Aspergers Syndrome and Cortisol

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I just found this interesting webpage by reputable doctor Ray Sahelian.

http://www.raysahelian.com/aspergersyndrome.html

It says teen males with ASD lacked a cortisol surge upon awakening as is normal for NTs. It possibly explains the need for routine and lack of spontanaeity (which requires energy).

I dunno, its a possibility, a felt good yesterday when I had a coffee for the first time in ages, but for the first part of the morning was more jittery. But then felt good in the arvo. Coffee raises cortisol.

I'm stimmed out of my mind most of the day on either coffee, energy drinks, or ginseng. I'd say yes.

Isn't cortisol a chemical that is the result of stress?
Howell, I think cortisol level of people with Asperger syndrome is higher during stress moments than that of neurotypicals.

Yes and no. In a healthy person, cortisol spikes in the morning, to handle stresses throughout the day in a smooth fashion. So you'd have your baseline cortisol, which may help you through things like, I don't know, you spilling your drink or something. However, during extreme stress, let's say, your house is on fire, then it'll spike, along with epinephrine and norephrine. The problems come in when you're under prolonged periods of stress. Then you just end up getting adrenal fatigue. Your adrenals will make cortisol in much higher amounts, but eventually it won't be able to keep up, as the glands simply get overtaxed (though if you're "lucky" they'll actually enlarge, some of the Bulgarian Olympic lifters would have larger than normal sized adrenal glands) and can't adapt. Also, the stress disrupts cortisol rhythm, too. When your body gets stressed, it'll start making it at weird times to compensate, instead of just making it in the morning, thus why lots of us here are night owls.

It's a pretty complex process, but for some more reading, do lookup adrenal fatigue on google. Basically it's just another hormone our body uses to adapt to things. It's not bad or good, it's just there. It only gets bad or good at the wrong time or in wrong amounts.

As far as the theory of ASDs having wrong levels of cortisol just because of ASD, I'm not really sure. Maybe. It could account for why some ASD people look youthful when they're old, just because the cortisol didn't age them. But then again, prolonged stress could make the adrenal glands not function optimally, and thus no morning cortisol surge. Stress enough to cause adrenal fatigue would be quite easy to bring on a person with ASD. Again, causation vs correlation, who knows.

Adrenal fatigue is not a real medical condition, the adrenal gland just don't stop producing cortisol due to too much stress. The fake condition has been debunked by medical science.

Either way I'm gonna test out some cortisol raising supps like guarana see if that helps

Watch out as excessive cortisol causes weight gain, low immune response, hypertension, and diabetes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_insufficiency
And also Addisons. Usually most people never stop making cortisol. It's more just the rhythm gets messed up or inadequate/too much gets made. So I am sorry for putting it that way.

As far as raising cortisol. It's a wicked mistress. It's why people drink like a gazillion cups of coffee a day. It works. The problem is, it doesn't actually add more hormones to the body, all the substances do is make the adrenal glands pump out more hormones. So you feel awesome, can do more, at that cost. Eventually when cortisol gets too high, you get diabetes, due to how cortisol interacts with blood sugar to feed muscles and blood, that's how people can get stress induced hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia. If you're interested in actual HRT, see if you can get cortisol tests done then do a low dose of prednisone. As far as herbs go, you'd maybe wanna try licorice, as it's supposed to do something to time cortisol better. You ever try DHEA? I got a bottle my mom has, she said when she tried it, she felt like it was comparable to OTC prednisone for her, but unfortunately it caused inflammation in her legs like prednisone did, so she had to stop it. There's also pregnenelone, another precursor hormone.

Or just drink a bunch of cups of coffee everyday. No need for anything fancy.

AIS is nothing like this adrenal fatigue nonsense you said before, it has nothing to do with your adrenals getting fatigue due to over production of cortisol. Please actually read with AIS is, and see how it has nothing to do with your fake illness.

correct! I have a 3 years old girl on a spectrum.

We did cortisol blood test (I was expected to see a very hig level of cortisol, how wrong was I ! !!)

her level is:

cortisol AM 8:20am 175 nmol/L ( bordeline low cortisol <250 nml/L) reference range: AM 150 - 600, PM 100-400

We were thinking that she is stressed up all the time but now we know for sure that this is more "unflexible brain" problem.

Dr. Mark Brosnan from University of Bath is my hero now.

It's about time they bloody tested females with AS as well. I'm just heartily fed-up of reading yet more studies done on males and the exclusion of females. No wonder so many females have problems getting diagnosed (or even assessed in the first place), as all the diagnostic criteria are based on male presentation.

Yeah, among other hormones. It has hundreds (or more) effects on the body, and even turns genes on and off, but it's basically like a turbocharger or NOS injection on a motor: it's useful in short bursts but if you use it for too long at a stretch you end up with damage.

I.e. it's bad for mood (can even cause psychosis), sugar metabolism, blood pressure, immune system suppression, and other things that I can't remember.

You know how salmon swim upstream, spawn and then die? They have the strength to make the swim because of hugely elevated cortisol levels during that time, which is also is what kills them in the end -- they're fulls of infections and parasites due to the immune system suppression when they die. (Maybe that means that the immune system normally uses a lot of energy.)

As far as high/low cortisol, it can be tricky. The hormone that releases it it produced by the brain in a pulsatile way that depends on the time of day, when you've eaten, whether you're sleep deprived (or otherwise stressed), have had coffee, have an infection, and on and on. So, I would have liked to see the doctor in the article do a 24-hour cortisol metabolite collection/measurement, because you can have low cortisol in the morning but normal total daily cortisol secretion.

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My side on the subject of cortisol is I'm a female with Aspergers and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). When my hormone levels were tested my cortisol levels were extremely high, which my doctor associated with the PCOS. I only recently found out on a thread here that there also seems to be a link between cortisol and autism/Aspergers. Advice I've read on both conditions suggests to reduce cortisol. My doctor advised me to cut down on caffeine and find ways to reduce stress. After cutting back on caffeine and what stress I could identify (I don't feel like I'm very stressed) my condition has not changed. So, it seems to me that the cause for the elevation is not an external factor like he seemed to be implying. I've also tried taking high doses of Vitamin C and L-Glutamine to suppress cortisol and had no noticeable results (other than expensive urine). Diet and exercise only seem to have minimal effect. I have read that exercising too much may actually raise cortisol levels even higher so maybe that's been a contributing factor in exercise not being very effective.
Has anyone here had success in lowering cortisol?

Well said. This is how I interpreted it: Don't think you can understand the brain. It tends to do most things right, so if it ain't broken, don't fix it! Then again, I'm on two antidepressants, a stimulant, and other stuff too.

I don't know if it's coincidence or if it's a cause & effect, or otherwise, or how/if related to high functioning autism, but I have very low or absent cortisol production. In fact, I had to be prescribed a 5mcg dose daily of cortisol, and if I don't take it every morning, I get very moody and even (unprovoked) angry if I don't immediately eat a meal, and then eat meals exactly on time through the day. With the cortisol supplement once in the morning, I am OK if I have to eat off-schedule. I also have hypoaldosteronism, which is another hormone dysfunction, and that could be the cause of the cortisol issues. The hormone balance in humans is very complicated, but very important...

Charles

That is only true for your daughter, I have had multiple AM cortisol test all were above the reference range, one was even close to 800 nmol/L.