When Cortisol is The Victim: The Biochemistry of Cortisol & Insulin - Simplified & Clarified

As I've mentioned on my podcast, I want to share "ah ha" moments my clients & I have been experiencing as a Community in our group strategy calls & 1:1 sessions. Today, let's breakdown when cortisol is the victim.

You may be thinking, "Wait, cortisol can be the VICTIM?!"  I thought cortisol was "bad" with all of the misleading sensationalism we see online & endless marketing scare tactics.

As you know, here at Breaking Through Wellness, we break down female 35+ physiology with clear science - specific to ambitious active women & female runners - NOT sensationalism.

Here's the biochemistry of cortisol & insulin broken down. Most importantly, why it matters:

Many women (& men) have cortisol regulation issues simply because they are not regulating their blood sugar properly.  In the general population, this is the most common root cause of not feeling our best as we age, as well as weight gain, belly fat, brain fog, energy crashes, poor sleep & unexpected disease diagnoses.

At BTW, this is one of the first things we address via our simple, science-backed fueling framework. For us wellness-minded active women who already eat whole foods most of the time, it's the simple logic of knowing when to eat what, exact portions, the best whole foods to support our female body/natural hormone production & female-specific nutrient timing that quickly changes the game.  

We accomplish this for most clients by session 1 when paired with my Badass Breakthrough Academy learning modules. Keep in mind that I work with Type A wellness-minded women seeking highly specific information, NOT general. Thus, my clients usually crush taking my customized women's health, fueling, fitness & lifestyle game plans & run with them (literally 😊).  It's imperative that all of my clients stabilize their blood sugar with sustainable success, or we get nowhere in progressing our health, body composition, running or fitness goals!

Here's Why:  Cortisol is glucocorticosteroid, which is a blood sugar stabilizer. It is also anti-inflammatory. When blood sugar is up & down, cortisol is constantly chasing the ups & downs, which is a huge strain on our system - more than we'd think.  

Insulin is also inflammatory. Thus, when insulin is out of control, we are inflamed AND blood sugar is unstable. Inflammation + blood sugar instability are the exact 2 mechanisms that cause insulin resistance. 

Additionally, the more we have insulin regulated properly, the more the adrenals can relax with proper, well controlled cortisol levels. We want to have cortisol levels well under control in perimenopause so our body can focus on making proper sex hormones.

A Big "Ah Ha" For Most Of My Clients: When cortisol is elevated, it blocks sex hormone production, in particular estrogen & testosterone. The impacts on progesterone are less direct, but still occur. This can cause a rapid, expedited & highly symptomatic perimenopause experience no active woman or recreational female runner wants! Plus, as estrogen declines naturally this also decreases our ability to manage cortisol. Yikes! That's a lot going on in our female body.

The Bottom-Line Is: Being inflamed + having unstable blood sugar is how we end up with insulin resistance & frustrating perimenopause symptoms. 

First, we feel acute symptoms like energy highs & crashes, mood swings, odd bloating, GI distress & brain fog. We may feel tired yet wired, pack on unwanted belly fat, see fat loss resistance & what feels like endless tossing, turning & waking throughout the night. Personally, in my private practice, I have also observed a direct correlation with blood sugar regulation, hot flashes & night sweats. Long-term, this has dangerous metabolic consequences on our health, supporting disease processes like diabetes, cancer & cardiovascular disease. 

How To Catch This Via Your Labs: You can catch warning signs from your body if your resting fasting glucose biomarker is above 90.  Other markers, like hs-CRP, which measures inflammation, may or may not show elevation. Do not rely on morning cortisol via standard lab work, as a salivary cortisol response test is a best practice lab to truly gauge all of these impacts throughout the day.

Longer term, downstream impacts can be spotted via a rising A1C over time or unfortunately, an unexpected diagnosis of pre-diabetes.  Surprisingly, because we runners tend to overdo the miles & cardio relative to our age & changing hormones, we can also see HOW we are training + training volume add up to impact our cortisol-insulin response. This is again why here at BTW we have very specific running, fitness, fat loss & strength training methods designed to accommodate for these metabolic changes & promote cortisol resilience.

Other example running plan changes include adjusting speedwork to be shorter, yet still high intensity, keeping our long runs a bit shorter than they once were, keeping long runs super easy & prioritizing "A" workouts like Goal Pace runs where we knowingly let cortisol peak yet have proper nutrition, recovery & lifestyle habits to support it coming back down to appropriate, productive levels.  

Many fitness-minded women who love to move also need to remove other modes of cardio like HIIT classes, avoiding fitness models like bootcamps, Orange Theory, CrossFit & Hydrox.  Incline walking is a go-to mode of cardio here at BTW, alongside lifestyle walks to keep stress lower & our famous BTW MET CON methods that still ramp up SIT-style training, but with strategic amounts added in relative to your goals & biomarkers. This a physiology of training rabbit hole I will avoid going down for now, but you can scan my podcast episodes here to learn more about training with & not against your female 35+ physiology.  

