If you’ve had chronic stress in your life (lasting six months or longer), there’s a good chance you have elevated cortisol levels.  Cortisol is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, which sit right on top of your kidneys.  When you experience rapid-onset stress, the adrenals produce adrenaline to help aid in the body’s stress response; mainly, preparing the body for “fight or flight.”  This is helpful in one-time or short-term situations, as heart rate increases and blood flow to the muscles increase for quick response.

However, the adrenals can release cortisol over long periods of time, and this  stimulates your body to hold onto fat – particularly in the midsection and lower abdominal region – for “survival energy.”  This is fat that exercise won’t eliminate.

As time goes on, and your stress continues (which is standard with PTSD), your body continues to store fat in your abdomen, and the cortisol also breaks down your muscle tissue to use for energy.  Again, exercising harder will only exacerbate the problem, because intense exercise increases strain on the adrenals, which in turn release more cortisol, which stores more fat on your belly and breaks down your muscle tissues.  It also causes more fatigue!  So you end up feeling worse, the more you exercise.

This is why, when I entered my high-impact, super-intense workout regimen, after six months, I’d actually gained fat around my belly and felt miserable.  Sad, sad for me.

So what do you do?

Get adrenal/cortisol support – Until you deal with the root cause of your stress, your adrenals will continue to produce cortisol.  If you have PTSD, this can take years (or even a lifetime).  So certain vitamins and supplements taken daily are crucial in balancing out adrenal function:

• A good multi-vitamin
• Vitamin C (3,000-10,000 mg/daily – Essential for adrenal gland function)
• B-Complex (nervous system function)
• GABA (Acts as a tranquilizer and is important for proper brain function)
• Inositol (May be present in your B-Complex supplement)
• Calcium+Magnesium (These are lost when stress is present)
• Fish oil (Omega-3′s) 2-3 grams/day
• Herbs such as ashwaganda (calming), gingko biloba (brain function), bilberry (prevents cell destruction), chamomile (calming), holy basil (balances cortisol levels), siberian ginseng (helps body cope with stress), and valerian (sleep aid)
• Adaptogens
• Cortisol Manager (A supplement you can find on Amazon.com- Works great for a lot of people)

I’m not a doctor and am not prescribing anything!  This is a mix of information I received from my naturopath (ND), as well as the book ‘Prescription for Nutritional Healing.’

Exercise - Since my cortisol gets progressively higher throughout the day, my ND recommended I do any higher impact cardio (like my kickboxing DVD) strictly in the morning (when my cortisol levels are normal).  Restrict these cardio workouts to 3 times per week, and keep to around 30 minutes in length.

When cortisol levels are highest (for me, afternoon through evening), I am to do only calming exercises, such as yoga, tai chi, easy walking… Nothing that makes me short of breath.  However, I find that by that time, I have absolutely no interest in exercise.  I’m usually in the kitchen cooking, or sitting on my butt.

Strengthening is also important, but limit to twice per week.

Finally, be patient.  It took time to get your adrenals out of whack.  They will take time to heal.  Research I’ve done says it takes two years to get your adrenals back to normal, and that’s generally if you eliminate the stress triggers.  PTSD has a mind of its own, so to speak, so I will continue to just to the best I can, take my supplements like a good girl, exercise like I’m supposed to, and pray.

Pray a LOT.