Best Cortisol Lowering Supplements: Our Top 5
Stress, stress and more stress, our modern lifestyles are not seemingly adapted to lowering our levels of the stress hormone cortisol so we made a list of our best cortisol lowering supplements. People seem to be more stressed than ever, especially in urban environments.
Cortisol is the hormone responsible for the stress response. Your internal and external stress levels can build up through external stressors or pressures, but also oxidative stress. The stress response builds up and manifests itself in the adrenal glands, where stress signalling in the body takes place. Your adrenals are near your close to your kidneys. Managing the health of your adrenal glands is vital to managing your long-term responses to stress.
Why Lower Cortisol Levels?
Cortisol is a hormone that is stimulate when you need to do things to survive, under normal and natural circumstances it can help you to adapt to situations. Consistently out of control, imbalanced and elevated levels of any hormone is linked to cancer, so there’s that. Managing cortisol levels might also help with weight loss in the long term.
Another effect of long-term elevated cortisol is poor healing and a lowered immune system functioning. Excess cortisol can also result in higher risks of depression and cognitive impairment. Naturally, elevated cortisol might also result in skin changes and the development of acne as hormones imbalance in the body.
Constantly elevated cortisol levels might also influence your decision-making processes. This may be detrimental to your long-term visions and goals. You might want to make more calculated and relaxed decisions. This will require you to be in the right body and mind state to do so. Lowering cortisol levels is an effective stress management system, with lowered cortisol levels have a lessening effect on the stress response. One key stress axis is that oxidation and inflammation in the body initiates cortisol release, while the condition of stress activates inflammation pathways. Inflammation has a critical role in stress and the progression of stressed caused diseases.
There are adaptogenic herbs and compounds rich in antioxidants that can help you manage your levels of internal body stress. In addition, these could possibly help you to manage your adaptability to stress too. Let’s look at the 5 best cortisol lowering supplements on the market.
5 Best Cortisol Lowering Supplements
Our 5 best cortisol lowering supplements, as listed here, are examples of what we think are among the top supplements on the market for the long-term management of cortisol levels. Products with as natural as possible components are listed.
MitoQ Adrenal + Balance
MitoQ Adrenal + Balance has been specifically designed to help support with relieving stress in the long term, providing mental clarity and to provide better sleep. This product contains Mito Q, or mitoquinol mesylate, as a main active ingredient that is thought to pass into the walls of your mitochondria. Mitochondria are where energy is produced in the body and so where a lot of redox stress occurs.
Mito Q seems to be very good at protecting the brain from oxidative stress and is targeted into mitochondria. This molecule has been included to assist with energy production and to manage levels of free radicals. As we have mentioned, oxidative stress, inflammation and cortisol are all heavily linked to one another.
In addition to their main unique active compound Mito Q at 5mg, this product has ashwagandha at 125mg, rhodiola at 72mg and pine extracts 30mg per capsule. These are researched adaptogenic herbs, that may assist with managing the stress response in humans. They contain antioxidants, such as polyphenols, or other compounds that protect your cells from oxidative stress and cell damage. These should help to support the adrenal glands and manage cortisol signalling in the long term, in a natural way.
This product is quite pricey at 85 dollars per 60 capsules. The ingredients list looks fairly standard within the industry, as compared to other supplements. However, we can see that there is maltodextrin included, a sweetener that you may not want to consume. Other than this, MitoQ Adrenal seems to offer one of the best cortisol lowering products available.
Cortisol-Stress Balance
Cortisol-Stress Balance is a product offered by Life Extension. This product contains extracts from green tea leaf, lychee, magnolia bark and phellodendron bark. There are also minimal inactive ingredients within each vegetarian capsule which is nice to see. This proprietary blend of ingredients is unique on the market and seems quite interesting to us.
Fresh lychee pulp contains a number of antioxidant phenolic compounds, in addition to other antioxidants that protect the body from oxidative stress.
Lychee also has kidney protective effects and anti-apoptosis properties that may encourage normal kidney and adrenal functions. For this reason, we rate this as quite a decent product for reducing cortisol levels. Green tea leaves are also rich in polyphenols, which have antioxidant effects throughout the body and may reduce cortisol levels naturally. Green tea leaves, rich in catechins, helped young people with a stutter to have better mental health, while reducing cortisol levels. Magnolia bark may assist with anxiety reduction, while phellodendron extract may also have anxiety and cortisol reducing effects.
