33 Minutes to HEAL Your Hormones and Feel ENERGIZED Again | Cortisol | Dr. Josh Axe

Are you constantly praised for your productivity but feel guilty when you rest? This video explores the struggle with chronic stress and high cortisol symptoms, highlighting the cultural pressure to always be busy. Discover how to achieve better work life balance and find true stress relief, contributing to overall holistic health and wellness. It's time to manage stress effectively and prevent burnout. Thank you to our sponsors! Sunlighten Sauna: https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast Manukora Manuka Honey: https://manukora.com/axe Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1 🎧 Early Access! Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners → Spotify: https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3JDvWcS Order my NEW BOOK, The Biblio Diet → https://bit.ly/4oPEP3t Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → http://mybloodwork.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/ TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrjoshaxeshow/ X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxe Website → http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe Timestamps: 0:00 — The Hustle Myth and Stress 3:46 — Defining the Cortisol Steal 7:29 — Protein, Fiber, and GLP-1 9:49 — Magnesium and Relaxation 10:45 — Ashwagandha: The 30% Fix 13:00 — Stopping the 3 AM Wakeup 14:40 — Case Study: Reversing High Stress 17:19 — The Pregnenolone Pathway 21:16 — The SHBG Trap and Free Testosterone 24:16 — Profile 1: The Anxious Type 26:25 — Profile 2: The Burnout Type 28:12 — Profile 3: The Mistimed Type 30:52 — The Sabbath and Recovery Links DISCLAIMER This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program. MB016QPHQKOO253 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot snack bar. Your lucky jersey, your chairs, and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger cargo space. And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist, and the tech to stay a step ahead. It's more than an SUV. It's your Equinox. Chevrolet, together let's drive.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  You know you need fiber for a healthy gut, but do you actually know how to get it? Quaker's been serving up fiber since 1877 with over 100 great tasting, good source of fiber options to choose from. Whether you like old-fashioned oats, instant oatmeal, granola, or oatmeal squares, Quaker makes it delicious. Mmm, so good. Get your fiber with Quaker. Shop Quaker's Good Source of Fiber products at a store near you.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Last night, you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party. This morning, it'll take you two minutes to list it on Depop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again? There's a birthday girl searching for them right now. Your one-and-done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the ride home. Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

• 1:29Josh Axe?

  I once worked with a patient who struggled with chronic stress and high cortisol symptoms. She was extremely productive. She finished every single task at work. She was praised constantly for getting things done on time, and yet, anytime she rested, she felt guilty or even anxious. And if she wasn't producing, she felt like she was failing. And maybe you can relate to that. We live in a culture that rewards the hustle, but our bodies were made to follow rhythms to work, but also to rest and recover. And without balance, cortisol rises like an internal stove. And so what happens is, this heat... Gets turned up and your body here can only take the heat for so long.

• 2:14Josh Axe?

  Today, we call this the cortisol steal. And on today's episode, I'm going to walk you through how to reverse things like hypothyroidism, menopausal symptoms, low testosterone in men and women, imbalanced progesterone levels, and so much more by fixing the cortisol steal. And I'll go through the exact diet, supplements, and so much more on how to fix your hormones today. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Ak Show.

• 2:53Josh Axe?

  The number one hormone that most people have it in balance with today that's causing all of your other hormones to be at unhealthy levels is cortisol, right? Cortisol is your body's survival hormone and your body will prioritize making sure that hormone is at optimal levels and it will sacrifice the other hormones known as your sex hormones because of it. Think about this, if your body has to choose between surviving versus reproducing offspring, your body is going to prioritize cortisol because you have to survive or these other things don't matter. And so that's what happens is your body actually starts to steal all of the nutrients,

• 3:37Josh Axe?

  all of the building blocks like cholesterol for your body, making estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and thyroid hormones. It starts to steal those in order to help your body make more and more and more cortisol because it's your survival hormone. It's important to understand when cortisol stays elevated for months or even years, it starts to disrupt every hormone in your entire body. Its real job, as I mentioned, is survival and cortisol's main purpose is to mobilize your energy and it mobilizes your energy towards the area of your brain that causes you to be more alert and it sends more. More of your energy and blood out to your extremities. Today, we are dealing with chronic responses.

• 4:22Josh Axe?

