5 Best Supplements to Reduce Cortisol

Elevated cortisol levels may be wreaking havoc on your life and stem from chronic stress. Ongoing exposure to stress hormones can worsen mental health problems, increase your risk of chronic disease, and even impact your digestive system and gut health.

Reducing cortisol levels with certain supplements can improve your feelings and overall health.

Cortisol-reducing supplements can often help with general stress reduction and healthy mental alertness and might even help reduce things like high blood pressure and brain fog.

Our picks for the five best supplements to reduce cortisol are:

• Ashwagandha
• L-theanine
• Integrative Therapeutics Cortisol Manager
• Holy Basil
• Phosphatidylserine

Below, we discuss what to know about cortisol, why your levels get high, and the effects of high cortisol on your physical and mental health.

We will also look at the supplements to reduce cortisol listed above in more detail and explore the idea of a natural cortisol blocker.

What Is Cortisol?

Cortisol is a steroid glucocorticoid hormone. Your adrenal glands produce and then release cortisol.

A hormone is a chemical coordinating functions in your body by carrying messages through your blood and to your skin, muscles, organs, and other tissues. Hormones signal to your body what to do and when to do it.

As a steroid hormone, glucocorticoids suppress tissue inflammation, control metabolism, and affect sleep-wake cycles.

Your adrenal glands, located on top of your kidneys, are part of the endocrine system. Cortisol is a hormone that plays a lot of essential roles, such as:

• Regulating your body’s response to stress
• Controlling the use of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins, as well as your metabolism
• Inflammation suppression
• Regulation of blood sugar
• Regulating blood pressure

Your body works to keep your cortisol levels balanced because it can be harmful when they’re too low or high.

We sometimes hear cortisol referred to as the stress hormone, but it also has other roles. Some of the ways cortisol affects your body include:

• Regulating your body’s response to stress. When experiencing stress, your body releases cortisol after the adrenaline and other fight-or-flight hormones. Cortisol also triggers the release of sugar from your liver, giving you a fast energy source during stress.
• Cortisol regulates your metabolism and how you use food and nutrients for energy.
• Short bursts of cortisol can limit inflammation and boost your immune function. You might experience inflammation and a suppressed immune system if you regularly have high cortisol levels.
• Cortisol regulates blood pressure, so higher hormone levels can cause high blood pressure and vice versa.
• Cortisol, under normal circumstances, counterbalances insulin effects. Insulin is a hormone the pancreas makes to regulate blood sugar. Cortisol can raise blood sugar by releasing stored glucose, and insulin lowers blood sugar. If your cortisol levels are chronically elevated, you may have persistent high blood sugar, putting you at risk for type 2 diabetes.
• Normally, we have lower cortisol levels in the evening when going to sleep, then levels peak in the morning before waking up. Cortisol plays a role in your body’s circadian rhythm and wakefulness.

High Cortisol

If you have high cortisol, it can cause symptoms including:

• Weight gain, especially around your upper back and midsection
• Weight gain on the face
• Rounding of the face
• Thin skin
• Easy bruising
• Muscle weakness
• Fatigue
• Irritability
• Acne
• Headaches
• High blood pressure
• Lack of sex drive
• Mood swings, including anxiety or depression
• Irregular periods

If someone has high cortisol, they could have Cushing syndrome. There are other factors outside of this condition that can lead to elevated cortisol levels:

• Stress: When you experience a lot of stress, there are signals from nerves and hormones. These signals lead your adrenal glands to release hormones, including cortisol. When you’re under constant stress, you stay stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Long-term exposure to stress hormones, including cortisol, can increase your risk for many health issues, including obesity, anxiety, depression, and heart disease.
• Pituitary gland issues: Your pituitary gland is a small organ at the brain’s base that controls certain hormones’ secretion. If you have issues with this gland, it may under or over-produce certain hormones. Pituitary conditions that can trigger high cortisol include hyperpituitarism, an overactive pituitary gland, benign pituitary tumors, and cancer tumors.
• Adrenal tumors: Adrenal gland tumors can be benign or cancerous, but both types can lead to high cortisol levels and other hormones.
• Medication side effects: Some medicines, such as oral contraceptives and corticosteroids, can increase cortisol levels.
• Estrogen: When you have circulating estrogen, it can increase your cortisol levels. High circulating estrogen concentrations are women’s most common cause of elevated cortisol.

Cortisol and Weight Gain: What’s the Connection?

Cortisol is typically released in relation to your circadian rhythm. Around 50 to 60% of your cortisol is released within 30 to 40 minutes of waking up. Then, as your day progresses, your cortisol levels should naturally decline.

When you’re experiencing increased stress, your adrenal glands release cortisol and adrenaline. The release of these hormones raises your energy level and your heart rate.

Regarding your body weight, hormone regulation is one of the important factors influencing your body weight. Your endocrine system typically balances your hormones, but there are situations where they can be low or high.

