Have We Got Cortisol All Wrong?
When did cortisol become public enemy number one?
Cortisol is wellness’s latest villain. Conveniently, everyone has something to sell us to fix it.
We seem to have developed a rather complicated relationship with a hormone that has spent thousands of years doing a perfectly respectable job of keeping us alive. Now we're being encouraged to lower it, balance it, monitor it and generally keep it on a very short leash. Even our morning coffee has been dragged into the argument.
The wellness industry, naturally, is delighted. Cortisol cocktails, adaptogenic powders, supplements and specially curated workouts have turned stress management into a surprisingly lucrative business. The underlying suggestion is that our hormones are misbehaving and, with the right purchases and a little discipline, we can persuade them to fall into line.
Except cortisol isn't supposed to stay low. It rises when we wake, responds when we exercise and helps regulate everything from blood sugar to inflammation. Trying to suppress it indiscriminately makes about as much sense as deciding your heart shouldn't beat faster when you run.
“It’s a rather profitable cycle: create the concern, collect the views, sell the solution.”
Chronic stress, of course, can have very real consequences for our health, affecting everything from sleep and appetite to metabolism and recovery. But have we become so convinced that cortisol is behind every unwelcome change in our bodies that we've stopped questioning the advice? A few years of increasingly alarming social-media claims have given us plenty to worry about, along with a convenient menu of solutions.
A puffy face becomes a hormonal warning sign, a changing waistline demands a new workout regime, and suddenly we're booking reformer Pilates, reconsidering our morning coffee and ordering supplements to correct an imbalance nobody has actually established exists. It's a rather profitable cycle: create the concern, collect the views, sell the solution. The question is how much of what we've come to believe about cortisol stands up to scrutiny, and how much is simply another way of turning women's insecurities into somebody else's income.
When A Cortisol Spike Is Actually A Good Thing
Your cortisol is already at work before you've even considered getting out of bed. While you're negotiating another nine minutes with the snooze button, it's busy making energy available, supporting your blood pressure and helping prepare you for the day. Rather efficient for a hormone that's apparently become such a liability.
This early-morning rise is part of cortisol's natural rhythm. Levels typically peak around waking and gradually decline towards evening, helping regulate everything from blood sugar to immune activity along the way. It's an impressive operation, although one that doesn't always appreciate shift work, erratic sleeping patterns or the occasional night spent mentally reorganising your entire life at 3am.
Cortisol also happens to be rather useful in an emergency. Whether we're fighting an infection, recovering from an injury or dealing with a sudden physical demand, it helps the body make energy available, maintain circulation and regulate inflammation. Without enough of it, even relatively ordinary illnesses can become much more serious. Not quite the useless troublemaker its current reputation would suggest.
People with adrenal insufficiency, a condition in which the body cannot produce sufficient cortisol, may need daily hormone replacement and additional medication during illness. Without appropriate treatment, a severe deficiency can result in an adrenal crisis, a potentially life-threatening medical emergency. The determination to lower cortisol at every opportunity begins to look rather less appealing when you discover how badly things can go without it.
Its ability to rise in response to a challenge is equally important. Excitement, physical exertion and psychological pressure can all trigger temporary increases, allowing the body to meet changing demands. Our bodies are supposed to react to the things happening around us, not maintain the hormonal composure of someone permanently reclining beside an infinity pool.
The difficulty comes when the system is repeatedly placed under pressure without sufficient opportunity to recover. Even then, chronic stress doesn't guarantee permanently elevated cortisol. Research has identified different patterns, from changes in the normal daily rhythm to altered responses when a new stressor appears. Two people can be dealing with equally demanding lives and have entirely different cortisol profiles. Unfortunately, the number of unread emails in your inbox isn't a recognised diagnostic tool.
There are, however, circumstances in which cortisol levels genuinely become a medical concern. Cushing's syndrome involves prolonged exposure to unusually high amounts of the hormone, sometimes as a result of steroid medication. Symptoms can include central weight gain, a rounded face, muscle weakness, easy bruising and wide purple stretch marks. These changes develop in a very different context from the everyday fluctuations being labelled cortisol faceonline, and persistent combinations of these symptoms warrant medical assessment.
