Why My Muscles Don't Grow? Cortisol Stress Hormone Destroy Muscle

There are many reasons why your muscles don't grow. One main culprit is cortisol, a stress hormone produced by your body when you are under stressful situations. Yes, any type of stress, whether they are mental stress, physical stress or even emotional stress will signal to your body to increase the level of cortisol hormones.

When you exercise or especially weightlifting body building exercises, you are placing tremendous stress on your body. This in turn will cause the cortisol hormone in your body to rise to unacceptable level which may destroy your muscle tissues, bone density mass and causes weight gain especially so in abdominal fat storage.

This hormone hates your muscles and wants you to grow fat. It takes away protein from the muscles. However to be fair to this hormone, the cortisol hormone has its uses.

Cortisol is produced by the adrenal cortex and is commonly known as a stress hormone because the level of cortisol in your body rises sharply when you are under stress. This hormone plays an important role in your body's metabolic function, it facilitates cardiovascular function, carbohydrate metabolism and controls inflammation. After all, it is a steroid hormone.

As more cortisol is being produced, your muscle tissue breaks down further since the amino acids from your muscle protein is being converted into glucose for energy. This hormone also blocks new muscle tissues from growing because it interferes in protein synthesis in your muscles.

How to lower cortisol level?

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Chris Chew is a fitness personal trainer for fashion models, actors, pageant winner sand other celebrities. He is the author of Lose Fat Build Muscles Quickly! and Singapore Fitness Trainers