  Typically, psychological stress due to overwhelming work obligations, right? Mounting financial pressure. You know, the stress of relationships, like these psychological and mental and spiritual stressors. They start to cause your adrenal glands to create more and more and more and more stress hormones. So this leaves testosterone, estrogen and progesterone and thyroid hormones without what they need to help your body heal and function at the highest level. And so what I want to do is walk you through exactly what you need to do to start to fix cortisol. Also, I'm really excited about this. I'm going to walk you through this scientific process.

• 5:06Josh Axe?

  And I'm going to make it really simple to understand, but it's called the cortisol steal. It's the root of almost every hormone issue out there today. So there are four steps that are going to help you greatly reduce cortisol and bring it back into balance. And at the end, I'm also going to dive into the supplements and the foods to fix it as well. Step number one, fix your sleep. You've probably already heard this, right? Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep a night. The old saying in kind of folk medicine, and that is every hour of sleep before midnight is worth almost double after midnight. Now, that's not exactly the case, but generally it is important to know that you will get better sleep when it's dark out.

• 5:47Josh Axe?

  Typically, your body is ready to start detoxing and healing once the sun is setting. So earlier in the night, you tend to get more deep sleep. Later at night, you tend to get more REM sleep. Remember, this deep sleep is more healing to your cells. It's more healing to your organs, your hormones. It's more reparative and regenerative. REM sleep is really more allowing your brain to organize and heal part of your brain. But deep sleep is more for chronic injuries, reversing chronic medical conditions, reducing inflammation. Deep sleep is more important. You start to have deep sleep oftentimes even around 10:00 PM at night. So if you're not going to sleep until, you know, midnight,

• 6:32Josh Axe?

  you're typically missing part of your deep sleep window. Step number two, cardio and aerobic exercise, simply walking outdoors can be as helpful as antidepressants, according to a recent medical study. A massive umbrella review of studies showed walking to be as much as a hundred to 50% more effective than counseling or medications. This is especially true when exercising outside because of fractal patterns in nature. Now, so listen, it's not really about cardio or anaerobic versus aerobic or strength training. It's really about just working out outside and spending more time outside. The more you can be outside and as a double whammy, work out while you're outside,

• 7:16Josh Axe?

  does tremendous things for your cortisol levels. Number three, wake up earlier. By the way, what I'm telling you, I'm not telling you to get less sleep. I'm telling you, we are meant to live in tune with nature. If you are living out of tune with nature, it equals disease and death. And so when the sun goes down, what do you do? You should be getting ready to go down, right? You should start, you know, dimming the lights or, or reading a book, turning off your, you know, turning off the blue devices, all technology, preparing yourself for bed as the sun goes down and then go to bed soon after. And then when the sun rises, that's when you should be rising and getting up. Okay. And the biggest thing you want to do is once you wake up is get outside for 15 minutes.

• 7:59Josh Axe?

  Doing a 15 minute walk has been shown in studies to start to regulate your cortisol levels. It should be driving up there in the morning. And then in the evening, it should start driving down so melatonin can go up. There's a study in Brazil that found that just 30 more minutes of sunlight in the morning shifted people's internal clock earlier by about 23 minutes, helping align their circadian rhythm and leading to better sleep. And so the way this worked is if you got outside first thing in the morning, a lot of people were able to fall asleep 23 minutes earlier. And for a lot of people, that means 23 more minutes of sleep. By the way, that's a lot more sleep. I can tell you by about a 30 minute differences between you being groggy and tired and not thinking

• 8:42Josh Axe?

  clearly versus being really sharp and having energy. So just getting outside in the morning can make a massive, massive difference. And the best way to do it is just go for a walk outside first thing in the morning. Step number four, eat protein and fiber every meal, especially protein. You want to balance your blood sugar. One of the biggest triggers for cortisol is actually unstable blood sugar. There's this really close knit relationship between cortisol and insulin. When cortisol goes up, insulin often goes up. If you know you've got blood sugar crashes or energy up and down, you want to increase fiber, increase protein, and do low to moderate carbohydrate.

• 9:23Josh Axe?

  And when you do that, that will lower and reduce those cortisol spikes. By the way, eating protein every meal also sends signals to your brain and it works hormonally. In fact, protein aids to your body in releasing your own natural GLP-1. Now, today, most people are turning and using this as a medication. That's never the best way to do it. Just like it's always better for your body to create the right hormones internally by itself, you want your body creating its own peptides and hormones itself as well. And so, did you know that eating more protein and more fiber especially, both boost GLP-1 production, which is also going to help you lose more body fat?

