Cortisol could be a reason behind disrupted sleep experienced by some, say experts

Recently, several videos on social media have been doing rounds claiming that the reason why some people experience disrupted sleep is because of cortisol.

Cortisol, which is also known as the stress hormone, is the one produced by two adrenal glands. When a person is stressed, increased cortisol is released in one's body.

It is extremely important to maintain the right balance of this hormone as it helps control metabolism, maintain blood pressure, lower inflammation, and regulate blood sugar levels.

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As per scientists, the impact that this hormone has on waking people up in the middle of their sleep is yet to be ascertained.

“Unfortunately, it’s not that clear-cut,” Bustle quoted Dr. Jocelyn Cheng, a neurologist in epilepsy and sleep medicine and vice chair of the public safety committee at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as saying. “Sleep health is multifactorial, and attributing one specific cause for either a problem or a benefit oversimplifies it.”

A more appropriate name for cortisol would be "the energising hormone,” Bustle quoted Mark Wetherell, a professor of health psychobiology at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom who studies how stress impacts health, as saying.

Cortisol functions by diverting resources from specific parts of the body, such as the immune, digestive, and reproductive systems, in order to help a person respond to stimuli, said Wetherell.

As per WebMD, the increase in levels of cortisol can cause rapid weight gain, diabetes, muscle weakness, and skin that bruises easily.

“This is all fine in the short term and precisely what the system is designed to do, but if we get stressed too often or for too long, these systems become faulty and this can lead to the long-term problems we associate with stress,” said Wetherell.

Cortisol and sleep cycle

Just like a person's sleep cycle, cortisol follows a similar 24-hour cycle.

Usually, the cortisol levels plummet to their lowest during midnight, increase two to three hours after falling asleep and then continue to rise until they peak around the time a person wakes up.

Apart from its usual biological clock, cortisol innately plummets throughout the day and frequently fluctuates in response to anything that stimulates a person.

However, stress can mess up the circadian rhythm of this hormone resulting in an increase in this hormone's levels, making it a little too difficult for a person to fall asleep.

“In those lower levels of wakefulness when we’re not fully awake, one person who’s a good sleeper might be able to fall right back to sleep,” says Ivan Vargas, a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychological science at the University of Arkansas who studies the role cortisol plays in keeping us up at night.

“But someone with insomnia may be primed to respond to even those low levels of wakefulness where their body is like, ‘Oh, we are waking up — a burst of cortisol.’”

“Sleep is just a much more complicated process than whether or not you're awake or asleep,” Bustle quoted him as saying. “This is incredibly understudied, so we still have more questions than we do answers.”

Balance is the key

Elevated cortisol definitely affects the quality of your sleep, which is why keeping our behavioural patterns, which are the actual reason behind the fluctuation of this hormone's levels, in check is extremely important.

Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist known as “The Sleep Doctor,” agrees that “elevated cortisol levels are mostly self-induced.”

“Social media kind of blows things out of proportion. Cortisol is good. If we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t wake up in the morning. But it needs to be in some level of balance, which social media really misses,” Breus says. “People need to understand that there are things they can do to help manage that.”

(With inputs from agencies)

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