This article is for information purposes only. It is not the intent of this article to diagnose, instruct individuals in self diagnosis or instruct individuals in the treatment of disease. Some Individuals could have a serious medical condition like Addison's or Cushings disease. A physician should be consulted to diagnose or rule out serious medical conditions.

      The hormone cortisol is produced in the adrenal cortex in response to adrenal cortical stimulating hormone (ACTH) produced in the pituitary gland. Cortisol plays an important role in regulating blood sugar, energy production, inflammation, the immune system, and healing.

      If you have too little cortisol, you may suffer from fatigue, chronic fatigue, exhaustion, and a disease of the endocrine system called Addison's disease. If your adrenal glands are producing too much cortisol, you may develop conditions such as weight gain, especially around the abdomen, depressed immune function with all of the consequences, accelerated aging, and stomach ulcers.

      Recently, a lot of attention has been directed to the effects of excess cortisol on weight gain and on the difficulty in losing weight. Collectively, the various diet plans being promoted by a long list of diet gurus have a failure rate of approximately 93 to 97 percent. There are several reasons for this. One is clearly the difficulty in achieving behavioral modification in the face of easy availability of the wrong kind of foods, inherently sedentary lifestyles, and intense media programming. Another reason is that our hormones work against us, in the weight loss perspective. High cortisol levels is one of the culprits. 
 

(Next issue: Cortisol and Stress)