The Link Between Stress, Excess Cortisol and Pain

As study after study continues to reveal and verify, stress, triggered by fear or a perceived threat, prompts the secretion of sympathetic epinephrine and norepinepherine and cortisol.

This response in the short term plays a positive role. For example, cortisol mobilizes glucose reserves for energy.

Chronic pain, however, can cause prolonged stress that, in turn, creates a cycle of unhealthy, excess cortisol secretion. The result can be widespread inflammation and increased pain. A vicious cycle can ensue where excess stress and unwarranted fear could perpetuate cortisol dysfunction, widespread inflammation, and pain.

Bottom line: it’s important to break the cycle of pain, excess cortisol, fear, and more pain.

Helping to break this cycle is one reason why physicians created Sanyx… to mitigate the effects of excess cortisol on target organs.

Work Less Stressful than Home? Yes, Says Cortisol Testing

It’s funny… but if you ask most Americans which is more stressful work or home, work always gets the nod. But not so, says the British newspaper reporting on a study done by a California researcher, Arlie Hochschild.

She was curious why employees at Fortune 500 companies did not take advantage of flex time, part time, maternity leave and other family-friendly benefits. It seems many of us see work as an escape from family problems. In fact, 20% of those she interviewed said they felt more supported and appreciated at work.

Then, Penn State researchers took up Hochschild’s work and recruited 122 men and women, most with ‘good’ jobs (not minimum wage, with salaries between $35K and 75K) and used saliva testing (a la www.i-calq.com and www.MySanyx.com) to measure cortisol levels.

As reported in www.bizpsycho.com/tag/cortisol/: “Over a 3-day period each participant gave a saliva sample which was tested for the level of cortisol, a stress hormone.  Each participant was also asked 6 times a day how happy they felt and how much stress they were under. The researchers found that cortisol levels, a biological marker of stress, were significantly lower at work than at home, indicating lower levels of stress at work.

“Although this goes against the idea that work is stressful it supports the fact that people who work have better levels of mental and physical health than people who don’t work.”

According to Peak Biometric Research, the manufacturers of Sanyx, the physician-created ‘Stress Mitigating Compound’ designed to limit the effects of excess cortisol, “We’ve gotten a lot of anecdotal evidence from Sanyx users who test their cortisol levels with the i-calQ smartphone app (www.i-calQ.com). They say their cortisol is higher on weekends when we suppose they’re spending more time at home.”

Stress and resulting excess cortisol have been called the new American health epidemic. That may seem like an exaggeration, but when we see research like this, it makes you wonder if calling it an epidemic is pretty accurate.

High Levels of Cortisol Passed from Mother to Baby

Excess cortisol continues to stun the medical community with its ubiquitous power t cause physical and mental damage. Now a study by the University of Colorado Denver found that low-income groups experienced high level of the stress hormone during pregnancy. You can imagine why. But here’s the kicker – the serious bit: these children face a heightened risk of developing serious diseases later in life.

What diseases?

Several chronic ailments including cardiovascular disease and mental illness.

We’re not kidding.

Researchers studies 64 pregnant women in New Zealand with several stress markers, including unemployment, divorce, and abuse, among a list of 19 stressors.

“The babies of lower socioeconomic mothers had higher cortisol response to the stress of the vaccination," said study author Zaneta Thayer. “Such changes have elsewhere been associated with differences in cognition, temperament and physical health… Our findings suggest that stressful social environments experienced by a mother impact her offspring... and that this is already detectable in the first weeks after birth."

These results are sad and astounding.

At Peak Biometric Research we offer a unique formulation, Sanyx (www.MySanyx.com), which helps reduce the effects of excess cortisol on target organs… BUT, this breakthrough is not meant to be used by pregnant women. We wish it were otherwise.

However, we license a personal, smart-phone based, physician-created testing system, called i-CalQ, which can help women monitor cortisol levels at home, so they and their doctors can take appropriate steps to lower stress. If necessary.

This inexpensive unit attaches to your smartphone and uses a drop of saliva to test. Results are available in minutes.

For more information, please visit www.i-CalQ.com for complete details.

Children of Poverty – Cortisol/Stress Affects Cognitive Development

As reported in The Washington Post, "Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area – working memory."

A study of 195 children (ages 9, 13 and 17) from households living above and below the poverty line took a look at stress levels by measuring the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine with blood pressure and body-mass index data.

The unfortunate results?

"The longer they lived in poverty, the higher the allostatic load (wear and tear on the body) and the lower the working memory score," the study found.

New questions are arising based on this research. What about stress caused by factors other than poverty? What about adult brains and an increased allostatic load?

The Post asks: “What is the effect of the allostatic load in women from the chronic dangers and stresses of being treated as second-class citizens all their lives? What does the allostatic load do to the working memory of males who are shorter and more slenderly built than the bullies at school? And what does it do to members of any devalued racial or ethnic group in society?”

Seems that continues stress in all shapes and forms has severely negative effects on cognition and overall brain performance.

Now it’s clear to see why controlling excess cortisol via products like Sanyx (http://www.MySanyx.com) -- and measuring the results using biometric devices -- are so important to overall health and well being. It’s no exaggeration that cortisol agonists can be among the most important supplements we can take… given the laundry list of harmful effects excess stress and cortisol can encourage.

Cognitive Decline Linked to Stress

A 2012 study entitled The ageing cortical synapse: hallmarks and implications for cognitive decline (by John H. Morrison & Mark G. Baxter) postulates the breakthrough idea that mental decline might be related to stress, anxiety and hormonal changes rather than neuronal changes in the brain. The authors go on to suggest that cognitive impairment should be treated as a systemic problem, rather than a localized condition of the prefrontal cortex, for example.

