09/24/2026
Dear Instagram, Cortisol is not the Voldemort of Hormones
Belly fat? Waking up at 3 a.m.? Puffy face? Tired in the afternoon? Anxious? Craving sugar?
You have HIGH CORTISOL!
And you shouldn’t do these 85 things because they will SPIKE YOUR CORTISOL!
And here’s how you can “HACK YOUR CORTISOL” in just 60 seconds!
But cortisol is not a dangerous, toxic substance your body accidentally squirts out when you’re stressed, it serves many purposes.
And your fatigue, belly fat, anxiety, sugar cravings, poor sleep, and afternoon slumps are not signs of “high cortisol.” They radically lack specificity, may involve multiple systems and have diverse etiologies.
It’s difficult to tell (and/or to test) if your cortisol is too high because cortisol is meant to change throughout the day. It follows a daily cycle, called the diurnal cortisol rhythm (sometimes called slope, pattern, or curve) that starts rising before you wake up and helps get you moving and ready for your day. And then, it typically slopes down across the rest of the day and is much lower at night as you get ready to sleep.
Cortisol can increase with intense exercise — which is not necessarily a bad thing. Higher cortisol helps meet the demand that is being placed on your system when you’re huffing and puffing. It may also increase when you’re sick, in pain, having a low blood sugar incident, sleep deprived, and, of course, psychologically stressed. But being under a lot of stress doesn’t always mean your cortisol is through the roof — not even if it’s chronic stress.
Researchers have found that different people under a lot of stress actually show different cortisol patterns, including altered morning cortisol, flatter daily rhythms, or even blunted responses.
So, annoyingly, science is once again not cooperating with Instagram.
There are real medical conditions related to excessive cortisol like Cushing’s syndrome — but it’s rare, and a puffy face or a little extra belly fat isn’t enough to diagnose it. And stress of course is very real (especially in these times) and shows up in many different ways for different people — high cortisol is not the singular culprit.
Also, that 3 a.m. wake-up thing is not necessarily from cortisol — it might be related to how much w**e you drank at dinner, what’s going on with your blood sugar or bladder, menopause, the temperature of the room, or your cat rustling around.
So, we can’t blame everything on high cortisol — the bigger question is how well is your system adapting to and recovering from your daily stressors? Yoga is helpful for self-regulation and balance, in many different ways via many different system, not just as a cortisol reducer. Yoga can improve how quickly and easily your system is able to return to a homeodynamic balance (across multiple systems) after a stressor. And that’s good. And over time, it may also help to regulate your diurnal cortisol rhythm — but that’s just one of many ways that it helps.
In the same way that believing that the goal is to stay in “parasympathetic mode” all day is reductive and inaccurate, trying to hack, reduce, or recover from cortisol spikes is also simplistic and inaccurate. Yes, Instagram, show us how to feel more relaxed, happier, and at peace, but stop blaming all my problems on high cortisol.
Reference: Miller GE, Chen E, Zhou ES. (2007). “If it goes up, must it come down? Chronic stress and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis in humans.” Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 25–45.
