My 7 favorite foods and herbs to lower cortisol

did you know that there are actually foods that can lower your cortisol levels so cortisol is one of the important stress hormones that you have inside of your body when you have an important work project dumped on your lap on Friday that has to be done by Monday cortisol is one of the hormones that is released in the body basically to deal with this new perceived threat but obviously you don't want to have to rely on Pharmaceuticals or medication unless you absolutely have to as a last resorb so in this video we'll discuss some herbs and also food grade medicine that you can use to help lower your its own levels hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed acupuncturist and doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day let's jump in now my entire life story is basically one of an anxious person who is prone to hypers sensitivity and way too many stress hormones coursing through his body you know some people just have that nervous system where they're the Beres mountain dog that aren't easily aroused or they're the Chihuahua that anyone that gets within 2 Ines of them they're barking and trying to attack them and shw their foot off the way I view this is almost a mirror of the nervous system right when you think of that little Chihuahua I mean we've had a Chihuahua my parents and I hate to build on the Chihuahua stereotype but it was the nastiest dog we've ever owned you know and I was trying to figure out why she was like that and I thought about you know if I was this little dog and everything around me was a perceived Potential Threat I mean my foot was as big as this dog right if everything around me could kill me accidentally by Falling On Me by stepping on me by dropping a cup of water on me I would be in high alert all the time and that's a lot like the nervous system the nervous system when we talk about fight ORF flight a lot of people are in the state of something is about to hurt me I don't know where it's going to come from I don't know when it's going to happen but I have to be ready for it all the time the nervous system which should normally be somewhat regulated day-to-day is sort of like this all the body's energy and resources are at the surface it's just looking waiting watching it's waiting for the ball to drop it's waiting for the hawk to come pluck the chah you know out of the garden it's waiting for some bad news the problem is is you can't live like that very long and I found myself in this fight ORF flight state for a very long period of time a piece of why I was in that state was specifically because I was self-employed those of you that are self-employed or those of you that have high stress jobs or those of you that are maybe mothers and parents or single mothers or single parents you know exactly the kind of stress that will be demanded of you because of the responsibilities that you have but in a perfect world you don't have to resort to medication that you may be on forever or anti-depressants there are some practi practices we can do in terms of Lifestyle medicine now before we jump into the actual seven foods I want to talk from a Chinese medicine point of view because it's very unique and very distinct you know when we talk about cortisol let's remove this hormone because 5,000 years ago people didn't know what cortisol was and probably several hundred years ago people did not know what cortisol was but people saw the effects of adrenaline and cortisol and HPA access disregulation ancient people had panic attacks ancient people had chest tightness from anxiety ancient people had heart palpitations and arhythmia ancient people had a high resting heart rate when they're under high periods of stress for long periods of time these symptoms are not new and yet the way ancient doctors in traditional Chinese medicine described these was actually very interesting so for example when we talk about cortisol we're talking about let's just say adrenaline right we're talking about cortisol and adrenaline when you acutely experience a shock let's say the shock is your boss drop some papers on your desk Friday you have a project due Monday the first thing you may feel is your pulse Quicken Your Collar tighten your pressure in your head the hypertension that's happening because you're so pissed off at your boss what we're talking about in traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis is the heart so sometimes when people have an elevated heart rate teoc cardia palpitations or they're noticing their heart a lot even if the heart rate is not elevated like on a smartwatch this is what we called heart Chi or heart Yang deficiency this is primarily a nervous system symptom so when I think of the trifecta I think of four key symptoms when we talk about nervous system disregulation or HPA access disregulation elevated heart rate particularly when you're not working or long after work palpitations or dysrhythmias they are non-pathological doesn't actually indicate anything with your heart most of the time it's with the electrical signals the third is insomnia the fourth is anxiety and I would say one more uh actual reflex zones your jaw the sternomastoid muscles and the sub oipal base of the skull being tight and tightness in the chest this cluster of symptoms are the square A1 textbook symptoms from my point of view that there is significant nervous system disregulation going on one final diagnosis you might see you could Google or see an acupuncturist is what's called heart and kidney not communicating it's not worth me going into detail to explain what the cultural origin of that is but effectively it's like the anchor has been broken and the main symptom is typically insomnia so heart and kidney not communicating is like your anchor that allows your nervous system to stay in parasympathetic has been broken and now your nervous system is just boom boom boom boom boom can't