To quote the paper itself: “The data on the effects of stress and sex steroids on the ageing brain and cognition… make it clear that the brain cannot be viewed in isolation with respect to the neurobiological basis of cognitive decline. Given the impact of menopause on women’s health, as well as the requirements to maintain optimal executive function in the face of stressful conditions, future work should target the nature of these interactions with an eye towards interventions that might be behavioural as well as pharmaceutical. “

The research was conducted in monkeys and rodents, but the implications for human cognition are significant.

The link between stress and mental decline needs a lot more research… but for aging boomers, in particular, finding ways to reduce stress and normalize cortisol seems like a very prudent thing to do.

Meditation, massage therapy, supplementation to normalize cortisol (p-serine is a good place to start), and any number of relaxation techniques will help reduce stress and anxiety and that’s always, always a good thing.

NOTE: The use of formulations like Sanyx (MySanyx.com) to lower stress-induced cortisol can be a solid first step in mitigating the negative effects of stress and anxiety. This physician-developed stress mitigating compound is the first of its kind specifically formulated to reduce excess levels of stress-induced cortisol.

You can read the article at http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v13/n4/full/nrn3200.html

Stress Is Neither Sexy nor Appealing

Researchers photographed 52 ‘good-looking’ Latvian women with an average age of 20, then vaccinated each for hepatitis B and measured how many antibodies they produced as a result. However, they also found that cortisol levels were also higher.

A new study confirms the fact that stressed out women are not attractive to men.
The study, done in Finland,  found that women with higher cortisol levels were considered less attractive than those with lower levels. Bottom line: stress plays a more important role is attractiveness than the researchers ever thought. In fact, the results came as a surprise… the study was meant to correlate immunity with attractiveness but then things went awry.

The research team then asked 18 heterosexual male undergraduates to rate the women on their attractiveness and found that higher cortisol levels in the women correlated with how attractive the men found them.

The study also found a link between how much fat each women carried and how attractive they were considered. Too high or low amounts of body fat reduced the women’s attractiveness. In other words, those who were too thin were regarded as just as unattractive as those were seen as too fat.

Dr Markus Rantala speculated that instead low levels of cortisol could signal health in the female face.

“This would be consistent with many studies in humans that have found stress has strong negative effect on health, including immune function, heart disease and susceptibility to cancer, etc…” he said.

Rantala added that an alternative explanation for the findings is that facial attractiveness indicates reproductive potential which is mediated partly by stress hormones. In fact, past research has shown that stress interferes with fertility.

NOTE: A 2010 study showed that when men in the company of a beautiful woman had higher levels of cortisol, especially when left alone for five minutes. And if the men thought the women were out of their league, so to speak, cortisol levels soared. Ahhh… the tension caused by being too close to beauty.

And yes, this is yet another reason to control stress by balancing cortisol output with things like meditation, yoga, exercise, deep breathing and Sanyx Stress Mitigating Compound.

Cortisol and Stress Affect Eating Habits

It’s common knowledge that excess cortisol causes the body to store excess fat around the middle.  Few dispute this fact. When the body is consistently stressed, the effects of elevated cortisol create a demand for more fats to be deposited to the abdominal area, where cortisol receptors are higher.

But the increased girth is caused by other factors, too… related to how and what we eat when were under pressure.

Stress can drive us to eat comfort foods, generally fast foods loaded with salt, fat and sugar. Plus, these foods destroy our self-control. In short, we eat ‘bad’ food in excess.

When we’re stressed we grab the easiest, most convenient, and tastiest food – burgers, pizza, chicken nuggets, chips, etc. You know – a 7-11 diet.

Plus, high consumption of alcohol is also another by-product of stress. Alcohol is caloric… alcohol in excess is excessively caloric. One is never enough and two are just nice.

Three pints of beer = 500 calories. Do this twice a week and you’ve added 4,000 calories in a month. A year later, you’re at least 10 pounds heavier (13.7 pounds to be exact).

Eating and drinking comfort foods can help feel calm, but their long-term effects are horrific to your shape and your health.

Control stress, reduce cortisol… and stay slim around the middle. In fact, controlling cortisol through diet, meditation, biometric (mHealth) testing and supplementation, (see http://www.MySanyx.com), could be the best weight loss plan ever… and the simplest.

Sanyx 101: Manage Stress and Cortisol for Heart Health

We all know that stress can cause a laundry list of health problems… mental and physical. Your hair can fall out, for example; your sleep patterns can be disrupted; your appetite can increase along with your waistline.

A recent study from The Netherlands showed that increased cortisol in the hair samples of older men and women was indicative of cardiovascular health. Essentially, higher cortisol and stress levels – can greatly increase your chance at sustaining future heart disease.

Over three months, researchers used scalp hair analysis to identify patterns in levels of cortisol in roughly 300 seniors aged 65 - 85. They found that those with elevated cortisol levels over a period of time were more likely to be at risk for cardiovascular disease, and they also were more likely to have a history of stroke, diabetes, peripheral arterial disease, and coronary heart disease.

"Because scalp hair can capture information about how cortisol levels have changed over time, hair analysis gives us a better tool for evaluating that risk,” said study co-author Laura Manenschijn, MD.

Bottom line: elevated cortisol levels show a strong link to cardiovascular disease.

And while the study was not related to lowering cortisol levels, it seems to follow that doing so, through the use of supplements like Sanyx, could have a positive effect on heart health, among other things.