Fitness Improvement Requires Stress & Cortisol | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

You will not see any progress from exercise training without a large spike in cortisol . It is critically important when we think of phrases like cortisol inflammation stress . This is not bad , right ?

Fitness Improvement Requires Stress & Cortisol | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

If you go look at the um athlete foundations or the athlete resilience protocols that put together , you're not going to see these things in there for that specific reason . Um Any form of cortisol regulation needs to be done strategically , if you are excessively high and we're bringing you back down the normative values at the right time , then great . If you're normal though , then taking you down lower than that is actually problematic .

Fitness Improvement Requires Stress & Cortisol | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

I know we'll touch on more in the nutrition supplementation episode . But um in thinking about the relationship between carbohydrates and cortisol and what we've just been talking about in terms of cortisol as being vitally important for the adaptation , trigger or triggering adaptation . It's probably a better way to put it , but that it can blunt cortisol taking post training or um maybe in the evening before sleep .

Fitness Improvement Requires Stress & Cortisol | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

We have nutrients , we have energy again , specifically carbohydrates . Therefore , Cortisol can sort of go back down . We don't need to be liberating free fatty acids and preparing uh the need for fuel .

Fitness Improvement Requires Stress & Cortisol | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

What I think it can be useful for people to understand is that many things will spike cortisol throughout the day , stress cold water exercise . But the idea is that it comes down to baseline or near baseline .