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.

Stress Is Contagious

I've always said that when it comes to stress, some people are carriers. This study seems to agree. And didn't our parents always tell us to stay away from negative people. They were right.

According to a new study which paired observers and stressed-out people of the opposite sex, some 26% of observers experienced a boost in cortisol, indicating stress. "The fact that we could actually measure this empathic stress in the form of a significant hormone release was astonishing," says a study author. The empathic stress occurred in 30% of observers watching the stressful situation through a one way mirror—but another 24% of observers experienced it when they were simply watching the event on video.  "Even television programs depicting the suffering of other people can transmit that stress to viewers," says a study author.

Imagine -- out cortisol levels increase when we're just around stressful situations and not involved. And watching television raised cortisol levels, too. No wonder belly fat, stress and anxiety are at epidemic proportions.

Sanyx (www,mysanyx.com) just might be the most important supplement we'll ever take -- at least when it comes to reducing the negative effects of excess stress.

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.