6 Ways to Decrease Cortisol
Stubbornly high cortisol doesn't have to be permanent. There are several proven, easy ways to bring your cortisol back under control.
- Regular exercise lowers cortisol, despite spiking it acutely. Overtraining and poor recovery do the opposite and keep cortisol levels high.
- Mindfulness techniques need as little as 8–10 minutes a day to begin reducing cortisol.
- Laughing reduced cortisol. "Forest bathing" also produces measurable reductions in as little as 15 minutes.
Cortisol isn't your enemy. It wakes you up in the morning, fuels your workouts, and helps your body respond to threats. The problem isn't cortisol itself — it's when your cortisol system never switches off.
When your levels stay stubbornly high, that's when the problems happen: weight gain around your midsection, disrupted sleep, anxiety, illness, low libido, and fatigue. Here are some things that you can do to fix it.
#1. Exercise
Exercise is one of the best things you can do to help control your cortisol, but the relationship isn’t straightforward. In the short-term, exercise increases cortisol. Whether it's a run, a weights session or a spin class, it will spike your cortisol. That’s bad, right? Well no!
It’s a normal, expected, perfectly natural response. What cortisol is doing is helping your body release energy from its stores to fuel the exercise you're doing. This is exactly what you want to happen. Regular exercise lowers cortisol. So your cortisol response while you're exercising is completely different to what happens to your cortisol levels after you finish (and recover) from exercise.
Remember, even if you follow exercise guidelines, you’ll only ever spend 1-2% of your waking hours exercising. The remaining 98% of your time, when you’re not exercising, is really more important. People who regularly exercise tend to have lower cortisol levels and healthier, better-functioning cortisol systems.[1]
Both running and walking lower cortisol levels
The type of exercise seems to matter less than consistency. Walking in nature seems particularly effective, as the environment you are in also affects your cortisol and stress levels.[2]
A slow, leisurely walk will also not spike your cortisol whatsoever, whereas running will. So if you want to exercise without increasing your cortisol, walking beats running.[3]
Aim for moderate-intensity aerobic exercise like running, brisk walking, cycling and swimming, 2-4 times a week to start with. Avoid the trap of training more and more as you get fitter. Too much high-volume, high-intensity exercise, without adequate rest and recovery, can increase your cortisol levels and keep them high. This is referred to as “overtraining”. More exercise isn’t always better.
#2. Mindfulness and Meditation
“Mindfulness” interventions work for lowering cortisol. It seems to lower cortisol for people who are stressed (with high cortisol) and have normal cortisol levels (keeping them low). Although both are effective, mindfulness and meditation were more effective than “mind-body therapies” and “talking therapies”.[4]
Researchers suggest that it’s not all about how much mindfulness you do. Like exercise, more isn’t always better. So 8–10 minutes of daily mindfulness is enough to start lowering your cortisol.
The specific “type” of mindfulness appears to matter less than doing it consistently — app-based programmes, breathwork, formal “MBSR” programmes, and different meditation programmes have all been shown to work. So does just relaxing as well!
#3. Laughter
Laughter is one of the most underrated tools for decreasing your cortisol. The more you laugh, the lower your cortisol seems to go. Researchers showed that those who went out of their way to make sure they laughed more reduced their cortisol levels by a third. It seems to work by taking your mind out of its “fight-or-flight” threat-response mode.[5]
Being in a positive emotional state keeps your cortisol low; laughing just seems to help you on your way there. It may sound almost too simple, but the evidence is there.
Genuine laughter, from friends and family, comedy, or anything that makes you genuinely happy and amused, will lower your cortisol. It is also pretty much free, has no side effects, and is arguably underused. It turns out laughter is (one of) the best medicines.
#4. Mind-Body Practices
Yoga and other similar “mind-body” practices like Tai-chi, Pilates, or Qigong use exercise, breathing and mindfulness together. All of these independently lower cortisol, so it's no surprise that combining the three of them reliably lowers your cortisol as well.
In addition to the physical health benefits of exercise, yoga has been shown to reduce cortisol levels throughout the day. It also reduces your cortisol response to stress, meaning it brings down cortisol more quickly after it has spiked. One of the hallmarks of high stress is not only high cortisol levels, but also the inability to bring them down quickly once they’ve spiked.[6]
For lowering cortisol, gentle or restorative yoga appears to be as effective as more intense styles — and potentially more so, since high-intensity exercise can spike cortisol in the short term. Even a brief yoga session (20–30 mins) may meaningfully speed up cortisol recovery if you’re feeling stressed. Regular practice can help lower your baseline cortisol levels over time.
#5. “Bathing”
“Bathing” doesn’t always mean water; it includes special therapeutic variations, such as forest bathing, hot spring bathing, foot bathing, spa bathing, mud baths, steam baths, sauna baths and hydrotherapy pools. They've all been shown to lower stress and cortisol levels.
The Japanese practice of “shinrin-yoku”, meaning 'forest bathing', seems particularly effective. Exposure to the fresh air and cool temperatures, forest scents from the plants and animals, the repeating visuals from the trees, and the quiet, echoing, low-frequency sounds are thought to work together to lower your cortisol.[7]
These therapies are “immersive” and “multisensory”, meaning they occupy your senses. This allows your mind to drift and relax, lowering your fight-or-flight threat-response and thus your cortisol. So what can you do at home? A warm bath or shower before bed has been shown to improve sleep, which in turn may help lower cortisol and stress.
Researchers have suggested you can recreate a forest environment in your bathroom: use forest sounds and scents, natural light, bathroom plants, then just lie back and visualise a forest in your mind. Easier yet, just get out in nature, into a forest. Combine it with light physical activity, such as walking or yoga; as little as 15 minutes of forest bathing is shown to reduce cortisol levels.
