Welcome to the GitFit Guys' quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy, and in this episode, you're going to get five ways to lower cortisol and beat stress.

Little known ways that you may not be aware of. So I had a past article that I wrote about,

and in that article I talked about identifying stress. I'll link to that over at quick and dirty

tips.com. Just check out the show notes to this episode, episode number 275. Now, I wrote about the

adrenal glands and the four stages of adrenal exhaustion, and these stages

of adrenal exhaustion were first identified back in the 1950s when a guy named Dr. Hans Selyer conducted

experiments creating stress in rats. In those experiments, poor little rats were forced to tread

water with their legs tied together until they became exhausted and died.

Sad, I know. Dr. Selya then removed the adrenal glands from the rats at various stages of drowning

and discovered that the adrenal glands respond to stress in several distinct stages.

In the initial stage, they enlarge and the blood supply to them increases.

But as stress continues, the glands begin

to shrink. Eventually, as the stress continues, the glands reach a completely depleted state of

adrenal exhaustion. Well, this makes sense, because in a stressful situation, your adrenal glands

are responsible for causing your body to release the stress hormone cortisol,

raising your blood pressure, transferring blood from your gut to your extremities,

increasing your heart rate, suppressing your immune system, and increasing your blood clotting ability.

These glands work really hard to allow you to survive, but this response is supposed to be short-lived,

not a constant treading day after day. For example, if your ancestor was walking through the forest

and saw a wild animal, her adrenal glands might kick in, her heart rate would increase, her

pupils would dilate, the blood would go out of her digestive system into her arms and legs.

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