descend into sleep right we say wired for a reason or we say tense now lots of other symptoms fall into different organ diagnostic patterns and I've put together a really cool quiz it's just called the root cause quiz according to traditional Chinese medicine your symptoms are probably coming from here it's a 10-page handout I've put together it's completely free it's the link right below this video and basically we go organ system by organ system right these are your typical differential diagnoses in medicine and what's called a pattern differentiation in traditional Chinese medicine so you can actually go download that quiz check it out it's really ightful and really interesting we actually hyperlink to probably our top five or 10 videos that talk more about that specific symptom more so there's a lot of material in there for free so check it out now let's talk about our top seven herbs and Foods remember here we're talking about mostly food grade medicine we're not talking about the clinical herbalism where we're using very high doses that are 10 to 20 times what you would normally supplement with herb or supplement or food number one is you guys are lucky dark chocolate so a study actually found that consumption of dark chocolate was found to reduce cortisol levels in individuals experiencing high levels of psychological stress number two blueberries or berries in general blueberri strawberries that kind of thing now in one study they found that the antioxidants in berries themselves can reduce oxidative stress and inflammation which are associated with elevated cortisol levels food number three is green tea in this particular study researchers found that eleanine a compound in green tea has been shown to promote relaxation and reduce cortisol levels number four is avocados so believe it or not the fats and avocados have lots of health benefits in one study they found that the healthy fats and potassium and avocados can help regulate your blood pressure and actually lower cortisol levels number five fatty fish like salmon and mackerel now in this particular study researchers found that the omega-3 fatty acids in particular that are in fatty fish have an anti-inflammatory property that can help reduce cortisol levels themselves number six is garlic now garlic a common kitchen spice has been found in to have compounds that can reduce cortisol levels in response to stress and number seven is spinach so spinach is one of those plants that is naturally high in magnesium which by itself can help reduce cortisol levels by improving relaxation and reducing stress so Foods aside there are lots of herbs that we tend to use clinically the most as well now I don't think you should think of use this herb for this hormone I think that is the wrong thinking clinically when someone comes in with stress symptoms let's say elevator heart rate heart palpitation anxiety insomnia I don't think this herb treats high cortisol because there are all kinds of correlations that can relate to the subjective feeling of stress it can be related to Adrenaline can be related to serotonin right can be related to neurotransmitters can be related to gut health right a high percentage of neurotransmitters are produced in the gut serotonin in particular and for some people it's totally bizarre you fix their digestive system once the gut disbiosis is gone clinical anxiety is gone almost overnight within a couple months a symptom they have for a decade so we always want to do this sort of pattern differentiation there are a few herbs in particular that I see help much more with subjective feeling of feeling stressed clinically what I use most often is a high dose of medical grade cinnamon bark called rogue rogue is the single most common herb I use in formulas at a high dose that gets people off anti-depressants anti-anxiety medications can regulate your heart rate in place of a beta blocker tons of my patients come in that are young that don't have heart problems but if palpitations and they're on beta blockers this is a crime that should literally be a crime in medicine but they have nothing else to offer this kind of thing can get them off beta blockers the second is a mushroom called Poria fooling Poria there's an interesting study done on rats experiencing anxiety so the researchers did a horrible study where they make rats tread water until basically they can create a drowning like response in their physiology so a panic response they found that the rats they gave fooling to that have this anxiety response from stress the fooling was working on serotonin like an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication so pora fooling is a common mushroom we end up using in certain kinds of anxiety and certain kinds of heart palpitations other herbs that can really help are renen jining ginsing is very good at stabilizing the HP axis so in Chinese medicine it's fascinating we don't really use it for Stress and Anxiety primarily we primarily use it for Digestive problems involving you know pancreatic enzymes bloating sibo disbiosis but in naturopathic and functional circles they use ginsing primarily more for the HPA AIS I've seen so interesting sort of off Lael use there that's not uh typically in traditional medicine what we use those are some herbs that can really really turn the tide when it comes to stress now if you guys didn't know I work with a limited number of new patients every single month in my practice in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine if you guys want to reach out just go to Dr Alex hind.com Clinic the link for the email my phone number the clinic information is right below this video as well and then don't forget I've also put together this link for that root cause quiz if you want to know exactly what pattern your symptoms are coming from so make sure you check it out and I have a final video right here on herbs that you can use for stress as well so check that out