Do you feel overwhelmed by daily tasks? Catch yourself thinking negative or pessimistic thoughts? Blame your high cortisol levels, influencers would have you believe. Online, cortisol—commonly called the “stress hormone”—is a hot topic and frequent scapegoat. Type “cortisol levels” or “howtoreducecortisol” into TikTok, and you’ll be met with hundreds of millions of posts, name-dropping the hormone as responsible for everything from a puffy face (#cortistolface) to a bloated midsection. There are just as many hacks for how to handle it. Beauty and wellness brands have also jumped on the cortisol bandwagon and released products, sometimes marketed as “anti-stress,” that claim to reduce cortisol. Considering that stress has become a bogeyman for everything that ails us, it’s perhaps not surprising that people are zeroing in on tamping down the hormone aligned with it. But what exactly is cortisol? Do we really need to be fixated on our levels? And when can we fairly blame it for health issues? How cortisol works The cortisol fixation has made its way from the internet to doctors' offices. And people have questions. “In all my years of being a doctor, I’ve never heard cortisol being mentioned so much by patients,” says Dr. Molly McBride, an ob-gyn and women’s health specialist in New York City. “Now with TikTok running amok, everybody is asking for cortisol checks.” More in Health The Scientific Search for Youth Why Do I Keep Having Recurring Dreams? Dermatologists Have a Dirty Little Secret The Best Longevity Habit You’re Not Thinking About Personal Trainers Share the No. 1 Tip That Has Changed Their Lives Cortisol is a hormone synthesized from cholesterol that is produced by the adrenal glands. When we are stressed or in fight-or-flight mode, the brain kicks off a process that results in the body producing cortisol. “Cortisol then stimulates our body to increase blood pressure and metabolize fats, carbohydrates, and protein so we have the energy to respond to the stressor,” says Dr. David Kim, a dermatologist in New York City. Cortisol is essential for regulating circadian rhythms and reacting to internal and external stressors. “It really is an adaptive hormone,” critical for our acute stress response and the recovery from it, says Rajita Sinha, a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. We all have cortisol, in other words, and we all need it.