• 10:09Josh Axe?

  Hey, so it's important to remember that cortisol and chronic stress aren't just mental. They create real physical strain on the body over time. They disrupt your hormones, your sleep, your metabolism, and your recovery. And when that stress response stays elevated, it becomes much harder for your body to reset and heal. One tool that helps regulate your stress response, supports your detox pathways, and promotes recovery is sunlighting infrared saunas. These are targeted infrared light and heat, which are absorbed at the cellular level, helping reduce stress and improve circulation. That's why I trust sunlight. Led infrared technology for over 25 years with patented systems designed to deliver high quality infrared.

• 10:53Josh Axe?

  Their impulse sauna, which is what I personally have, lets you customize precise wavelengths to match your health goals. If lowering stress and supporting long-term resilience is a priority for you, learn more at sunlighten.com/axe. Use the code A X E to save up to $1,600 plus free shipping with additional savings throughout the year.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. So you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online at statefarm.com. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 11:42Josh Axe?

  Now, I want to walk you through the top supplements that can make a really big difference in your cortisol levels as well and bringing your hormones back into balance. And so my first and most recommended supplement for lowering cortisol is magnesium glycinate. This is a combination of the mineral that supports the greatest levels of relaxation of your body and the amino acid that supports the greatest levels of relaxation by your body, which is glycine. Right? When you combine them, it has so many benefits for relaxation, brain health, sleep, lowering cortisol and stress. You want to take around 300 to 400 milligrams of magnesium glycinate a day.

• 12:25Josh Axe?

  Next up is vitamin D with vitamin K. This is especially important during the winter months. This can lower stress, improve mood. Remember this, to create hormones, there are certain nutrients your body needs. Vitamin D is one of those. It is a pro hormone. Next up, now this is my other favorite outside of magnesium glycinate, and it is ashwagandha. Typically, I recommend a dosage of around 600 milligrams to 900 milligrams daily. This can reduce cortisol levels by up to 30% in chronically stressed individuals. By the way, there are so many fantastic studies showing ashwagandha brings cortisol back into balance. So it also can do things like bring thyroid hormones back into balance

• 13:06Josh Axe?

  and testosterone back into balance. There's that sort of, you can look up studies on this. Ashwagandha for testosterone, ashwagandha for PCOS, ashwagandha for all of these different hormonal issues. But what it really does is it has an impact on one hormone directly, and that's cortisol. And because it lowers cortisol, all of your other hormones start to come back into balance. By the way, there's a lot of other adaptogens that I like along with ashwagandha. Rhodiola rosea, another one really good for mitochondrial function. That can be great for cortisol in high-stress periods. Also, cordyceps mushrooms, reishi

• 13:46Josh Axe?

  mushrooms, holy basil, also known as tulsi. These adaptogenic herbs have great benefits of starting to lower and bring down those cortisol levels. Now, here's another one I like. One of the greatest ways to combat high cortisol is to bring more joy in your life, to lift your mood. Saffron, which is one of my favorite herbs, it's referenced in the Bible, it's famed in Ayurvedic medicine. Saffron is probably the most effective herb to act as a natural antidepressant and natural anti-anxiety supplement. Okay? Typically, it's around 88 milligrams per day is one of the best. By the way, I've used this with kids with ADHD. I've used saffron for depression, for anxiety, and for supporting healthy cortisol

• 14:30Josh Axe?

  levels. So saffron, a great supplement, and its benefits for cortisol. Now, here's another one I really like, and this is a compound found in chamomile tea. It's called apigenin, okay? And it acts as this antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, but if you've ever drank in chamomile tea, you know, it's very calming to the body. So you could drink a cup of chamomile, or take apigenin as a supplement, and has great benefits. Here's another one I really like, phospholipids. Now, it helps you get better sleep at night. If you're a person that wakes up around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. in the morning, and that's you, that tends to mean that your cortisol is getting Being high around that time. Okay. One of the supplements that can help dampen and calm that effect is called phosphatidylserine. Okay. You might've heard of phosphatidylcholine.

• 15:15Josh Axe?

