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 .
Because you actually want the cortisol to reduce inflammation and initiate or participate in the recovery process . 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 .
Um I think that if people are trying to regulate their cortisol and they're just under and they just understand that basic contour that the baseline should be uh you know , rise pretty quickly after one rises in the morning . So it's easy to remember , rise , rise , um rise out of bed and rise cortisol with light , um bright light with exercise , um with caffeine , these things will all increase cortisol and then across the day , it's normal for cortisol to spike . But then to use some of the down regulation methods that you described in particular , the breathing methods and exercise itself as the case may be .
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 .
Ok , great . So then they take something for stimulation and then the rest of the day they're trying to reduce and then you know , this nasty cycle instead of just getting out of the way and letting cortisol do what it's supposed to do . Uh , and then making sure again you're teaching it .