Overall, we rate this as a well-researched and quality product focused on potentially reducing cortisol levels for the benefit of the consumer. It is also well priced at about 30 dollars for 30 capsules. This product is GMO free, vegetarian friendly and gluten free.
Cortisol Balance By Vital Nutrients
Cortisol Balance by Vital Nutrients is a proprietary formulation that may assist with optimal adrenal function, healthy sleep levels and stress relief. This is a really extensive formulation, providing value for money with only one inactive ingredient. This product already says to me they are consumer focused.
This product contains a couple of B vitamins, such as methylcobalamin or B12, which will assist with normal energy production. These are interesting inclusions that may also relieve the body of stress. This product contains some adaptogenic herbs, including rhodiola at 25mg and ashwagandha 300mg which may also assist the body in adapting to stressful circumstances.
Cortisol balance contains eleuthero extract at 100mg, which is an adaptogen that may support with optimal adrenal health and lower cortisol levels. Boswellia, included at 100mg, is an anti-inflammatory herb that may also support with lowering cortisol levels in the body.
Overall, this product is impressive to use and comes at a good price of 25 dollars for 30 capsules. This supplement is gluten free, non-GMO and free of sweeteners too.
Cortisol Calm By Pure Encapsulations
Cortisol Calm is a product by Pure Encapsulations. This product contains 120 vegetarian capsules, with minimal added extra ingredients. This is quite a simple product, focusing more on key adaptogens for protecting cortisol levels. Cortisol calm contains ashwagandha, rhodiola and magnolia bark.
These plant extracts will all contribute to helping to normalise cortisol levels in the body, reducing overall stress. There is 100mg of magnolia, 125mg of rhodiola and 250mg of ashwagandha. If you are looking for some adaptogenic support for managing stress and to adapt to stressful situations, this might well be your product. Cortisol calm retails at about 50 dollars, but you get 120 capsules.
Revive Cortisol Support
Revive cortisol support is a unique product containing adaptogenic herbs. There are 30 capsules in a container including ingredients such as rhodiola extract at 133mg, magnolia bark extract at 100mg and phosphatidylserine. We’ve discussed the adaptogenic herbs in other product and they may assist with helping to regulate normal cortisol levels, as well as ensuring the body adapts to stress.
The capsule also contains only one ingredient which is definitely consumer focused. Some research has found that phosphatidylserine might be able to attenuate cortisol responses. This has been suggested by various studies and this is why phosphatidylserine has been included at 600mg per 3 capsules. Altogether this looks like a good product to help support normal cortisol levels, priced at 54 dollars a bottle.
Conclusions
In our stressed filled modern environments, managing your stress levels is as important as it has ever been. Cortisol plays a massive role in managing stress and lowering cortisol levels is a way to manage stress in the body. Elevated cortisol levels for long periods of time can result in higher risks of depression, weight gain, lowered immunity and skin changes.
Here we reviewed 5 cortisol lowering supplements and how they may support your overall health. Of these we like Cortisol Calm by pure encapsulations the best. It provides a very simple product focused on adaptogens and helping to support healthy cortisol levels naturally. Cortisol Balance by Vital Nutrients we thought was another really good product with a lot of potential. This product has been really well thought out and deserves a lot of credit, so comes in second.
Cortisol-Stress Balance also provides a decent product for balancing overall cortisol levels and we really liked the inclusion of various antioxidants and innovative extracts as well. We think this one deserves a third place.
MitoQ Adrenal + Balance is our next favourite in this list of cortisol lowering supplements. The proprietary mitochondrial energy support is an interesting concept, while there are certainly many adaptogenic herbs too that could support lowered cortisol levels.
Revive cortisol support is our last one on the cortisol lowering supplements list. We like the product but the other products standout more, although the inclusion of phosphatidylserine is very innovative and not a compound often considered as a potential cortisol lowering molecule.
For more interesting articles, navigate to the main articles page below.
