Manage Stress & Enhance Wellbeing

We have mentioned many times over the past few months the dangers of consistently raising our stress hormones. Most people think of “stress” as a mental state only (like when you have a big project due at work, you are concerned about finances, you have a loved one you are worried about, or you have a sudden tragedy in your life). And yes, this is definitely a type of stress that can cause a chain of events inside your body that can be unhealthy if not dealt with.

When we are talking about the dangers of “stress hormones” as it relates to your metabolism, we are talking about the rise of certain hormones in response to low energy in your cells. When your cells don’t have enough energy, a signal is sent out that drastic measures must be taken immediately so that the primary organs (brain and nervous system) do not run out of glucose. 

Every other function in your body becomes secondary, and the cost of this rise in stress hormones over time is severe.

⚠️ Your metabolic rate is turned down. ⚠️

⚠️ Thyroid production and conversion is decreased. ⚠️

⚠️ Sex hormone production is reduced. ⚠️

⚠️ Digestive processes are slowed. ⚠️

⚠️ Vital processes necessary for survival are prioritized. ⚠️

This makes sense if there is a famine. The body will switch to survival mode so you don’t run out of energy and die. But this is designed to be a short-term timeframe until more food (read: carbs) is found.
 

Living long-term in this state, either knowingly through a low carb diet or intermittent fasting, or unknowingly by suffering with prediabetes, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) or obesity, can cause damage to your liver, heart, thyroid and other organs. 
 

Today we are going to discuss a few of these stress hormones and list exactly what they signal in our bodies.

GLUCAGON

Glucagon is the first hormone that is increased when we are under stress. It is increased when we decrease our carbohydrate intake, or when carbohydrate oxidation (sugar “burning”) is not working properly.

What does it signal?

🚨 It signals the liver to release glucose (hepatic glucose production) 🚨

🚨 It signals the cells to increase fatty acid oxidation (fat “burning”) 🚨

So glucagon’s job is to tell the liver to make and release more glucose, and to tell the cells to switch to fat burning so that the glucose on hand can be reserved for the organs that need it to survive.
 

It is an elegant pathway when the need is truly warranted. But unfortunately, we are not a starving people and this pathway has been hijacked and is destroying our health.
 

Why do diabetics have higher and higher fasting blood sugar even though they are obeying their doctor and reducing their sugar intake? Because of glucagon. As we talked about here, diabetics have broken glucose metabolism and can’t burn sugar efficiently. This is an emergency in the body that causes glucagon to be released to signal the liver to create and release glucose. This causes their baseline glucose to rise because 1) their cells can’t burn it and 2) the liver production is raising these levels higher. They try to eat carbs, and it peaks higher because their baseline (running on glucagon) is higher.

This is also why your doctor may see that you are “creeping up” in your fasting blood sugar levels, or why they may say you are in danger or being “pre-diabetic,” even though in your mind, you feel like you haven’t increased your sugar intake, and have actually been pretty careful about it.

It’s not the sugar.

It’s the stress hormone glucagon. And you should take it VERY SERIOUSLY.

Low carb and keto/carnivore diets will also cause this phenomenon. Even though these dieters are eating little to no carbs, they will see their fasting blood sugar slowly rising over time. This is exactly what I saw. This is the body signaling a high stress situation. The body is running on glucagon, depending upon it to cause the liver to create and release glucose. It is not good to be low carb for too long because you are driving this process. It is NOT benign.

This is a catabolic state. Catabolic means breakdown. The body, in a catabolic state, will breakdown muscles and tissues to feed itself. This is NOT GOOD.

So, not only is glucagon promoting muscle breakdown through gluconeogenesis (the making of glucose using protein), driving fatty acid oxidation which induces insulin resistance (we already talked about how bad that is here), but it is also raising your blood glucose levels...

Nope!

CORTISOL

Cortisol is another stress hormone that can contribute to these problems. Cortisol is the stress hormone that starts to rise in the night when you run out of glucose while you are sleeping. It eventually is also responsible for waking you up in the morning to encourage you to eat. When we tell you to drink some orange juice within 30 minutes of waking up, lowering this and other stress hormones is one of the goals.

Also, having a spoonful of raw honey when you wake up in the night helps because you are lowering your stress thus lowering your cortisol, and helping your body relax back into sleep.

Cortisol is a hormone that we don’t want raging in our bodies over and above its normal task. It will provoke all the same negative things that glucagon does. Even testing your cortisol isn’t accurate because the active form will be more prevalent in the central and peripheral tissues, not in the blood.

ESTROGEN

Surprised? Yes, estrogen is a stress hormone. Alongside its important functions in growth, development and reproduction, the body will produce excess levels in response to cellular stress. This will cause an imbalance with progesterone/testosterone and has the effect of lowering sex drive and fertility until you can get to a non-famine place with more carbs that will better support childbearing. And yes, this can effect men, too.

Estrogen will directly impact all of these:

• Energy levels

• Thyroid hormone conversion

• Mood/personality

• Sleep

• Stubborn weight gain

• Gut/digestion

• Autoimmunity 

• Hormonal issues
  (menstrual symptoms/PMS, infertility, menopause, PCOS, gynecomastia, endometriosis, acne)

Birth control pills are directly estrogenic. We are betting most women don’t know they are purposefully increasing a stress hormone, do they? That is just asking for major future health trouble. Avoid!

These are just a few of the stress hormones that are raised when when our cells don’t have enough energy. We didn’t talk about epinephrine, serotonin, histamine, adrenaline…there are a lot more.

Notice in all this talk about stress hormones I haven’t mentioned insulin. That’s because insulin is not a stress hormone. Remember, insulin is one of the ways our body lowers stress! Insulin causes the liver to decrease glucose production, the exact opposite of glucagon.

So remember, the best way to lower your stress hormones is to eat some carbs! For more info on this topic, check out this podcast.