Hair Cortisol Signals Mental Health Risk in Children with Chronic Illness

Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health

Briana Mercola

Health & Fitness, Health, Alternative Health

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One in four children lives with a chronic physical illness, creating hidden stress that can be measured through hair cortisol concentration
In one study about cortisol in children, three distinct patterns emerged — Consistently high (most problematic), consistently low (system burnout), and high-to-low (most hopeful, showing adaptation and resilience)
Children under mental health care showed significantly elevated hair cortisol levels compared to healthy peers, indicating chronic stress across various psychiatric disorders regardless of irritability
Dietary interventions focus on quality carbohydrates while avoiding ultraprocessed foods. Severely compromised digestive systems can benefit from temporary pure glucose before reintroducing fiber-rich foods
Simple lifestyle changes effectively reduce cortisol. Examples include br

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you missing the silent signs that your child's stress is building month after month,
0:04.4	even when everything looks fine on the surface?
0:07.0	Welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom.
0:10.6	Stay informed with quick, easy-to-listen summaries of our latest articles,
0:14.6	perfect for when you're on the go.
0:16.1	No reading required.
0:17.3	Subscribe for free at Mercola.com for the latest health insights. Hello, and welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. I'm Ethan Foster, and today we're
0:26.9	looking at hair cortisol as a window into long-term stress in children with chronic illness
0:32.1	and what those patterns mean for mental health. I'm Alara Sky. You'll hear how a simple 3-centimeter hair sample can reflect roughly 3 months of cortisol
0:41.4	history, why repeated sampling matters more than one-off tests, and how you can act early
0:47.5	with targeted diet and lifestyle steps that were outlined in the research we're discussing.
0:53.0	Let's start with prevalence. One in four children lives with a chronic physical illness,
0:58.0	conditions like asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, and juvenile arthritis.
1:04.0	So, stress is not an edge case.
1:06.0	The difficulty is that many kids mask it well.
1:09.0	Hair cortisol provides a non-invasive biomarker to detect that hidden load
1:13.4	and to track change over time.
1:15.6	The long view is crucial.
1:17.9	Blood or saliva only capture a moment.
1:20.7	Hair preserves a timeline.
1:23.1	In a four-year study, researchers paired periodic hair samples with caregiver reports.
1:29.1	Nearly a third of participants showed unusual cortisol trajectories that aligned with later anxiety, withdrawal,
	...

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