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Simon Aylwin
London Endocrinology
What if cortisol levels are high, how does high cortisol affect your body?
Dr Simon Aylwin of London Endocrinology explains that excess levels of cortisol tend to a variety of symptoms, including weight gain and thinning of the limbs, often known as Cushing’s syndrome.
Transcript
If you have, or think you have too much cortisol in your body, quite a number of different things are going to happen. Excess cortisol, high levels of cortisol, will tend to cause weight gain, particularly central weight gain around the abdomen. At the same time, it causes the arms and legs to become thin, and the classical, typical presentation of what's called Cushing's syndrome, named after a man called Cushing's who first described it. But a lot of other things happen with cortisol excess as well. Skin becomes thin, friable, bruises easily, the body can't fight infections very well and so lots of infections occur, bones are affected and osteoporosis can happen, it can cause high blood pressure, it can cause diabetes, all kinds of effects on mood, difficulty sleeping, agitation, depression. It's a really nasty condition. If your weight is increased and you have other features as well, then we would want to evaluate you to make sure that you didn't have an early form of cortisol excess, or that condition, Cushing's syndrome.