  This is a phospholipid that's found in things like wild-caught fish, like salmon, or caviar. It's found in caviar. It's found in egg yolk. These are really unique types of fats that are the most healing and regenerative to our cell membranes into our cells. But phosphatidylserine has this calming effect and healing effect on our cells. And it's also been shown to help you get better sleep at night. You tend to want to do around 200 to 300 mg per night. And then I mentioned this earlier, magnesium glycinate. This next one here is just glycine by itself. 3,000 to 4,000 mg of glycine per night. In fact, one reason why glycine works, if you're a hot sleeper, and that's one of the things that's waking you up and keeping you from

• 15:59Josh Axe?

  getting good sleep at night. Glycine is shown in clinical studies to help lower your body temperature. So you can sleep. So again, think about what your issue is. And I think it's always important with supplements to think about, okay, which of these things best describes me? Am I in a constant state of high stress? Well, okay, do ashwagandha. Can I not sleep at night? Or I'm feeling tense? Magnesium glycinate. Are you waking up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.? Phosphatidylserine. Or are you a hot sleeper? Glycine. All of these things though work together to help lower cortisol levels in your body. You know, I want to share with you a client I had. Kristen was a client of mine at the Health Institute, and she came in with chronically

• 16:43Josh Axe?

  high cortisol levels. In fact, one of the things we do with with a lot of people is we do, you know, a blood test to see, you know, what's off, right? I always say, tests don't guess, you know, let's figure out what's going on. We noticed really high cortisol. And part of it was due to, she had a really demanding, travel-heavy work schedule, really poor self-care, poor sleep, poor digestive function, a lot of these issues. And I put her on a program that really focused on lowering cortisol. We put together a supplement protocol, a daily eating

• 17:16Josh Axe?

  A lifestyle plan, everything she needed to follow in order to heal her hormones and her digestive system and her sleep. And it was absolutely mind blowing to see the results that she experienced. If you look at this graph here, you can see here what she came in with and seeing how severe all of her problems were in red, right? You can see here digestive issues, you can see here poor sleep, you see all these issues. And then in the blue, you can see the next time we checked in on her, after going through the program, where her levels were, and you can see improvements in every single area across the board. And this thing I want to share about this is this, a lot of times, if you're dealing with a health problem, you're just kind of guessing. You're like, oh, I

• 17:57Josh Axe?

  saw this influencer online say I should take this supplement, or I heard somebody say I should drink apple cider vinegar, or use coconut oil. But you've never had anyone dial in things specifically for you. You know, one thing I'm seeing a lot is that there's a lot of people online getting all this blood work done. And I have had this happen a lot. People have come in, and I said, well, okay, you got the blood work done. What did they tell you to do? Well, they didn't. I just got blood work done. Well, listen, you know what's more even more important than blood work is having a exact plan in place of how to completely heal your body. And so, one of the things that I've really tried to do my entire career, especially with hormones like cortisol, or hypothyroidism, or menopause, or whatever, low testosterone, whatever you're dealing with, is it's really important that you have mapped out for you, because you're a

• 18:42Josh Axe?

  unique individual, exactly what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the ideal supplements to take, the natural therapies that'll really make a difference for you, really getting that dialed in is so, so important. You want someone to help create a plan for you, or to get the blood work done, you can simply go to mybloodwork.com, and it's a great resource. You can learn there more about the programs at the Health Institute, and how to actually heal your body and get a plan in place to fix your hormones for good. Now, I want to talk to you about something, maybe one of the most important things I'm going to cover is talking to you about the cortisol steel. This is a process and a pathway that happens in the body, and it's often misunderstood. And I think when I explain this to you, the lights are going to come

• 19:26Josh Axe?

  And you're going to fully understand how this works in your body. The way your body starts off tends to be hormonally, one of the biggest organs that's responsible for these hormones is, are your adrenal glands. Okay. And so your adrenal glands help support the creation of cholesterol along with other organs, right? And then your body creates a hormone called pregnenolone. Okay. And pregnenolone then either becomes progesterone or DHEA. Okay. And then progesterone, if it needs to, can become cortisol. And the DHA becomes your testosterone or your estrogen. Now here's what's happening with most people.

• 20:07Josh Axe?

