Muscle Building and Cortisol

There are certain hormones that we must consider whether we want to build muscle mass, and between them, it is important to check the levels of cortisol to gain muscle, since although it is important a little bit of stress, too much this can be a true enemy of the hypertrophy.
Cortisol, the stress hormone
cortisol levels in the body increase next to the level of stress, therefore, an intensive training such as that we require to damage the muscle fibers and then generate hypertrophy, can raise this hormone in the body.
While this is necessary, the increased levels of cortisol in the time, they will not allow effective muscle recovery with the resulting creation of new muscle fibers. That is to say, the high levels of cortisol in the long term, preclude the hypertrophy.
For this reason, it is a hormone that, while it is necessary, it must be brought under control so as not to impede our goal of gaining muscle mass.
cortisol3

As keep cortisol levels
as we have said, we should keep the levels of cortisol, since a high presence of this hormone can undermine our attempts to gain muscle, and on the contrary, destroy it. To achieve this we recommend:
Avoid overtraining and to respect the breaks to encourage the reduction of cortisol after an intense effort and thus, enable the muscle recovery. Earlier in Vitonica we have left some data to avoid sobreentrenar.
Eat enough vitamin C daily to help reduce the levels of blood cortisol, above all, by its antioxidant effect that prevents the muscle stress in excess.
Eat omega 3 daily and not abuse of oils containing omega 6 and promote the opposite effect. You can increase your intake of fatty fish to replace meat in your diet to exaggerating and add dried fruit or seeds.
Moderate your intake of caffeine, because in large quantities and next to an important stress as you can be the intense training, significantly higher levels of cortisol.
Sufficient amount of sleep hours, since the lack of sleep sum cortisol and stress to the body, while the rest is reduced.
With a healthy diet, an intense training but care and sufficient breaks, our stress level will be moderate and we will check the levels of cortisol to finally gain muscle as we wish.