The Morning Cortisol Spike You Need (And How To Time It)
Cortisol isn't always bad. Here's why you need it.
If you’ve been treating cortisol like a problem to suppress, taking ashwagandha until it disappears and congratulating yourself for keeping it low, you may have broken something important.
Every morning, within 30-45 minutes of waking, your body executes one of its most significant hormonal events of the day. Cortisol rises 50-75% above its waking level, and the magnitude varies based on sleep timing, light exposure, how much you’re anticipating the day ahead, and your baseline stress load. Your stress system runs this on purpose, to sharpen alertness, mobilize glucose, and prime you for the cognitive demands of the day. That’s not a malfunction.
This is the cortisol awakening response (CAR), and it gives you a direct window into your HPA axis (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system that coordinates your stress response). Researchers use the CAR as one marker of HPA axis function and stress resilience. A well-functioning system shows a clear morning rise and a gradual decline through the day. Anything else tells you something is off.
A blunted CAR means cortisol barely moves when you wake up. Without that surge, you start the day already behind. You wake exhausted regardless of how long you slept, your cognition drags, and stress hits harder and takes longer to clear than it should.
An excessive CAR means cortisol spikes too high and stays there. Researchers see this pattern more frequently in anxiety disorders and certain mood disorders. When your system runs that hot chronically, you get metabolic strain, wrecked sleep quality, and eventual HPA axis collapse.
You want the spike. You just want it to land and then come down.
In the full version you’ll get:
How to test your CAR
Exact protocols for both blunted and excessive CAR
Follow-up testing strategy
When to consider additional HPA axis support
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