Can Cortisol Actually Induce Healing?
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Summary: The author explores exercise-induced cortisol levels and their impact on T1D healing, influenced by an article from Shape. It discusses cases of spontaneous remission linked to stress-induced cortisol spikes, suggesting a potential mechanism akin to Peter Levine’s stress cycle theory. This hypothesis prompts consideration of re-enacting past traumas for healing benefits.
Since writing my post on the fight-or-flight response, I have come across an article that has further developed my understanding and thoughts around this…! It all started when I was musing about what form of exercise I wanted to select as part of my healing process. I like doing weight training but I always come away from my sessions feeling pumped up and ready to fight or punch someone. It made me think about how I might be encouraging the fight-or-flight response in my system. Therefore, I wasn’t sure that that feeling was inducive to my healing. So I started Googling to see what I could learn about this. One of the articles I came across was this article in Shape. It reassured me that the cortisol from my gym workouts were not going to be troublesome to the health of my body or to my healing.
This article, though, also mentioned the risk of high cortisol levels from ultra-marathon running (which Daniel Darkes does) and from CrossFit (which Johan Kotze does). That peaked my interest! So do elevated cortisol levels somehow help in healing T1D?
I looked to see if this idea could be seen in the other cases of spontaneous remissions I discussed in my post here. I got stuck when it came to the case of the 32-year-old female who spontaneously healed from T1D whilst detained in prison. It was only when I talked this through with a friend who also has T1D that it landed for me… My friend pointed out that this woman was likely to have been under a lot of stress in a prison environment and without the supply of insulin she needed to keep alive. So, again, elevated cortisol levels appear to heal not harm!
My friend and I then wondered why elevated cortisol might be useful in healing T1D. This idea brought me straight back to the work of Peter Levine (see my post here for more information on that). Perhaps Daniel, Johan and the unnamed 32-year-old female all healed their Type 1 diabetes by elevating their cortisol levels back to the way they were at the time of diagnosis and then this time were able to complete the stress cycle in a healthy way. This is much like Peter Levine describes. In other words, they took their bodies back to the same condition it was in when T1D arrived but this time gave a route to healing instead. It’s only a hypothesis and I suspect it may be difficult to prove but the idea seems to sit well with the case studies and my own intuitive feel. It is making me think about, from here, how I may also safely re-enact my early life traumatic experiences and lead them towards a better outcome this time.
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Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.
