Sleep Health

Here’s How Cortisol Plays a Critical Role in Sleep Disturbances.

The higher cortisol (stress hormone), the lower melatonin adversely affects sleep quality.

Hormones are critical for our physical and mental health. I resolved several issues related to weight, stress, inflammation, and sleep by focusing on various hormones. The most critical ones were insulin, testosterone, and cortisol, which I call a monster.

In this post, I focus on cortisol related to melatonin within the sleep context. Cortisol and melatonin are meticulously linked. These two hormones play opposite roles in the sleep cycle.

More precisely, while cortisol keeps us awake, melatonin makes us sleepy. Besides, when one is higher, the other gets lower.

As a person who suffered from adverse effects of cortisol in my mid-life, I have been researching the impact of this hormone on health.

In this article, I introduced the role of cortisol related to fat gain. My key point was unless we managed cortisol effectively, it was not possible to lose abdominal fat.

I introduced the importance of biological rhythms in this article. Circadian is one of the critical rhythms. Disturbance of the circadian rhythm “has been associated with disease states, such as metabolic disorders, depression, and cancers.”

Another paper also informs that “disturbances in circadian rhythm have been linked to chronic diseases such as insomnia, hypertension, diabetes, and depression.”

Circadian rhythms are parts of the body’s internal clock in 24 hours. These rhythms manage our sleep-wake cycles.

Cortisol and melatonin are closely related. These two hormones play a critical role in sleep quality and wakefulness state. They are vital hormones to determine circadian rhythms.

As pointed out in this study, “In adults, the melatonin onset typically occurs during low cortisol secretion. With aging, the production of melatonin declines and is shifted to later hours while the production of cortisol increases, and its peak occurs earlier in the night.”

The body produces melatonin naturally when it senses darkness. However, when I was a shift worker and traveled overseas on long trips, I frequently used exogenous melatonin. It helped me to regulate my circadian rhythm and temporarily solved my jet lag issues.

The problem was, after a while, using exogenous melatonin did not work at certain times. I had difficulty sleeping.

I used to take one-milligram tablets as prescribed by my doctor. I live in Australia, so melatonin requires a prescription.

Interestingly, in several countries, I visited, melatonin was sold over the counter. And more surprisingly, the dose they recommended was five and even ten milligrams.

One day in a foreign country, I asked the pharmacist about the dose, considering people consumed five and even ten times more than what I used to take. She said melatonin was the safest supplement.

She also mentioned it would not have any side effects if I took ten milligrams. Besides, she said it was a potent antioxidant and immune booster. According to the pharmacist, melatonin was even used in much higher doses, like 20 and 50 milligrams, for chronic diseases requiring higher immunity.

I believed the pharmacist. So, I started taking ten milligrams. Unfortunately, after trying it for a week, I did not see any benefits. It even made me feel worse. My mood was extremely low in the morning, and I felt drowsier.

I thought something must be wrong with the dose. So, when I came back to Australia, I shared my experience with my family doctor. He gave me a brief education session on the side effects of exogenous melatonin, especially in higher doses. His points made sense. Thus, I stopped using the tablets I purchased from that country.

During this education session, my doctor mentioned the cortisol hormone. In those days, I did not know much about the effects of this hormone. I started researching it. When I asked my doctor about possible tests, he agreed to refer me to blood tests.

Considering my high stress, not surprisingly, my cortisol levels were very high. As the level was abnormal, the doctor requested another blood test for cortisol. The results were the same. Then, he referred me to an endocrinologist, a specialist in hormones.

In the first consultation, the endocrinologist requested a repeat of the blood test for morning cortisol and saliva and urine tests for a few days at different times of the day. In addition, she asked for tests for several other hormones. After these tests, it was confirmed that my cortisol levels were elevated, and my testosterone was relatively low.

These confirmations shed light on my sleep disturbances and several other conditions that I mentioned in this article. The endocrinologist said high cortisol in the morning was not a severe problem considering my hectic lifestyle, but high cortisol levels in afternoons, especially at night, would be an issue.

I was delighted with this confirmation adding clarity to my sleep issues. Excessive cortisol at night was preventing me from falling asleep. I learned that cortisol needs to be at the lowest level to be able to sleep properly.

Cortisol is the stress hormone. It is natural and wonderful to manage stress. However, having too much of it was showing that my body was dealing with chronic stress. This type of stress is a root cause of many ailments.

Exogenous melatonin was great for solving jet lag issues but not effective for solving chronic stress issues. Learning about the roles of these two opposing hormones empowered me to make lifestyle changes. For example, rather than using exogenous melatonin, I focused on addressing my accumulating stress.

Ironically, deprived sleep was increasing my stress and causing the secretion of more cortisol. It was a sign of a catch-22 situation.

I approached the issue using a two-pronged method. The first approach was to learn about effective stress management techniques. And the second approach was to know about increasing sleep quality from credible sources.

In addition, I obtained advice from a sleep therapist and guidance from several stress management experts in various fields. For stress management, I adjusted my diet and exercise, as discussed in several articles on Euphoria before.

As documented in this story, I used seven simple yet very effective techniques to solve sleep problems. Here is a summary of the approach.

1 — Fully darkroom during the sleep

2 — Noise cancellation using earplugs

3 — Cool room around 18 Celsius degrees

4 — Three minutes mixed and cold showers

5 — Preventing my eyes from blue lights at night

6 — Increasing magnesium intake

7 — Using an air cleaner in the bedroom

In addition to these seven points, I later found out that not eating three hours before going to bed was an excellent sleep regime to improve my condition.

I learned this technique from a centenarian friend, 105-year-old Algor, who never eats anything within six hours before bed.

Takeaways

The critical point from experience is that cortisol and melatonin are opposing hormones. They run the show for our sleep and wakefulness cycle. Cortisol is essential in earlier hours to keep us awake and get ready for the day. And melatonin is necessary for quality sleep at later hours.

However, excessive cortisol at later hours of the day causes sleep disturbances. Even though melatonin tablets were great for solving temporary jet lag issues, they were ineffective in reducing my stress. Hence cortisol remained high in stressful situations despite using melatonin.

The best solution for me was to find effective ways to address the root causes of stress and find effective ways to improve sleep quality. A customized sleep regime and stress management approach helped me solve sleep issues and normalize my cortisol without supplements or medications.

In addition to customized nutrition and workout, the best contributor to solving my stress and sleep issues was mindfulness. Through a mindful approach to my thoughts, emotions, and behavior, I addressed health issues and improved my life satisfaction.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

Sample Health Improvement Articles for New Readers

I aim to increase the hormonal intelligence of my readers and write about various hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.

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