In This Article
By Wibe Wagemans and Ioana Bina, MD, PhD, FACG
Say hello to cortisol—a master hormone that can be both friend and foe. Cortisol is the body’s alarm system that makes your heart pound when you parachute out of an airplane or sit down to take a college entrance exam. It tells you to act now to save your life. But it can also send you into a panic over the stresses of everyday life—from job losses and money worries, to strained relationships, social media pressures, and the 24/7 news cycle.
So, how important is cortisol? According to Netherlands-based endocrinologist Sjoerd van den Berg, cortisol is an indispensable hormone that plays many essential roles in the body. “If you take away the body’s capacity to synthesize cortisol, either by removing the adrenal gland, the hypothalamus, or the pituitary gland, you will probably die within one day, it is that important.”
Cortisol-Measuring App
Considering the role of cortisol in the body, measuring it can help you better control it, so it doesn’t control you. As such, we developed a simple way to read cortisol rhythms on smartphones. Knowing when cortisol is too high or too low can make the difference between feeling great or flubbing your performance at a board meeting, experiencing infertility issues, or having trouble losing weight. Simply by measuring cortisol with your phone—without any other device or lab—you can take charge of your health.
Until now, checking cortisol in real time was practically impossible. You saw a doctor to get blood, saliva, or a 24-hour urine test. The sample was sent to a lab and underwent analysis. Days or weeks later, you received a result that typically gave you a single data point.
Getting only one measurement is like measuring your heartbeat for one second. Cortisol levels vary widely throughout the day and have a circadian—or waking/sleeping—pattern with broad health implications. To appreciate the powerful role cortisol plays, we need a more nuanced, more comprehensive picture of its behavior in the body throughout the day.
The cortisol-measuring app, Pardigm, will use your phone’s camera, which has a higher quality sensor than the average lab scanner. You’ll soon be able to get results as precise as those from an overnight lab, plus, the results will be available in real time.
You have likely used a phone app to hail a taxi, take a photo, check the weather, text your kids or friends, learn a language, set an alarm, listen to a podcast, buy groceries, or pay for coffee. Gauging the status of your cortisol levels—and other biomarkers—should be just as easy as tapping an app for other day-to-day necessities in life.
Pardigm App: How it Works
When you wake up, collect your saliva by using a rapid test salivary strip. Next, take a picture of the strip with your phone camera. Wait a few seconds for the app’s proprietary algorithms to analyze the strip and give you your exact cortisol level between 0-30 ng/ml.
Because cortisol levels vary throughout the day in a specific pattern, you’ll do this procedure five times on day one to establish your baseline curve. Now you have a story, as it were, about your physical health, mental stress, athletic overtraining, capacity for recovery, depression, infertility, menopausal symptoms, and many other issues.
Knowing the basics about the science of cortisol—and understanding its connection to your overall health—will give you the data you need to function more optimally.
Cortisol Research
Whenever our body secretes cortisol, the two counter-regulatory hormones—DHEA and pregnenolone—are secreted too. As stress becomes chronic, the counterregulatory hormones begin to fail. What happens next is not pretty: cortisol starts to break down bone and muscle. To add insult to injury, it increases your body’s visceral fat deposits and shrinks the hippocampus—a part of the limbic system in the brain involved in learning, spatial processing, and memory. Keep in mind, a healthy hippocampus is needed for dampening the stress response.1
What can you do to ensure your cortisol levels are balanced? Here are a few simple strategies to get started:
Intermittent fasting. Cycling between fasting and eating will bring down your insulin levels, reduce your body weight, and improve your body composition, which, in turn, will lower your cortisol.
Whole foods. A New York University study found a link between low-quality foods and an impaired hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. It turns out, high cortisol levels were associated with the consumption of processed food, soda, fried foods, fast food, and simple carbohydrates.
HPA Axis
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) refers to the functional interaction between the nervous and endocrine (hormonal) systems to ensure a well-adapted stress response. The HPA axis is involved in many bodily processes, including digestion, the inflammatory response, immune system, and mood.
Healthy fats. A number of whole foods can help “relax” your cortisol levels. Many of them are part of the Mediterranean diet: fish, poultry, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats. Indeed, healthy fats—specifically food with omega-3 fatty acids—help reduce inflammation, and therefore, cortisol.2
Vitamins and minerals. You can’t “supplement” your way out of high cortisol levels. Even the healthiest diet won’t balance your cortisol levels without your commitment to sleep, exercise, and a healthy mindset. That said, supplements can be an important component of a healthy regimen:
Vitamin C. Researchers at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, found that high-dose vitamin C can prevent illness by alleviating the body’s normal response to stress.3 The adrenal gland is among the organs with the highest concentration of vitamin C in the body. Eskimos—the indigenous peoples of eastern Siberia and Alaska—don’t get scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency, because they eat the adrenal glands of their fish and seal catch.
Vitamin B. B vitamins help regulate production of cortisol and they are in greater demand when you’re under chronic stress. Researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia found that their treatment groups receiving complex vitamin B reported significantly lower personal strain and a reduction in confusion and depressed/dejected mood after twelve weeks.4
B vitamins are cofactors in the synthesis of hormones and neurotransmitters, and the right amount, especially of vitamin B12, is essential for the healthy functioning of adrenal hormones.5 We recommend a good B complex vitamin that includes vitamins B5 and B6. Note that bananas, rich in vitamin B6, are a great source for maintaining proper adrenal gland function.
