There couldn’t possibly be a fire, according to the people obsessed with cortisol and other hormones.
Twenty plus years after I began criticizing cortisol fetishists for making a big deal about nothing, and even long after Stu Phillips up at McMaster University did real research confirming my brilliant hunches, fitpro influencer experts, to include no less than podcast darling Andrew Huberman, still hustle that myth that natural rhythms of cortisol make a difference to your results.
Cortisol is a bogeyman to many people that don’t know much about the human body because it is associated with catabolism, or the breakdown of tissues.
Because many people are very stupid and think about the world in terms little removed from voodoo, they assume that breakdown of tissues means losing muscle and wasting away.
Voodoo-like thinking, by the way, is the real meaning of “bro-science” that we meant when we cooked up the term circa 2006.
Anyhow, breaking-down and building-up happen all the time in every cell of your body. Cortisol is a healthy and necessary part of being alive.
It happens that the natural peaks and valleys in your cortisol throughout the day don’t affect much of anything as far as fat loss, muscle gain, or most anything else.
The problem is that most people, and I’m including a whole lot of scientists, do not understand a fundamental difference between symptoms and causes.
Say you come home from the store and find your kitchen full of rolling black smoke.
Is your first thought, “I need to switch on the big fan and clear all this smoke out of here”?
Not if you have an IQ in three digits.
There’s a dang fire in there.
The smoke is a symptom that hides the true cause.
You can’t see the fire. The smoke is visible, noxious, and irritating.
Exercise and nutrition are not the only offenders. Health and medical advice in the broadest scope tend to operate in the realm of symptoms, which are visible, obvious, and easily manipulated with chemicals, while ignoring causes.
In a living creature every behavior you can observe, measure, and manage is the result of hidden causes.
When the fitbros focus your attention on the cortisol spikes and valleys, what aren’t you seeing?
Cortisol is but one chemical messenger among thousands.
All of those signals dance together in multiple interacting feedback loops across your entire body that, scientific arrogance notwithstanding, science has barely begun to understand.
We aren’t even in a position to talk about causes and effects. Yet every 22 year old with a gym membership and a social media account is telling you how to hAcK yOuR cOrTiSoL by avoiding coffee and blue light.
These may not be bad things to do, but the reason for doing them is bogus voodoo-science.
You may as well blow all the smoke out of the kitchen and ignore the raging grease-fire on the stove.
Looking beyond the obvious symptoms to the true causes and structures that make your body go wacky is one of the “trade secrets” that I know and use, which precious few others involved in health and fitness even begin to understand.
If you get sick of voodoo-science and the checklists of 50 things to optimize for your Most Productive Day Ever, and you want to get real results instead of following fake influencer advice, send me a message.
Matt Perryman