How to Control Your Cortisol & Overcome Burnout

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're discussing cortisol, in particular, how to control your cortisol in order to avoid burnout, or should you already be feeling burnt out, how to overcome burnout. Now, it's hard for me to overemphasize just how important cortisol is. In fact, in the late stages of preparing for this episode, it dawned on me that if ever there were an episode of the Huberman Lab podcast that people could benefit from in terms of their health and wellbeing, this would be that episode. And I say that because as you'll soon learn, cortisol, the biology of it, how it impacts your mood, your sleep, your immune system, your overall feelings of wellbeing, not just in the moment, but over the long term, and your ability to control cortisol at different portions of the day and night makes it one of the most, if not the most powerful levers for your health and wellbeing. So I'm very excited to get into the material for today's discussion about cortisol, how to control it, and how to avoid and overcome burnout. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. Okay, let's discuss cortisol. Now I believe that most people have heard of cortisol and most everyone that hears the word cortisol hears it somewhere nearby the word stress. And it makes sense why you would hear about cortisol in that context because indeed cortisol is a hormone that's made and released in response to stress. Now, the problem with thinking about cortisol simply as a stress hormone is that it's doing a lot of other things unrelated to stress that are super important and positive for you. However, it all depends on how high your cortisol levels are and when. So during today's discussion, there's going to be a very prominent theme, which is your cortisol rhythm, or more particularly your 24 hour, so-called circadian rhythm in cortisol. And here's the important first thing to remember. You want your cortisol high early in the day, shortly after waking. And you want your cortisol low in the hours right before sleep and in the first hours of sleep. If you remember nothing else from this episode, please remember that, because if you get those two things correct, everything else in terms of health and wellness and performance, all of that will be reinforced by getting your cortisol rhythm correct. So today I will explain how to get your cortisol rhythm correct. I will also explain what stress does to cortisol in the short term, which turns out to be good for you. And in the long term, if you're dealing with long bouts of stress associated with what eventually becomes burnout. So it's also important for me to point out, that if you're already feeling wired and tired and burnt out, if you don't have energy in the morning, or if you somehow have low energy all day, but then at night you can't sleep, this is very typical of burnout, or if you have morning anxiety, literally all of that can be resolved, perhaps not entirely, but mostly, and in some cases entirely by fixing your cortisol rhythm. Okay, so to understand and control your cortisol, the first thing you really need to know is that cortisol, again, is not a stress hormone per se, rather cortisol is involved in deploying and directing energy to tissues that need it most. Okay, I'll say that again. Cortisol is not a stress hormone per se, cortisol should be thought of as a hormone that causes the deployment of energy into the body and helps direct that energy to particular tissues, especially your brain, in order to deal with, yes, stressors, but all sorts of other things that demand your energy. So the way to think about cortisol is that it causes the release of glucose, blood sugar, into the bloodstream. And it does that by controlling energy release from the liver and from the muscles. And it literally can cause the release of glucose from individual neurons, nerve cells in the brain. But cortisol is not made in the brain. Cortisol is made in your adrenal glands. And of course, the adrenals are associated with adrenaline, also called epinephrine, those are the same thing, by the way, epinephrine and adrenaline. And your adrenals will release epinephrine, aka adrenaline, in response to a stressor very quickly. Your adrenals can also release cortisol in response to a stressor, but it needs to make that cortisol first and then release it. So cortisol acts on a slightly slower time scale to deal with stress. And as I mentioned before, cortisol isn't just about stress. Cortisol is also about generating energy to deal with pretty much anything that requires energy.