Did you know cortisol lowers your thyroid hormones?
Here is the simple truth:
Stress triggers the adrenal hormone cortisol.
Cortisol triggers the flight or fight response.
Over time cortisol lowers thyroid hormones.
Ok so here is the dirty truth,
this is why weight loss is so hard with hypothyroidism, not only is your thyroid function low, but your cortisol being high slows down weight loss and on top of that cortisol causes your thyroid to work even slower. In addition to negative effects of cortisol like increased blood sugar, high blood pressure, poor digestion, poor immune function, it also lowers thyroid hormones. When the body is pushed too hard, thyroid hormone and the metabolic rate goes down. This is the body’s way of protecting itself, like pushing on the brakes in a car that’s speeding down a hill. It’s a fact cortisol messes with your thyroid hormones.
1. Cortisol decreases TSH, lowering thyroid hormone production.
2. Cortisol inhibits the conversion of T4 to active T3, and increases the conversion of T4 to reverse T3.
The other most significant indirect effect the adrenals have on thyroid function is via their influence on blood sugar. High or low cortisol can cause hypoglycemica, hyperglycemia or both. Blood sugar imbalances cause hypothyroid symptoms in a variety of ways.
Always remember adrenal stress also has a more direct impact on thyroid function. In order for thyroid hormone circulating in blood to have a physiological effect, it must first activate receptors on cells. Inflammatory cytokines have been shown to cause hypothyroidism.
If you’re familiar with insulin resistance, where the cells gradually lose their sensitivity to insulin, this is a similar pattern. It’s as if the thyroid hormone is knocking on the cell’s door, but the cells don’t answer. A perfect example of this in practice is the Hashimoto’s patient who is taking replacement hormones but still suffers from hypothyroid symptoms – often in spite of repeated changes in the dose and type of medication. In these patients, inflammation is depressing thyroid receptor site sensitivity and producing hypothyroid symptoms, even though lab markers like TSH, T4 and T3 may be normal.
Who isn’t stressed these days?
On top of not feeling good, you have kids to take care of, dinner to make, parents to help, deadlines to meet, traffic, bills, illness, anger, phone calls, and family. We either exercise not enough or too much. Most people can admit to eating foods that are not ideal and when we are tired and stressed we stop for a fancy coffee and sweet bite to feed our flesh because it’s been a long day. This stress is not just one day – it is long term, day after day after day.
What happens if long term stress continues?
If the adrenals are put under stress long enough, they eventually become exhausted. At this point, the adrenals won’t even be able to make a normal amount of cortisol.
The two conditions of hypothyroid and hypoadrenal are hand in hand friends and often come together. I believe in order to feel better instead of thinking in terms of just hypothyroidism, it is wise to think in terms of a hypo-endocrine system.
Cortisol is one of the hormones released by the adrenals during the stress response. Prolonged cortisol elevations, caused by chronic stress, decrease the liver’s ability to clear excess estrogens from the blood. Excess estrogen increases levels of thyroid TBG, the proteins that thyroid hormone is attached to as it’s transported through the body.
When thyroid hormone is bound to TBG, it is inactive. It must be cleaved from TBG to become “free-fraction” before it can activate cellular receptors. (These free-fraction thyroid hormones are represented on lab tests as “free T4 [FT4]” and “free T3 [FT3]”.)
When TBG levels are high, the percentage of free thyroid hormones drops. This shows up on labs as low free T4/T3.
If you are hypothyroid I highly recommend you look at your body as a whole and you know where your cortisol is as well as your thryoid hormones.
Normally, cortisol is present in the body at higher levels in the morning and at its lowest at night.
Although stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, it has been termed “the stress hormone” because it’s also secreted in higher levels during the body’s fight or flight response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body. Small increases of cortisol have some positive effects:
- A quick burst of energy for survival reasons
- Heightened memory function
- A burst of increased immunity
- Lower sensitivity to pain
- Maintenance of homeostasis in the body
While cortisol is an important and helpful part of the body’s response to stress, it’s important that the body relaxes so the body’s functions can return to normal following a stressful event. If you are not sleeping it could be your cortisol. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that the body doesn’t always have a chance to return to normal, resulting in a state of excessive stress.
Higher and more prolonged levels of cortisol in the bloodstream like those associated with chronic stress have been shown to have negative effects, such as:
- Impaired cognitive performance
- Suppressed thyroid function
- Blood sugar imbalances such as hyperglycemia
- Decreased bone density
- Decreased muscle tissue
- Higher blood pressure
- Lowered inflammatory responses in the body and other health consequences
- Increased abdominal fat, which is associated with a greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body
To keep cortisol healthy and under control, the body’s relaxation response should be activated after the fight or flight response occurs.
Cortisol is normally 10 times higher in the morning than at night. However, in adrenal dysfuntion (either too low or too high cortisol) there is also a change in this basic pattern of cortisol release. As covered in the charts below, there is simply no way to accurately guess cortisol levels at 8PM based on a single 8AM sample.
Therefore, multiple cortisol samples are needed throughout the day. If testing blood, this would require multiple blood draws during the same day, which is just simply not practical.
Waking up extra early in the morning to run to a lab and get stuck with a needle is a big stress in itself and may alter the level of the body’s main stress hormone cortisol. Therefore, this is testing cortisol levels when a patient is under unusual levels of stress in the morning, not during a typical day.
Saliva tests require people to merely spit in a tube. This is a much less stressful test than getting a blood draw, and so getting the test itself will not change cortisol levels.
The saliva cortisol test
Saliva cortisol is usually measured 4 times during the day: upon waking up, noon, the late afternoon and before bed. Saliva is collected by spitting into a small collection tube, therefore it can be collected just about any time or any place. This is often referred to as an ASI or Adrenal Stress Index test.
Adrenal Stress Panel is used when individuals are complaining of:
- fatigue
- weakness
- insomnia
- headaches
- irritability
- nervousness
- sugar cravings
- dizzy spells
- decreased stamina
All individuals with chronic disease will have changes/compromises in their adrenal function.
Cortisol Patterns
It is never good sense to “guess” whether you have high or low cortisol, even if you “think” you do! Symptoms of high cortisol can be similar to symptoms of low cortisol. Plus there are different variations of an adrenal problem which require different supplements.
niks nemen zonder toezicht van een arts niet luisteren naar mensen hier op de forum met betrekking van het nemen van iets. Hormonen kunnen de mentale gesteldheid verschrikkelijk aantasten. Ik spreek uit ervaring. Ga dus naar een goeie arts 
Want dan werken ze zo te zien niet...