Please don't let anyone tell that wearing a weighted vest & only walking or "only do Zone 2 cardio" will fix this problem - it will not.  Yes, we CAN still run!  It just looks a bit different & is a lot more strategic than we thought to mitigate all of these downstream impacts. Thankfully, that's my specialty & you're in the right place!

Other Important Lifestyle Habits To Consider: In order to support your best blood sugar stability, a supplement like berberine, adrenal support or medications like a GLP1 or Metformin are usually not the best answer.  It's often a bandaid solution that ends poorly.  Again, this is the opposite of what the women I support in my practice want for themselves.  Instead, here at BTW, all of my clients also work to address:

• specific portions & what makes up your meals/snacks
• nutrient timing relative to your fitness, running &/or physique goals
• eating enough, so your body is not chronically stress or under-recovered 
• carb quality & amount (yes, we still eat them!)
• caffeine timing, amount & what it's paired with
• sleep quality & amount
• holistic stress management - from how hard we chase running & body composition goals, to literal life-related stress management strategies done in the morning, mid-day & evening
• blood sugar supportive post-meal habits, like moving for 2 to 5 minutes after eating a meal 
• working to address unprocessed trauma or recent loss
• ensuring gut health is balanced & no pathogens, infections or dysbiosis are present
• addressing stage 1, 2 or 3 HPA axis dysfunction (more to come on my podcast)
• ensuring enough rest & recovery
• redefining our relationship with alcohol (most don't take it away all together)
• supporting nervous system regulation & a strong HRV
• monitoring biomarkers over time & adjusting fueling, fitness & lifestyle as needed
• using specific running methods, fitness strategies & strength training plans designed to promote metabolic health, muscle resilience, cortisol resilience, insulin sensitivity & badass longevity in moving strong for life
• ensuring we make time for a parasympathetic downshift each evening (like mobility work)

Pro Tip To Get Started With Right Away: If you're super busy at work, simply stand after eating your meal, as research supports that activating our quadricep muscles can act as little insulin pumps & help our body mitigate insulin resistance.  Given I wrote my master thesis on this topic, it was shocking to learn about the "active couch potato complex".  

This directly applies to us ambitious active women who think we are "so active & fit" because we workout in the morning. Nope - not enough, ladies!  We cannot simply move during exercise & think our body has met its daily movement needs. We have to move throughout the day to help stabilize our blood sugar & this includes our busy work days that we often power through AND even our rest days from exercise. 

Key Takeaways: One of the easiest ways to support optimal cortisol levels throughout the day is to regulate blood sugar & insulin properly. By doing so, we mitigate many frustrating perimenopause symptoms, hormone decline & associated metabolic, health & fitness decline. Blood sugar regulation is non-negotiable to thrive through perimenopause as the fit, strong & vibrantly well women we all work so hard to be. If you need clear, effective & personalized support in this area, be sure to apply to join us in Badass Breakthrough Academy, which is your one-stop-shop for all things working with & not against your changing female body's needs.

Did you find it fascinating that so much needs to be addressed in our nutrition, fitness & lifestyle habits to support our changing female body's needs?  Most do.  

However, when you have all-in-one support & proven methods that build a badass foundation to thrive through perimenopause, you absolutely can ensure perimenopause does not have to be confusing, complicated or suck! 

If you find yourself saying, "Ugh! I don't want to think about when I eat what!  Do I REALLY have to think about portions in my meals AND snacks AND eating "best choice" specific food choices ALL the time?"  

My answer:  Of course we don't want to be hyper-restrictive in our relationship with food. And yes, we all love to have those purposefully planned "I don't give an F" meals out with friends or with our family 1-2 times per week. We talk about that all the time in my program, too. BUT yes - this all matters & it will help you live a long, healthy & beautifully active life, for life.

We can choose to have frustrating perimenopause symptoms, watch our performance, hormones, health & fitness decline, have an expedited menopause experience & horrible metabolic consequences as described above. Or, we can try the good old go-to lifetime of endless pills that do not holistically address all of these factors.

The choice, my friend, is yours.  However, knowing the type of woman who reads this blog, perhaps this was exactly the "ah ha" information you needed. If it was, be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter below & share this resource with a friend.

Stay tuned to my upcoming podcast episodes 154 & 155, as I will be breaking down a 2-part masterclass "How to Master Your Adrenal, Stress & Cortisol Regulation". This explains the opposite effect: when cortisol is the "enemy" & insulin is the victim. This is actually where I see most runners & ambitious active women facing unexpected symptoms, blood sugar issues & diagnoses. Important to know: Just as insulin can impact cortisol, cortisol can impact insulin.