  Your body's creating enough cholesterol. It's doing that. Okay. It's getting to enough pregnenolone. But then here's what's happening. Your body then can, has a choice. It can either send hormones to one side of your cascade, which is to make cortisol, or another side to create testosterone and estrogen. Here's what's happening. When you live in a fight or flight state, when your body feels like it's in survival mode, rather than creating sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen, it creates stress hormones. And your body can only create so many hormones. So your body will start giving all of its energy to create cortisol.

• 20:49Josh Axe?

  And when it should be something like 50 50, okay, 50% of your energy is going to cortisol, 50% of it is going over there to testosterone and estrogen. Here's what's happening to you right now. You're having 80 to 90% of your total hormones become cortisol. And so your testosterone is one third or one half of what it should be. Your estrogen that you should have is at the rock bottom, or your progesterone is at the rock bottom, because cortisol is stealing all of the building blocks, all of the nutrients needed in order to make.

• 21:24Josh Axe?

  This hormone cortisol, cortisol becomes pregnenolone and then progesterone, but then it all just drops down there and becomes cortisol. Okay. And there's also certain nutrients your body needs to make these, right? In order to make stress hormones, your body needs B vitamins, especially B5. It needs folate, it needs vitamin C. All of those are needed to make cortisol. In order to make progesterone, your body needs vitamin B2 riboflavin, it needs niacin, that's critically important. And then there's some other things here. So if you don't have these, by the way, your, your levels are going to be even worse. If you have, uh, let's say, if you want to have enough DHEA and enough testosterone, you need to have zinc, vitamin

• 22:06Josh Axe?

  D, boron, which you probably didn't even realize that's one you need, and you also need certain B vitamins. And if your body is deficient in those nutrients, your body doesn't have what it needs to make proper levels of testosterone, or estrogen or cortisol, and then in a whole nother cascade, it doesn't have what it needs to create enough thyroid hormone. You know, I recently went over this case with a patient, and by the way, anytime I'm working with a patient in person, I create an entire, uh, presentation where I really go through their blood work in depth of what's happening. And again, this is called the cortisol steal. And here's another thing that happens for some people. For some of you, your body, uh, is able to maybe create enough cortisol, and then you have, your, your body is kind

• 22:50Josh Axe?

  of borderline levels of testosterone or estrogen, right? For men, it tends to be testosterone. For women, it tends to be estrogen, though again, a lot of women have too much testosterone, not enough testosterone too. But, but that starts to happen. But then something else can happen, by the way, if your body doesn't have enough nutrients, where there's a hormone called SHBG, and it's called the SHBG trap. And this is where this, uh, this, this thing in the body starts to actually trap your testosterone and estrogen, and, and they can't function, function freely in the body. This is why, if you ever see a testosterone test, and a lot of times we test for free testosterone. Do you, do you have testosterone that's not bound up that your body can Actually use. So that's what this is talking about here.

• 23:36Josh Axe?

  And if you don't have, again, certain nutrients for men, if you don't have the high enough levels of magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, boron, and certain B vitamins, your testosterone will stay bound up, especially zinc and vitamin D. And women, exact same thing. If you are, if your estrogen can get bound up, this is why for women, eat, doing a lot of cruciferous vegetables and doing things to make sure your liver is detoxing, this will help balance out and free up some of your estrogen as well. But if you don't do this, your hormones will stay completely off. But the single greatest factor of bringing all these hormones back into balance is improving

• 24:15Josh Axe?

  your cortisol levels. And if you don't, cortisol imbalances everything else in the body. It's like a domino effect, or it's like a, like a scale, cortisol's off, now everything else is off, right? You end up with increased blood sugar, insulin resistance, visceral fat storage, right? Why does your body store visceral fat? When your body's in survival mode, it wants to store up more body fat. That's, that's what happens. It says, well, I need to survive. I may not eat for a while. I don't know. And so it starts to store body fat. So when you lower cortisol, now weight loss becomes easy. By the way, another big thing here too, for, for men and women, cortisol, when it's high, it breaks down your muscle mass. It'll start even using your muscle for energy.

• 24:59Josh Axe?

  Your thyroid conversion is absolutely suppressed. Your testosterone is lower, as we talked about, and here's another big one from a cellular standpoint, your mitochondrial function is weakened. So what happens is, okay, you're energized, you're energized, you're energized, now all of a sudden you're tired. So either you, you, you get this feeling of you're wired, but you're still tired, like deep down, you can feel I'm exhausted, deep down in my soul, deep down in my cells.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in Original and Cherry Vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, unbelievably Pepsi.

