Cortisol: How if Affects Muscle Growth

The most important part about this circadian rhythm is allowing cortisol to fall close to bedtime. However, our lives are busy and stressful, and this isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Here is a list of common things that can raise your cortisol levels:

• Stress and high stress events
• Caffeine
• Overtraining
• Undertraining
• High Sugar Diets
• Prolonged Fasting
• Dehydration
• Lack of Sleep
• Late night screen-time

As you likely already know, many of these habits are quite unhealthy for you. If left unchecked, these can contribute to long term elevated cortisol levels, increasing your chances of many unwanted health effects including:

• Chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis
• Weight Gain
• Excess Fatigue
• Sleep Difficulties
• Brain Fog and Low Mental Clarity
• Reduced Immune Function
• Muscle Atrophy/Loss

Many of these are scary but fear not! Later in this article we will talk about steps you can take to help prevent this!

Cortisol and Fitness

As this is a fitness site, it’s likely many of you are most concerned with the last item on the list – Muscle Atrophy/Loss. What we’ve covered so far in this article is how cortisol elevates your fight/flight type functions and reduces your rest/digest functions. However, cortisol has an influence on muscle breakdown during times of stress and fatigue.

One of cortisol's primary functions is to increase blood sugar levels. Raising blood glucose ensures that the brain has a consistent source of energy, vital for getting through stressful events. However, cortisol takes a sort of shotgun approach and gets energy wherever it can find it. Think of it as a worst-case scenario of energy production. Cortisol acts on these areas to create glucose and energy for the body:

• Liver
• Muscle
• Fat Cells

While the Liver and Fat Cells are energy stores purposed to hold and release energy, Cortisol can also act on the Muscle as a third option. Muscle contains its own energy storage, glycogen, which it uses to generate ATP for contraction. Muscle cells also contain amino acids, useful for energy in dire situations. Cortisol not only shuttles muscle glycogen stores, it can also break down muscle cells into amino acids for additional glucose resources. As anyone invested in fitness, the last thing we want is our body to use muscle as a source of energy.

Cortisol and Muscle Growth

In addition to breaking down muscle, cortisol also has a negative influence on muscle growth and development. Glucocorticoids (like cortisol), have a complicated signaling cascade, some involving protein degradation and synthesis. These hormones increase protein degradation via the ubiquitin-proteasome system and autophagy lysosome system. These are cellular processes involved in the breakdown and recycling of cells. In addition, protein synthesis is suppressed at the level of translational initiation via mTOR complex interaction. This protein kinase is a key coordinator of many different cellular growth mechanisms, and glucocorticoids are shown in studies to interact with mTOR in such a way that inhibits protein synthesis.

Furthermore, some studies have shown that chronically elevated cortisol may play a role in decreasing testosterone levels.

The quick summary here is: cortisol plays a factor in increasing muscular breakdown and inhibiting muscular growth. What we should be focused on is finding ways to decrease cortisol throughout the day, one of many important steps to bettering our health and maximizing our muscle growth.

Managing Cortisol Levels

My goal here with this article is to help you understand what high cortisol can do to your body, and find ways to help you reduce it throughout the day. Let’s start by revisiting our list earlier of key contributors to elevated cortisol:

• Stress and high stress events
• Caffeine
• Overtraining
• Undertraining
• High Sugar Diets
• Excessive fasting
• Dehydration
• Lack of Sleep
• Late night screen-time

Improve Sleep

As we can see, many of these factors are related to our mood and daily habits. What is important to note is that proper sleep is key to promoting a good mood and clear thinking. Good sleep hygiene includes setting a regular time for sleep, not using your phone 1 hour before bed, and establishing a regular nighttime routine. For those times where you’re having trouble sleeping, there are some great options to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. One of our most popular sleep supplements we offer is Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals Somatomax. It contains an all natural sleep aid that helps you fall asleep fast and stay asleep longer. It also comes in a wide variety of great tasting flavors.