When you have high cortisol levels, one of the ways it can contribute to weight gain is by prompting you to overeat. A study of 59 women found an association between elevated cortisol levels and increased appetite, contributing to weight gain.

Another study found a link between higher cortisol response and more belly fat in a group of men and women. Sometimes, this is called the stress belly.

High long-term cortisol levels are highly associated with abdominal obesity.

Other reasons that high cortisol is linked to weight gain and abdominal obesity include:

• Insulin resistance and chronic inflammation: When you have belly fat, it leads to chronic inflammation. Additionally, belly fat can release compounds that signal to your brain that it should release more cortisol. This cycle leads to more and more fat buildup in the abdominal area.
• Sleep problems: Sleep is important to overall health and wellness and helps you maintain a healthy weight. When you have high cortisol, your sleep patterns are disrupted. If you can’t sleep, your body isn’t able to release growth hormones. Growth hormone helps you go into a deep sleep. Because of a lack of sleep, your body then loses insulin sensitivity. When you’re tired and stressed, your body is not functioning as it should, and you’re less likely to make good eating choices.
• Lower metabolic rate: Cortisol levels affect your thyroid hormones, estrogen, and testosterone. These hormones can reduce your metabolic rate, so your body burns fewer calories.

What Causes High Cortisol Levels?

There are a lot of factors that can contribute to high cortisol levels. Some of the things that contribute to abnormally high levels of cortisol include:

• Not getting enough sleep– especially deep sleep naturally suppresses cortisol synthesis. One of the main reasons behind the excess cortisol secretion is sleep insufficiency.
• Stress—high stress levels affect cortisol synthesis. Your stress response system gets stuck in constant fight-or-flight mode if you regularly experience high stress levels. When there’s sufficient cortisol in your body, it begins a negative feedback loop. This loop tells your HPA axis to turn off cortisol production. If you have a life with chronic stress exposure, your body is consistently flooded with high cortisol levels, damaging your negative feedback loop. Your body maintains high cortisol levels even if the stressor goes away.
• Circadian problems—any time there’s a disturbance to your internal clock, it can affect your cortisol rhythm. Shift work and jet lag are reasons your internal clock might be off concerning your cortisol.
• Medical causes—there are different reasons high cortisol levels can become consistent, which we discussed above.
• Exercise can lower cortisol, but remember that high-intensity workouts raise cortisol. You want to give yourself plenty of recovery time after workouts to avoid this.

People often wonder if there’s a natural supplement that acts as a cortisol blocker. Cortisol blocker is a bit of a misnomer because you need some of the hormones, but there are supplements to reduce cortisol and create more of a sense of balance.

Below, we highlight some of the best supplements to reduce your cortisol levels naturally and get them back to normal. Cortisol reduction can make you feel better than you ever thought.  

1. Ashwagandha

• What Is it? Ashwagandha is one of the essential herbs in traditional Ayurvedic medicine. Ashwagandha has been used for thousands of years to improve concentration, relieve stress, and raise energy levels.  
• The Benefits: Ashwagandha is a potent reducer of cortisol. It’s an adaptogen with natural substances to help your body deal with stress and maintain a sense of homeostasis.
• How much should you take? You can take daily doses of 125 mg of up to 5 grams to lower cortisol, stress, and anxiety. 500 to 600 mg daily may reduce anxiety and cortisol for most people.
• Are there side effects? For most people, ashwagandha is considered a safe herb. Most human studies don’t show side effects or adverse events, but you shouldn’t take it if you’re pregnant. If you have hormone-sensitive cancer, you might avoid taking ashwagandha. Potential side effects that have been recorded include gastrointestinal discomfort and drowsiness. Ashwagandha may affect the thyroid, so if you have a thyroid condition, speak to your healthcare provider before trying ashwagandha.   

Ashwagandha is one of those amazingly beneficial supplements that consistently ranks high on any list of the best herbal remedies. Ashwagandha has a long history in traditional medicine, especially Ayurveda. For thousands of years, ashwagandha has been used, and it’s also known as Withania somnifera, Indian ginseng, and winter cherry.

As far as being one of the best supplements to reduce cortisol, it works in multiple ways.

First, ashwagandha helps reduce anxiety and stress. It’s an adaptogen, so it helps the body deal with the effects of stress in a healthy way. Ashwagandha controls stress mediators, including cortisol, reducing the HPA axis’s activity. The HPA axis is a bodily system that regulates the stress response.

In one study using cortisol to measure the results of taking ashwagandha versus a placebo, the ashwagandha group significantly reduced cortisol levels compared to the placebo group. Participants took 250 or 600 mg of ashwagandha for eight weeks in this study.

The ability to reduce cortisol is just one of ashwagandha’s many benefits.

Other benefits of ashwagandha include improving athletic performance, reducing mental conditions like depression symptoms, and boosting testosterone and fertility in males.

Ashwagandha may reduce blood sugar levels, and it can also combat inflammation in the body.