• 25:41Josh Axe?

  Hey guys, I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Dave Jockers. In fact, we've been friends for more than 20 years. He runs the podcast, The Dr. Dave Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast. Dr. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your podcast is about.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. We dive deep on functional nutrition, really how to personalize your nutrition plan for better energy, mental clarity, better hormone balance. And we talk a lot about cellular health, mitochondrial function, cell membrane. We do a deep dive on every major nutrition topic and natural health topic. So everything you need right there at your fingertips. Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast.

• 26:17Josh Axe?

  Well, I encourage you, run out and listen to the Dr. Jockers Show. Again, I'm a big fan of it. I think you will be as well. There are different cortisol types. There are three cortisol types I want to talk about. And after working with patients for years, I've sort of divided them up into these groups so you can identify your root cause, okay? And you can tailor a plan to you. The first type is this, your cortisol is too high, right? This is what I would call the anxious person profile. Your cortisol is chronically elevated all the time. The biggest drivers are overwork and overcommitment. You've committed and you've taken on more responsibility than you should have, okay? Other things that can cause this to be worse, an inflammatory diet, especially excess carbs, poor sleep.

• 27:02Josh Axe?

  The key feature here is you've got anxiety, you've got excess belly fat, you've got this kind of some insomnia issues. And then when we do your lab work, and this is the way I've kind of discovered this, is when I do a lot of lab work with people, you have high free cortisol, high CRP, which is your inflammation levels, and often low DHEA. That's the pattern. And so you're working hard, you're sleeping poorly, you're carrying stress in your body, and you can't understand why your willpower is not solving it. Here's what you will respond best to. Number one, creating boundaries, saying no more, and scheduling time in where you're just shutting it off, okay? Listen, God created you, you can work hard.

• 27:47Josh Axe?

  But after dinner, no more work, put it down. Just spend time with family. You need to have more time blocked out to rest and restore. That's number one. And then what also these people with very high cortisol respond to, this is you. Ashwagandha, phosphatidylserolin, the magnesium glycinate. And then another, here's another big one. Eliminating caffeine after 10 a.m. A little bit of caffeine, one time a day is fine. But doing caffeine all the time throughout the day will absolutely make it worse. In fact, sometimes it's better just to do no caffeine for a period of time or to switch to something a little bit lower earlier in the day until your body gets balanced and then add the coffee back in. Now here's type 2 cortisol.

• 28:31Josh Axe?

  Your cortisol is too low. This is the burnout profile. So your cortisol before was chronically elevated. Now your body is so worn out. You've gone through so much stress. You have low grade, actually, this is, this is, this is what I see with people with low grade chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, chronic hypothyroidism. Cortisol was so high for so long. Your body now doesn't even have enough hormones to, to even have enough cortisol there. It's been so worn out. Okay. This person used to kind of be able to push and now they can't push anymore. They're just exhausted. By the way, this reminds me of my mom growing up. My mom said yes so much, so much going on that eventually she just had nothing left. And she was, you know, she was diagnosed with everything from chronic fatigue syndrome

• 29:16Josh Axe?

  to adrenal fatigue, to just major, you know, hypothyroid symptoms. That's what this is. Okay. These people respond best to true rest. And then here's another one. Scheduling things you love to do, things that build you joy. You not only want to stop doing things that deplete you. You need to start doing things that start to recharge your battery. These are the people that really need to get in and like see an acupuncturist. These are people that respond really well to red light therapy. You need to walk, you need to move regularly, not over exercise. And then some of the herbs are really responsive. Rhodiola rosea is amazing for low cortisol. Licorice root is great for low cortisol. Vitamin B5, doing electrolytes.

• 30:00Josh Axe?

