Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweek segment called Asking Nutritionist.

I am Brittany Vincent and registered and licensed dietitian.

On today's show brought to you by

Nutritional Weight and Wellness, I will be answering a nutrition question we have received from

one of our Dishing Up Nutrition listeners. Today's question is, what role does cortisol

play in our bodies and how does it relate to weight?

I think this is a really good question because we have been in the media hearing a lot more about

cortisol and its functions in the body, but it's a little confusing.

It takes us back to science class.

So let me first explain what cortisol is. It is a hormone

produced and released by our adrenal glands. And our adrenal glands are triangle-shaped glands that

sit atop of our kidneys. Our adrenal glands are part of our endocrine system. We produce and need to produce cortisol on a daily

basis, but we do have an optimal biarrhythm. It should be highest in the morning. It increases with

light. That's part of what gets us up and going for the day. And then it should slowly reduce and be at its lowest point at night.

It does have an inverse relationship with melatonin, which is our sleep-wake psycho-hormone.

And some roles cortisol plays.

It regulates your body's stress response.

So cortisol will increase during stress.

Cortisol helps to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure, metabolism reduces inflammation.

But when your cortisol is too high or too low, it definitely has negative impacts

systemically in your body. So moving on to the relationship

with weight, overproduction of cortisol can definitely cause weight gain, especially in the

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