The hormone cortisol might be synonymous with stress but in truth it’s the vital chemical that gets us out of bed in the morning and energizes us during the day only to dim its headlights at night so that we don’t remain wired and can get to sleep. It can also affect our mood making us anxious and cause weight gain or lead to extreme fatigue but experts claim this only happens when we either make too much or too little of this hormone. Most endocrinologists or hormone specialists claim that unless we have a disease which leads to the over or under-production of cortisol we cannot attribute any changes in our mood, being overweight or a decline in energy to fluctuations in our body’s capacity to manufacture cortisol.
The only way to find out if cortisol is implicated in any of these conditions is to ask your doctor to measure your cortisol levels which can be done with a blood, urine or saliva test. There are strategies that can be adopted to reduce or ramp up cortisol production depending on what your investigations reveal. For those whose cortisol levels are going through a slump possibly underpinning low mood and depleted energy the herb ashwagandha can alleviate fatigue and enhance cortisol production. For the insomniacs whose cortisol is stuck in “go mode” phosphatidylserine is a natural substance that can tamp down its production.
If cortisol is indeed making us agitated and hyped because we have so much to do with precious little time then AI which has the capacity to accomplish a massive work load in milliseconds with stupendous results might be at least one solution to all our chemical woes. Who cares about authenticity if AI becomes our perfect medicinal healer without any side effects, at least for the time being.
