Category

Stress & Cortisol

Cortisol is the primary stress hormone in your body. It triggers a fight-or-flight response, suppressing the immune and digestive systems and increasing glucose in the bloodstream. This response is very helpful from an evolutionary vantage point. When acute threats arise, it aids survival by increasing alertness and priming the body to react quickly and defensively to the threat at hand, simultaneously diverting energy away from other ‘low-priority’ processes.

However, the same stress response that evolved to keep you alive becomes maladaptive when chronically activated. Overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones disrupts your body’s natural processes and puts you at increased risk for a slew of health concerns, including obesity, chronic inflammation, disrupted glucose homeostasis, and sleep disorders, to name a few.

Check out the below content to take a deeper dive into stress and its profound impact on our bodies, as well as ways to help manage stress. 

Mental & Emotional Health

Stress, Cortisol, and Sleep Deprivation: An Awful Feedback Loop

This audio clip is from our “Ask Me Anything” with sleep expert, Matthew Walker (Part I of III), originally released…

Cold therapy: the facts, the myths, and the how-to

Forms of cold therapy have been used for generations for a number of alleged health benefits, but which are supported by evidence?

nature effects on brain

Understanding nature’s effects on stress requires more than intuition

A recent study investigated how nature walks impact brain regions involved in stress responses but trips on its own assumptions

The transformative moment that led Peter to mindfulness meditation

This audio clip is from episode #34 with Sam Harris, Ph.D., originally released on December 20, 2018.  

Alcohol, sleep, and stress: A self-fulfilling prophecy

This audio clip is from our sleep series with Matthew Walker, Ph.D., episode #126 — Matthew Walker, Ph.D.: Sleep and…

How alcohol disrupts sleep and contributes to Alzheimer’s disease

This audio clip is from our “Ask Me Anything” with sleep expert, Matthew Walker (Part I of III), originally released…

Peter on how stress can show up as physical pain

This clip is from “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) episode #16, originally released on October 12, 2020. If you’re a member, you…

Peter Attia on the connection between stress and insulin resistance

This clip is from “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) episode #17, originally released on November 9, 2020. If you’re a member, you…

#195 – Freedom, PTSD, war, and life through an evolutionary lens | Sebastian Junger

“If you experience that [equality of all people], you do not want to give it up. And that’s one of the things that soldiers experience in combat with each other in a platoon.” – Sebastian Junger

#191 – Revolutionizing our understanding of mental illness with optogenetics | Karl Deisseroth M.D., Ph.D.

“It turns out that behavioral states that mammals have, they can be cleanly broken apart into these features, and we could show that with optogenetics.” —Karl Deisseroth

#190 – Paul Conti, M.D.: How to heal from trauma and break the cycle of shame

“Trauma changes the instrument that we use to understand our trauma. It’s changing our brain.” —Paul Conti

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