The Stress Hormone Cortisol: In Chronic Excess, It Can Be the Root Cause of Several Medical Conditons

A person who is under excessive stress is often described as someone who is always working "under the gun". This expression should be a fair indicator that too much exposure to stress is a big threat to a person's health and well-being. Repeated studies expose the correlation between stress and ill-health, and why chronic stress is such an important health problem. Cortisol is a type of glucocorticoid hormone. Along with adrenaline, it is one of the main hormones responsible for stress responses. The actions of cortisol in the human body are quite complex. As a primary stress hormone it not only acts directly on the body, but also acts indirectly by activating other hormones, each with a critical role to perform. In a healthy person with a healthy cycle consisting of a stress incident followed by an adequate rest and recovery phase, cortisol has a major function of instigating homeostasis, or returning the body to normal after being exposed to stress. This is enacted largely through the triggering of secondary hormones. The recovery phase following an acute stress incident is critical for the prevention of developing chronic stress. Chronic stress develops when persistent stress causes stress hormones, including cortisol, to remain constantly elevated in the body. In this all too common situation, cortisol remains awash in the body at high levels for long periods of time. Unfortunately in today's world, this is happening a lot. In my book, I look not only look at ways to reduce stress, but also some things you can do to better cope with stress.

I grew up in Central Minnesota, where my parents owned and operated a fishing resort. Once out of high school I tried a couple of semesters of college, only to quit halfway through the Spring term; I decided at that time that college wasn’t for me. Then I decided to follow my father’s previous occupation as an auto mechanic. I graduated from a two-year of vocational training course and worked as a mechanic for five years. While in vocational training, I decided to join the National Guard where I eventually ended up working full-time for 32 years. So how does all of this relate to writing? In one of my leadership schools, the instructor, who was an English teacher at a juvenile detention center, presented writing to me in a whole new way - a way that started to develop my interest in working with words. I eventually went back to college on the GI Bill while I was working and earned my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Taking a class or two per semester at night and on weekends took me seven years to complete my degree. Fast forward about 40 years and I now have published over 100 books on Amazon for Kindle, CreateSpace and other publishing platforms. Besides my own writing, I also ghostwrite ebooks, books, reports, articles, blogs and do Kindle conversions for clients on a variety of topics. Today my wife and I are retired from our careers and live in Gold Canyon, AZ. I now write as a retirement business where you’ll find me happily sitting in my office typing away on my laptop as I work on my next book or ghostwriting project . . . that is if we are not traveling on a cruise ship - our new-found mode of travel.