Too little cortisol creates its own problems. Adrenal insufficiency can cause profound fatigue, low blood pressure, dizziness and unexplained weight loss, with serious complications if it goes untreated. Clearly, keeping cortisol permanently suppressed isn't quite the wellness achievement it's made out to be.
The body needs cortisol to rise when it's called upon, decline when the demand has passed and follow a healthy daily rhythm in between. Its usefulness lies in that ability to respond, not in maintaining some supposedly perfect low reading.
Yet we're now being encouraged to avoid perfectly healthy activities because they temporarily raise it. Imagine applying the same logic to our heart rate: no running, no dancing, certainly no sex. All terribly inconvenient for anyone intending to enjoy themselves, let alone stay fit.
What Your Cortisol Actually Wants From You
Should we really be swapping our weights for Pilates and abandoning HIIT the moment life becomes stressful? Yoga and gentler movement have genuine benefits, but the idea that a challenging workout is somehow adding to our hormonal problems overlooks one of exercise's most appealing qualities: it can make us feel considerably less stressed.
The claim being circulated on social media is particularly persuasive for women over 35: intense exercise raises cortisol, high cortisol encourages belly fat, therefore the harder you train, the more likely you are to hold weight around your middle. It's enough to make anyone question whether their favourite spin class has secretly been working against them.
Except a temporary cortisol rise during exercise is not the same as persistently excessive cortisol. During a challenging workout, the hormone helps release energy to meet the demands being placed on the body. Levels generally move back towards their usual pattern afterwards. That rise is part of a healthy physiological response, not evidence that your workout is rearranging your waistline.
If vigorous exercise really were the enemy of a smaller waistline, we'd have quite a problem explaining the research. Studies of high-intensity interval training in women before and after menopause have found reductions in body fat, including abdominal fat in some groups. Rather inconvenient for the theory that a demanding spin class is secretly expanding our waistlines.
The psychological benefits make the argument against hard workouts even less convincing. A 2024 review of 31 studies found that a single exercise session could reduce the body's subsequent cortisol and blood-pressure responses to psychological stress. Higher-intensity exercise was even associated with greater reductions in certain measures. So the workout we're being warned is sending our stress hormones into overdrive may actually leave us better equipped to deal with whatever the day throws at us.
That doesn't mean everyone should be sprinting up hills or chasing personal bests when they're exhausted. But it does make the idea that women suddenly need to exercise delicately after their 35th birthday seem rather questionable.
For some people, yoga provides exactly the release they need. For others, nothing clears the head quite like lifting heavy weights, pushing through a spin session or leaving the gym thoroughly sweaty and considerably less irritated by the world. Stress relief doesn't have to be gentle to be effective.
Recovery, however, deserves its place in the conversation. Continually training hard while eating too little, sleeping badly or allowing insufficient rest can undermine performance and health. Persistent exhaustion, repeated injuries or a noticeable decline in strength are reasons to reassess your routine. That might mean eating more, programming easier sessions or allowing yourself additional recovery, rather than abandoning the exercise you enjoy.
Fasting presents another dilemma. We're told to delay breakfast for metabolic health, then warned that doing so could send our cortisol soaring. Longer periods without food can raise cortisol under certain circumstances, but that doesn't make every overnight fast harmful. For someone exercising regularly, the more relevant question is whether they're getting enough energy and nutrients to support their activity. A fasting schedule that leaves you constantly hungry, exhausted or struggling to recover is hardly an achievement worth protecting.
Coffee has suffered similar reputational damage. Caffeine can temporarily increase cortisol, particularly in people who aren't accustomed to it, but there's no convincing evidence that drinking coffee before breakfast causes a harmful hormonal imbalance. If caffeine makes you anxious or interferes with sleep, reducing the amount or changing when you drink it is sensible. Otherwise, your morning espresso can probably remain exactly where it is.
Stress has become such a familiar part of modern life that we've almost stopped questioning how much of it we're carrying. We can recognise when our phones need charging, when our cars need servicing and when we've pushed a workout too far, yet somehow expect ourselves to operate indefinitely without much consideration for recovery. Unfortunately, being accustomed to pressure doesn't necessarily make us immune to its effects.