  And then possibly women, something like DHEA or doing peptides to support. But you really, it's this malnourishment because you've expended everything and it's really great self-care. And dialing in those right vitamins and supplements. I mean, this is where blood work is tremendously beneficial to see where you're depleted and then what we can do to start to build the body back up. The third type is mistimed, mistimed cortisol. This is wired at night and then you're absolutely fatigued in the morning with low cortisol. So this is the backwards person. I see this a lot of women 35 to 55 or some of the creative types it starts to happen to inability to function before 10

• 30:40Josh Axe?

  a.m. And then you get a second wind at 10 p.m. Okay, this is where you've got to cut out the blue light. This is where you typically have been completely working against nature. Cut out the blue light, late night screens, even evening exercise. These are primary drivers of imbalance. This is a commonly missed pattern. A lot of times this is where I like to do a cortisol test called a cortisol Dutch test where I get to see your patterns throughout the entire day. Okay, this is where you want to, listen, the biggest fix for this is discipline. It's saying, you know what? I'm going to start living in tune with God's design, living in tune with nature. I'm going to start going to bed when the sun's going down and I'm going to wake up when it's coming up.

• 31:23Josh Axe?

  And for the first two weeks, it's hard and then it gets easier. You know, try and exercise in the morning. Start drinking herbal tea, holy basil tea. Start drinking that throughout the morning. Get a cortisol test, take some adaptogens, get on a quality diet like we talked about, but just start living in tune with God's design, doing more spiritual growth, just time of reflection, going deep. That actually helps, I found, heal and restore this cortisol imbalance. The too high at night, too low during the day for those people. Here's an important thing to note. Cortisol is not a villain. Listen, you have to have cortisol. Without cortisol, you wouldn't have any energy. You couldn't focus. You couldn't be motivated. Like it's the hormone for survival.

• 32:07Josh Axe?

  It is essential. But when you are constantly living in survival mode. Cortisol will steal all of the building blocks, all of the nutrients, all of the energy from your body. And then there's nothing left for estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and thyroid hormones. You have nothing left for those because cortisol has stolen it all. And if we can fix cortisol, here's what happens. Now insulin, now thyroid hormones, now sex hormones, they all come back into balance. And listen, your goal isn't to eliminate stress completely. I mean, here's what I found for myself. I can work hard all day long, but I need to at dinner, which for me is early, typically 5:00, 5:30. Once I hit dinner,

• 32:50Josh Axe?

  I don't work anymore. It's time with family. It's watching a show and then an hour or two before bed, I read a book or listen to an audio book or something spiritual, play with the kids. That's what I'm doing. Okay. So really I work hard all day. But at dinner, I don't work anymore. And then I take it easy. At least one day, I have a Sabbath. I have one day on the weekend where there's absolutely zero work and focusing on more restoration. I found for myself, and I go hard, I play hard, I do things hard. I didn't have to stop working altogether. But I did have to make simple shifts and be strategic about how to optimize my cortisol levels. So I do other things to support myself. I personally take magnesium glycinate and fossil title serine and glycine before bed. I found it made a really big difference in my sleep routine.

• 33:33Josh Axe?

  I tend to sometimes take ashwagandha or drink holy basil tea during the day as well. Of course, I eat high protein. I take walks. So take little mini breaks during the day, like at lunch, I'll eat, go on a 20 minute walk. Those little shifts in my day have allowed me to heal and have allowed my health to be at 100%. So listen, for you, you don't have to do everything, but make a few shifts in your life. And if you can do it, it's going to help you balance cortisol and heal your body. By the way, if you want to get a cortisol regulation roadmap, and you didn't take notes, but you want to remember all the things I did and kind of get a cortisol plan, you can go to the link in the show notes and get that free cortisol roadmap when you sign up for my health

• 34:14Josh Axe?

  newsletter. And then you'll get continued to support on how to heal your hormones naturally. I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Ak Show. Each and every week, we're diving deep on how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. By the way, thank you so much, all of you that are subscribed. It is the number one thing you can do to support the show. You know, oftentimes, we cover controversial things on the show like cancer, and what's going on, you know, with the government, right? All the things I've covered over the years from COVID and other things. And even some of my guests on here, sometimes, these things can be what's called shadow banned. And if you're not subscribed, it'll never show up in your feed, and you'll never hear about the episode. So make sure to subscribe.

• 34:58Josh Axe?

  It also allows me to put out more content, bring on better guests. So thank you, all of you that are subscribed and supporting me in that way. Also, thank you so much for sharing this. Millions of people are dealing with hormone imbalance, thyroid issues, low testosterone. Think of one person right now that could greatly benefit from hearing this episode and sharing it with them. Thanks so much for doing that. Thank you for being a mission and purpose driven person. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you on the next episode.