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Sort out your stress levels with Matt Roberts
Understanding how cortisol, the stress hormone, affects our bodies is key to avoiding burnout, personal trainer Matt Roberts tells Jessica Salter
It’s cold, it’s dark, Christmas has been and gone, and all we’ve got left are unwanted presents, creditcard bills, and a backlog of work emails. January brings with it stress – and if we’re not careful, it can lead to burnout. But Matt Roberts, the personal trainer who has worked with Tom Ford, Naomi Campbell and David Cameron, is on a oneman crusade to change that. He is fascinated by cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone” that is made in the cortex of our adrenal glands and may just hold the key to thriving in 2020.
“Cortisol is hugely important; it affects nearly every cell in the body,” Roberts explains. When our cortisol levels are raised, it stimulates our “fight or flight” response, which is why too much of the hormone leads to health problems. We start seeing sabretoothed tigers around every corner. “The body thinks that it needs glycogen in case it has to act fast – run or fight – and so it uses up blood sugars, instead of burning up fat stores,” Roberts says. “The result is that you crave more sugar, which can create pre-diabetic stress.” Not only that, but as the body’s fat stores aren’t being burnt up, “the visceral fat around the organs and in the gut builds up.” That’s middleaged spread, to you and me.
If those words have you wanting to purge all cortisol from your body, then hold on, because too little cortisol is equally dangerous. Cortisol helps to put us into gear every morning, and focuses our thoughts on difficult work projects. “A lack of cortisol is mentally very harmful because you feel very down and despondent,” says Roberts. “It can be really hard to get yourself going again without reaching for stimulants – coffee, sugar or worse.” For Roberts, who prides himself on having the exact same body composition at the age of 46 as he did as a 20-year-old athlete, cortisol is also key because it affects how your body reacts to exercise. “If your cortisol is too high or too low, then you’re not going to get the results you want – no matter how hard you train,” he says.
He, like all of us, suffers from periodic moments of high stress: like many midlifers, he’s had to deal with the death of a parent, a divorce, and the sale of a company – not to mention the day-to-day pressures of being a business owner and father to two teenagers. But he says he has developed strategies to ensure he can manage the effects of stress on the body – and they’re techniques we can learn from.
When I meet him at his luxe gym in Mayfair to ascertain my own stress levels, he asks me the same questions that he puts to all his clients: How did you sleep? How rested do you feel? Do you feel thirsty, or crave sugar? It’s not just small talk: he’s assessing whether my cortisol might be out of whack, and if it needs testing, which his on-site doctor can do via blood or saliva samples. Ideal levels of the hormone peak from when you get up for a couple of hours, then gradually drift down throughout the rest of the day. But Roberts sees clients who either have very low levels at the start of the day, and then have no energy, or who have multiple spikes all day from mini stresses (the commute, a late-night workout). It’s a very simple test, as I find out: blood is taken at 8am and 4pm in the same day. Despite a bad night’s sleep caused by my restless three-year-old daughter, my results are close to textbook: 425 nanomoles per litre (nmol) at 8am, dropping to 197nmol at 4pm (ideally, says Roberts, it would be closer to 160nmol in the afternoon). The reason? I work from home, I don’t commute, I’m happy with my work, I exercise regularly but not too intensely, and as Roberts says, “life seems pretty good for you.” Sickening, I know.
My Telegraph colleagues Maddie and Nick are more in line with what Roberts normally sees. People who are “OK, getting through their days and lives, but there are underlying concerns with their stress levels and if they keep doing what they are doing, they could face problems.”
You’re not stuck with your lot: Roberts says that within a few weeks you can change your cortisol levels. If you’re someone who has high cortisol, it’s about reducing the impact of your daily stresses. That includes what you eat
(Roberts follows a 90pc vegan diet to reduce the inflammation in his gut), how much coffee you drink (caffeine spikes your cortisol and should be avoided after 12pm), when and how you exercise (don’t go hard in the gym if your cortisol is already high), and how you wind down (says Roberts: “we suggest anti-blue light glasses to clients who work late, to reduce the impact on their sleep, as that’s when cortisol regenerates”).
For those who suffer from low cortisol, there’s a different strategy. “We want to try to force little cortisol spikes, so we would suggest short, intense exercise in the morning and the afternoon, ideally, to increase the cortisol.”
For everyone, but especially midlifers, rest and recovery are essential. “I used to be a sprinter and I would smash it on the track in training, which was fine; I was young,” Roberts says. “But now, if I were to do that, it would be counterproductive. These days, if I wake up one morning and feel that I’m not recovered enough, I don’t train. I can’t act as if I’m still in my 20s; it’s all much more measured.” A calming thought to start the year with.
‘If your cortisol is too high or too low, then you’re not going to get the results you want’