Potassium and sodium. An appropriate amount of potassium and sodium are crucial for maintaining high-functioning adrenal glands. An imbalance leads to salt cravings—and, more seriously—low body fluid and low blood pressure. If you have a low cortisol number, you’ll want to take some sea salt in the morning. Salted vegetable juices with water are also a good option. Of note, researchers have observed an increased potassium to sodium ratio in patients with poorly functioning adrenals.
Adaptogens. Adaptogens are plants and mushrooms that help your body respond appropriately to stress, anxiety, and fatigue. They frequently come in tincture or capsule form, and are easy to add to shakes, tea, and soups. While adaptogens have not been accepted as conventional therapies in western medicine, studies show they can “reduce stress reactions in the alarm phase or retard/prevent the exhaustion phase and thus provide a certain degree of protection against long-term stress.”6
Many adaptogens have been used for thousands of years all over the globe. A few of the popular adaptogens that can help balance cortisol levels and boost HPA axis functionality include:
Ashwaganda. In a study by researchers at Asha Hospital in Hyderabad, study subjects who took ashwagandha to reduce their stress symptoms saw a 27.9 percent reduction in their cortisol levels. A placebo-control group saw only a 7.9 percent reduction. The researchers concluded that individuals who use high-concentration full-spectrum ashwagandha root extract can potentially realize improvements in their neurological, immune, energy-production, endocrine, and reproductive systems.7
Rhodiola rosea. A review study by Australian and Swedish researchers found that Rhodiola preparations taken up by various body organs, tissues, cells, and enzymes exhibited “neuroprotective, cardioprotective, antifatigue, anti-depressive, anxiolytic, nootropic, life-span increasing effects, and central nervous system stimulating activity.”8
Some clinical trials showed that Rhodiola reduced burnout in patients with “fatigue syndrome.” Several mechanisms contributing to this medicinal herb’s positive effects on mild depression and generalized anxiety include interactions with the HPA axis to reduce cortisol levels.
Ginseng. Found in central and eastern North America, Manchuria, Japan, and Korea, the ginseng herb has a long-standing reputation for combatting stress, enhancing the central and immune systems, fending off chronic disease states, and inhibiting the aging process.
Canadian researchers studying the effects of ginseng on humans, animals, and in vitro found that it brings about changes in circulating levels of adrenocorticotrophin and corticosterone concentrations. They noted too, that ginseng’s tendency to produce ergogenic, or enhanced physical performance, may be due to improved activity of the pituitary-adrenal axis.9
Phellodendron amurense. More popularly known as relora, this herb has traditionally been used to reduce stress and anxiety—particularly among competitive athletes. A study by Utah-based researchers showed that “daily supplementation with a combination of magnolia bark extract and Phellodendron bark extract (Relora®) reduces cortisol exposure and perceived daily stress, while improving a variety of mood state parameters, including lower fatigue and higher vigor.”
Over the course of a four-week Relora® supplementation period, the researchers found that “salivary cortisol exposure was significantly lower in the Relora® group.10
Fun Fact: You Can’t Escape Cortisol
One well-known study of track and field athletes participating in the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, found that athletes tend to experience increased cortisol levels when they lose to other top athletes in their field. At the same time, their stress level quantifiably increases when they defeat a fellow athlete they revere. In short, losing hurts but winning can hurt too!
Personal Note from Wibe
Our brains haven’t kept up with the algorithms—largely at the core of social media—that are managing our daily lives. Anxiety, depression, and stress are all up. Connecting person to person in real life is down. Our phones are our dinnertime companions. Paradoxically, Pardigm also uses a phone and algorithms to address a serious issue in our lives. Wasting time on your phone can create stress, but spending it wisely can help you control stress, weight, and many other physical and emotional problems.
Once we have an inexpensive, simple-to-use, readily available cortisol-measuring technology, we’re essentially building a platform that will work for measuring other hormones and biomarkers, such as estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, uric acid, progesterone, and thyroid hormones.
Think what measuring progesterone—a hormone necessary for the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus—will do for women suffering from infertility issues. They can reach for their phone and measure progesterone levels at home. Think how measuring uric acid—a marker for inflammation, metabolic health, and conditions leading to premature death—will help us make healthier dietary and lifestyle decisions.11
As I enter midlife—a time to reflect gratefully on the advantages and achievements that brought me to my present state—I turn my attention to healthcare. I’m one of those GenXers driven to leave the planet a better place than I found it.
It is my dream that measuring cortisol and other biomarkers will help make life better for everyone in every corner of our planet—simply and in real time. If you’re going to dream, dream big.
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Wibe Wagemans is a CEO, serial entrepreneur, and pioneer in mobile and AI technology.
Ioana A Bina, MD, PhD, is a Yale trained integrative gastroenterologist with a PhD in endocrinology.
Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Cortisol: The Master Hormone by Wibe Wagemans and Ioana Bina, MD, PhD. Copyright 2022 by Pardigm Inc, reprinted with permission.
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