What's the deal with cortisol-reducing diets and supplements?

by Martha Edwards (Subscribe to Martha Edwards's posts)
Dec 30th 2006 9:13AM

Categories: Diet & Weight Loss, Reviews & Products, Nutrition & Supplements

Laid up with a bout of flu, I spent a couple of days channel surfing recently, something I rarely ever do. I can across a bright, flashy ad for a Cortisol-reducing supplement, which explained to me in an energetic TV voice that by reducing cortisol, it would reduce my belly fat. So I decided to figure out just what this cortisol stuff is anyway?

Turn out, Cortisol is a hormone that, in response to stress, increases appetite and in turn, belly fat. So weight-loss companies have drawn the conclusion that by reducing cortisol, appetite and therefore belly fat can also be reduced. It seems like an obvious conclusion but there doesn't seem to be any conclusive evidence that Cortisol-reducing products help with weight loss. A better way to reduce cortisol would be to reduce your stress.

Have you seen any results from using Cortisol-reducing products?

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Comments (2)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Frangible 12-30-2006 @ 9:57PM

Coritsol isn't evil... in a natural diurnal cycle it is released during the day and helps with energy, motviation, and the encoding of memories. Levels will naturally fall at night usually as cortisol disrupts sleep. Without cortisol during the day you will feel lethargic, tired, unmotivated, and have poor memory. With too much cortisol at night you will have disrupted sleep. To my knowledge there are no studies showing the effect of direct cortisol reducing drugs on weight loss. Disturbed cortisol secretion (usually high) has been implicated as a causal factor in obesity, but I would suspect the mechanism behind this is due to sleep disruption, which decreases plasma leptin, increases plasma ghrelin (making you hungrier) and inhibits the secretion of HGH during the night.

Higher cortisol levels are indeed associated with stress, but if the DHEA-metabolite drugs like 7-OXO, 7-OH have a) a significant effect in supplement form (as I know a lot of the 7-OH has been shown to be the wrong isomer, not bioactive, etc), b) reduce stress/cortisol long term, I don't know.

Lifestyle alterations would make the most sense to me; very few people budget time for a period of relaxation before sleeping, and instead engage in focused-attention tasks that raise cortisol, like TV, video games, etc, and are usually accompanied by bright lighting, disrupting melatonin secretion and sleep, raising appetite and hurting body composition.

High cortisol 24/7 isn't good, nor is suppressed cortisol 24/7. Like most other things, the best is balance. And balance, as you point out, is stress reduction here.

B L Hendrix 12-30-2006 @ 9:19PM

A couple of months ago I bought an over the counter Cortisol reducing supplement that also has high levels of Vitamin B-6. The melatonin supplement, that I occasionally take, also has about 500% on daily recommended B-6. It is published that B-6 may have some calming effect. Anyway, I try not to take the two supplements together at night as the combination makes me tired, so tired in fact to don't have the energy to get up and raid the refrigerator at night. I've only lost just a few pounds ~ 4 or 5 in 2 months. I don't know if the Coritisol supplement works for me as I seldom have any great amount of stresss and things don't bother me much. I have only foundf one way to lose weight and to kjeep it off - eating a balanced diet and discipline towards portion control. That works for me.