The encouraging news is that our response to stress isn't entirely fixed. A systematic review and meta-analysis involving 58 studies and more than 3,500 participants found that psychological stress-management interventions had a measurable effect on cortisol, with mindfulness and relaxation techniques producing encouraging results.
The practical implications are accessible. Slow, controlled breathing can help reduce feelings of stress and physiological arousal. Progressive muscle relaxation, which involves deliberately tensing and releasing different muscle groups, can be useful for people who find sitting quietly with their thoughts about as relaxing as checking their bank balance after Christmas. Mindfulness has also demonstrated benefits, although there's no requirement to become someone who meditates for an hour before sunrise.
For anyone inclined to dismiss these approaches as rather lightweight, it's worth remembering that we're dealing with a nervous system designed to respond to perceived demands. Giving it regular opportunities to settle is a reasonable strategy, even when the source of the pressure isn't going anywhere. The aim isn't to remain permanently serene. It's to recover between the less serene moments.
What About The Supplements?
Of course, the prospect of feeling less stressed without having to overhaul our lives is difficult to resist. Particularly when the solution comes in a beautifully designed bottle promising hormonal harmony. But before we hand over our credit cards, which ingredients have actually earned their place on the shelf?
Ashwagandha might actually deserve some of its wellness-world popularity. Small clinical trials suggest certain extracts can improve stress and reduce cortisol, but its potential benefits don't stop there. A trial involving women experiencing perimenopause also found improvements in menopausal symptoms and quality of life, making it an interesting contender for those navigating both hormonal changes and everyday stress. Wild Nutrition's KSM-66 Ashwagandha Plus contains a clinically studied type of extract, although the finished product isn't proven to deliver all these benefits. Generally well tolerated in short-term trials, it isn't suitable for everyone: pregnancy, breastfeeding, certain thyroid or autoimmune conditions and medication interactions are important considerations, and rare liver reactions have been reported. The findings are promising, particularly for women experiencing stress alongside perimenopausal symptoms, although larger studies are needed to establish how effective it really is.
Magnesium has somehow graduated from essential mineral to wellness royalty. It's important for muscle and nerve function, and correcting inadequate intake makes sense, but evidence that extra magnesium reliably lowers cortisol is weak. Even glycinate, the supposedly superior calming form, hasn't convincingly earned its reputation. Solgar Chelated Magnesium is one option for supplementing magnesium, not a hormonal quick fix. High doses can upset digestion, and kidney problems warrant particular caution. Sometimes the most useful supplement is simply the one you're actually lacking.
L-theanine is worth a look if feeling calmer, rather than lowering cortisol, is the objective. Naturally found in tea, it has shown modest potential for reducing perceived stress in small studies, without necessarily making people drowsy. Viridian L-Theanine & Lemon Balm is one formulation to investigate, although the combination itself isn't proven to lower cortisol. Think possible relaxation aid, not hormonal intervention.
Rhodiola and phosphatidylserine have also attracted attention, but the research is too limited and inconsistent to justify much excitement. Both have produced preliminary findings relating to stress responses, yet neither has convincing evidence for routine cortisol management. For now, we'd save our money.
There's a difference between taking something because it genuinely helps and taking it because you've been persuaded your hormones need correcting. Ashwagandha has encouraging research behind it, magnesium deserves attention when you're not getting enough, and L-theanine may take the edge off a stressful day. None comes with a guarantee of hormonal harmony, however beautiful the packaging.
Feeling calmer is a perfectly good reason to explore ways of managing stress. It doesn't require a diagnosis invented somewhere between a TikTok video and the checkout.
The wellness industry has managed to turn a perfectly necessary hormone into something of a personal failing. Too much stress, the wrong breakfast, the wrong exercise, another reason to feel we're not quite getting our bodies right. Fortunately, there's usually a product, programme or monthly membership ready to put things straight.
Cortisol, meanwhile, will continue doing what it's always done: helping us wake up, rise to a challenge and recover afterwards. It might even rise during that HIIT class we're being encouraged to abandon. The real achievement isn't keeping it permanently low, but having a body that can respond when it needs to.
As for the promise that swapping your spin class for reformer Pilates will magically shrink your waistline? We'd suggest keeping the workout you love and saving the £200 membership for something rather more enjoyable.
