For years, wellness had a favourite villain.
Toxins.
Feeling tired? Toxins.
Bloated? Toxins.
Skin playing up? Probably toxins.
Fortunately, we had detox teas, detox massages, detox foot pads and an impressive number of products apparently prepared to rescue us.
But lately, there seems to be a new troublemaker in town.
Cortisol.
Scroll through social media and you could be forgiven for thinking cortisol is responsible for almost everything.
Can’t sleep?
Cortisol.
Feeling stressed?
Cortisol.
Carrying weight around your middle?
Cortisol.
Puffy face?
Definitely cortisol.
There are even morning routines, supplements, diets and exercises promising to “balance”, “reset” or “lower” it.
So should we all be trying to get rid of cortisol?
Absolutely not.
Cortisol isn’t the enemy
Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands.
And we need it.
Among other things, cortisol helps the body respond to stress and illness and plays important roles in regulating blood pressure, blood glucose and immune function.
In fact, having too little cortisol can be medically serious.
So describing cortisol simply as a harmful “stress hormone” misses quite a lot of the story.
It’s a little like describing adrenaline as bad because we don’t particularly enjoy feeling panicked.
These systems exist for a reason.
Cortisol is supposed to change
Your cortisol level isn’t meant to remain exactly the same throughout the day.
It has a natural daily rhythm.
Levels are generally higher earlier in the day and fall towards night.
Cortisol also changes in response to what’s happening.
Illness.
Exercise.
Stress.
Sleep.
Medication.
And numerous other factors can influence it.
So the idea that everybody should be trying to achieve one permanently “low cortisol” state doesn’t really make physiological sense.
The goal isn’t no cortisol.
It’s normal hormonal function.
But can’t high cortisol cause problems?
Yes.
There are genuine medical conditions involving abnormal cortisol production.
For example, Cushing’s syndrome involves excessive cortisol activity and can cause significant health problems.
Adrenal insufficiency involves inadequate cortisol production and can also be serious.
These are endocrine disorders.
They aren’t diagnosed because somebody has watched a video listing seven signs of “high cortisol”.
Medical professionals use clinical assessment and appropriate investigations because cortisol is complex.
Even a single cortisol blood result isn’t always enough to tell the whole story.
Which makes the idea of diagnosing your cortisol levels from your face in the bathroom mirror somewhat ambitious.
What about “cortisol face”?
This has become particularly popular online.
Videos show a rounder or puffier face labelled as “cortisol face”, often followed by a transformation after someone supposedly lowered their cortisol.
The difficulty is that facial appearance can change for many reasons.
Sleep.
Fluid balance.
Weight change.
Medication.
Hormonal changes.
Alcohol.
Allergies.
Diet.
Genetics.
Medical conditions.
And sometimes simply the angle, lighting and lens used for the photograph.
A person’s face isn’t a cortisol test.
Stress is still important
None of this means stress doesn’t affect the body.
Of course it does.
When we’re under stress, hormones including adrenaline and cortisol form part of the body’s response.
Stress can also affect sleep, appetite, concentration, mood, muscular tension and behaviour.
And when stress becomes persistent or overwhelming, it can have a significant impact on wellbeing.
So helping people find ways to manage stress is entirely reasonable.
The problem begins when every consequence of modern life gets reduced to:
“Your cortisol is too high.”
Human physiology rarely gives us such a convenient villain.
Where do complementary therapies fit?
This is where our language matters.
A client might book massage, reflexology or another complementary therapy because they feel stressed.
They may value an hour away from work, family responsibilities, phones and endless notifications.
They may feel calmer afterwards.
Their muscular tension may feel reduced.
They may sleep better that evening.
That’s valuable.
We don’t need to turn that experience into:
“I’ve lowered your cortisol.”
Unless we’re actually measuring cortisol under appropriate research conditions, we don’t know what that individual’s hormone levels were before or after the treatment.
We can confidently talk about helping clients relax without pretending we’ve performed an endocrine intervention.
Be careful with “balancing hormones”
This phrase appears everywhere in wellness.
“Balances cortisol.”
“Balances female hormones.”
“Resets your hormones.”
But hormones aren’t a set of scales that complementary therapists manually bring back into alignment.
Hormonal regulation involves complex interactions between the brain, endocrine glands, organs and feedback systems.
If somebody has symptoms suggesting a genuine hormonal problem, that’s something for appropriate medical assessment.
Complementary therapy can support wellbeing alongside conventional healthcare.
It doesn’t need to claim to correct endocrine disorders to have value.
And then there’s “adrenal fatigue”
Another term you may have encountered is adrenal fatigue.
The theory suggests that prolonged stress causes the adrenal glands to become exhausted and unable to produce cortisol properly.
It sounds plausible.
But “adrenal fatigue” isn’t an established medical diagnosis, and endocrine specialists have repeatedly challenged the concept because the evidence doesn’t support the idea that ordinary chronic stress causes the adrenal glands to simply wear out in this way.
That is very different from genuine adrenal insufficiency, which is a recognised medical condition.
The terminology matters.
Why do these ideas become so popular?
Because simple explanations are appealing.
You’re exhausted.
You’re struggling to sleep.
Your weight has changed.
You’re stressed.
You don’t feel quite yourself.
Then someone says:
“It’s your cortisol.”
Suddenly all those complicated experiences have one explanation.
Better still, the person explaining the problem often has something to sell that promises to fix it.
A supplement.
A programme.
A diet.
A test.
A morning routine.
A treatment.
That doesn’t mean everyone talking about cortisol is deliberately misleading people.
Often wellness ideas spread because they sound scientifically convincing.
One person repeats another.
Eventually something becomes “common knowledge” without anybody quite remembering where the evidence came from.
We don’t need another toxin
Perhaps cortisol is becoming the new toxin because it gives us a scientific-sounding word to attach to a huge range of everyday symptoms.
But cortisol isn’t something the body needs us to flush out, detoxify or defeat.
It’s an essential hormone doing an important job.
Can chronic stress be difficult for our physical and emotional wellbeing?
Absolutely.
Can complementary therapies provide valuable opportunities for relaxation and self-care?
Absolutely.
Do we need to diagnose every tired, stressed or puffy-faced client with a cortisol problem to justify that?
No.
Sometimes someone isn’t suffering from a mysterious hormonal imbalance.
Sometimes they’re working too much, sleeping badly, juggling seventeen responsibilities and haven’t had five minutes to themselves since Tuesday.
They might still thoroughly appreciate an hour on your treatment couch.
And we can provide that without declaring war on their adrenal glands.
