Welcome to the Doctor Burg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level.

Doctor Eric Burg.

There's an interesting relationship between cortisol and vitamin D that I'm going to talk about today.

Or I could also say there's an interesting relationship between stress and vitamin D as well.

So the first question is this, is it the vitamin D that causes low cortisol?

Or is it the cortisol, either too high or too low, that causes a vitamin D deficiency?

Is it the chicken or the egg?

Well, I think it's the chicken and the egg because vitamin D is required to make adrenal hormones.

Not just the adrenal hormone cortisol, but other adrenal hormones as well.

And so if a person is deficient in vitamin D, which includes the majority of the population,

because most people have a vitamin D deficiency, then they're also going to be deficient in certain adrenal hormones.

Which can then set them up for all sorts of problems, not having enough adrenal support to counter stress and life.

I mean, the adrenal hormones are all about adapting your physiology to the environment related to stress.

And if you're not adapting to stress, you can have a lot of problems.

And this is why there are so many diseases that are caused by stress.

Alcers, diabetes, increased risk for cancer, autoimmune disease, heart conditions, infection.

There are so many people that end up with an infection, both viral and bacterial, which occurs right after a stress event.

Because the stress lowers the immune system and makes you very susceptible to getting an infection.

Then you have insomnia, sleep apnea.

It can affect your mood, put you in a state of anxiety or depression.

And it can make you gain weight because cortisol affects the blood sugars.

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