08/11/2026
Stress affects your body’s daily cortisol rhythm. 📈
Cortisol, your main stress hormone, is supposed to follow a curve: highest in the morning to get you up and moving, then gently tapering to its lowest at night so you can sleep.
When that rhythm gets disrupted, you feel it:
1. Flat in the morning, wired at night? Curve is inverted
2. Exhausted no matter how much you sleep? Curve may be blunted
3. Anxious, can’t wind down, 3am wakeups? Cortisol may be spiking off-schedule
A single blood draw only shows one moment in time. When clinically appropriate, we may recommend measuring cortisol at several points throughout the day to better understand your daily pattern, mapping the actual curve, not one data point.
Once you can see the pattern, supporting it becomes much more precise: targeted nutrients, adaptogens, sleep and stress strategies matched to your rhythm.