cortisol curve. Number 2 is that deep breathing and gargling for supporting your vagal tone and getting out of fight or flight state. Number 3, high protein, high fiber to balance your blood sugar. Number 4, prayer, gratitude, deep relationship. Number 5, morning sunlight. Number 6, doing the right amount of exercise and walking. And number 7, magnesium. All of these are beneficial. You don't need to pick all of them, though you could strategically figure out how to put many of them in your daily routine. Now I have a bonus here. And this is the 3 herbs that have the biggest impact on your blood sugar. Number 1 being ashwagandha. Ashwagandha has unique compounds that lower cortisol and increase GABA. This also means better sleep. The dose according to most clinical studies is 300 to 600 milligrams a day, typically taken twice a day. One study showed that patients taking ashwagandha had their serum cortisol drop by 28%. Versus the control group, only 8%. So very effective here as an herb for lowering cortisol. Another one of my favorites here is rhodiola. This blunts the morning cortisol spike and protects energy under stress. Dose of this is about 200 to 400 milligrams daily. Typically you want to do this earlier in the day because it is a little bit stimulating. And the number 3 herb for balancing cortisol is holy basil, also known as tulsi. Now I like taking this as a tea. It contains eugenol and other compounds that lower cortisol and balance blood sugar naturally. So this is a great one you can do in the morning. You can also do it in the evening, and it's going to only improve your sleep at night as well. And by the way, in the free PDF guide on how to balance your hormones naturally, I put together a daily plan of exactly what to do to reset your cortisol curve the most quickly, of what this would look like throughout the day, so you can actually see that visual And that free PDF guide. So if you go to the show notes and download How to Balance Your Hormones Naturally, it's a free PDF guide. I guarantee that that is going to be the greatest thing you could do to fix your cortisol fast. And by the way, this is also going to help your thyroid hormones, your sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. It is going to make a major difference on insulin and all of the other hormones in your body. If this episode helped you, Subscribe and leave a review. That way we can reach more people. By the way, subscribing and leaving a review is the top thing you can do in order to support the show, allow me to bring on more guests, put out more content like this, and support you more. And number 3, share it. Think of one person right now who's running on cortisol and send them this episode today. I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Axe Show, where every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.