Lower Cortisol – 10 Effective Tips

In the last little bite of knowledge, we talked about the stress hormone cortisol. While a rise in cortisol at certain times of the day (morning) or in certain situations (danger – escape) is important for our body and absolutely normal, a long-term increased cortisol release can be detrimental to our health. If you missed that last morsel of knowledge, just read back here and learn what cortisol is.

Most of us have quite a stressful everyday life. Because there are too many phases of tension and too few phases of relaxation, cortisol secretion is often at its peak and the adrenal glands are overstressed.

Here are a few practical tips on how you can promote normal cortisol secretion despite your everyday stress:

• Take 10 minutes a day for a short meditation. You can’t sit still and just do nothing? No problem, me neither. Meditation apps can support you with binaural beats and guided meditation. My tip: The app pzizz!
• Go for a walk every day. Even if it’s just a 10-minute walk during your lunch break. The rest, fresh air and exercise will bring your cortisol levels down.
• Do moderate sports. Pleasure sport. Find a sport that you enjoy and doesn’t push you to your limits. Of course, you can also completely exhaust yourself with workouts from time to time. But if you want to do something about chronic stress and for healthy cortisol levels, go for restorative exercise.
• Take magnesium in the evening. Magnesium helps lower cortisol levels. Make sure to use a high-quality preparation, not effervescent tablets from the drugstore. Because they often contain flavorings and additives.
• Watch your omega-3 intake. Those who do not eat fatty sea fish several times a week should supplement omega-3 fatty acids. Here, too, a high-quality preparation is important.
• In parallel, you should reduce your intake of omega-6 fatty acids. Avoid corn oil, safflower oil, canola oil and sunflower oil. Choose high-quality protein sources, such as meat from pasture-raised cattle rather than conventionally raised animals. The fat from grain-fed animals contains more omega-6 fatty acids.
• Treat yourself to a massage! Muscle relaxation and human closeness lower cortisol and, in turn, increase the happiness and feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine.
• Human closeness is a good keyword: spend a lot of time with family, partner and friends. Laughingtogether is relaxing. Your hormone levels.
• Take a look at the sleeping berry – also called ashwagandha. A detailed (randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled) study showed an effect of an extract of ashwagandha root on participants’ cortisol levels. After 60-days of ingestion, the ashwagandha group had significantly lower levels and fewer stress symptoms than the control group.
• Improve your sleep! If you support melatonin release in the evening, you’ll fall into a more restorative sleep faster. For this, it is especially important to avoid blue light in the evening. The free f.lux software, LED lamps with changeable colors, the Nightshift mode on your smartphone, and glasses that filter out blue light all help you do this.