The thing is, your body is programmed to thrive when things are balanced. When one hormone is off, then many others get thrown off. And cortisol is no exception. When it remains elevated, it can unbalance many of your other hormones, including your sex hormones, which will tank your sex drive. 

Seriously, especially for women in menopause, you cannot produce cortisol at the same time as you produce your sex hormones. As women enter menopause, the ovaries hand over the responsibility of making sex hormones (estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone) to the adrenals. When your adrenals are in fight-flight-or-freeze mode, they don’t have capacity to make cortisol and fuel your sex drive. That’s why when you’re a stress ball, the last thing you want is for the hubs to wink at you over the dinner table. 

The imbalance of those sex hormones coming from your adrenals also fuels your hot flashes and night sweats—everybody says “my hormones are off,” and they think it’s normal menopause. It’s not. It’s stress! 

The same can be said about cortisol for men (granted, not the menopause part). For men, the big worry is cortisol “steal.” See, cortisol uses the same pathways in your body as testosterone, and there’s only room for one hormone in that pathway! So if men are making too much cortisol, they are decreasing their testosterone production. In other words, either you’re stressing out and pushing cortisol through your body or you’re chilling and letting the testosterone come out to play. 

Sex or stress? It’s your choice!

“On average, women tend to perform best when the temperature is warmer,” Ricker declares. “Say, around 75 to 77 degrees.” Men, on the other hand, are more productive when the thermostat is set lower—closer to 72 degrees, she says. This is a sweeping generalization, of course, as not all women and men may have these preferences (and research doesn’t take other genders into account, either)—but for now, that’s where the science stands.

Specifically, one 2019 study of 543 participants found that women performed better on math and verbal tasks at higher temperatures (while the opposite was true for men). Interestingly, though, the increase in productivity for women at warmer temperatures had a very significant effect, while the decrease in performance in men was there, but less pronounced. Meaning: Women’s productivity can really benefit at warmer temperatures; men do their best work at cooler temperatures, but their productivity doesn’t actually suffer too greatly when it’s warmer. Another study found that when men and women were exposed to the same temperature, women still reported feeling colder and more uncomfortable than men. 

“A lot of people don’t realize that they are systematically putting themselves in environments where they cannot function at their best,” says Ricker. In the case of chilly workspaces, “there [may be] a group of people who is not necessarily doing it on purpose, but they’re optimizing for their own functioning.” 

For years we’ve been peeling bananas and composting the peels (after using them in a quick natural fertilizer first, of course). But they’re actually edible, and offer many of the same nutrients as the banana itself.

Many cultures have been eating banana peels for years. You can find recipes for banana peel curries or banana peel chutneys online and in cookbooks. So yes, add them to the list of fruits that have surprisingly edible peels (looking at you, kiwi).

According to research, banana peel flour (which is derived, of course, from banana peels) showed that the peels themselves are rich in nutrients like essential amino acids and fiber. Another study, conducted in test tubes, found that less ripe peels were also rich in antioxidants. If you are going to eat the peels, it’s worth picking up organic bananas to minimize any pesticides on the peel—though you’ll still want to scrub it.

When it comes to mindfulness meditation, Leaf shares that our ability to remain in a state of presence has its limits: “The deliberate exercise, trying to stay in the now for a few moments, is a very good practice to develop the mind, but it’s not the solution to managing chaos.”

Rather, she suggests embracing the entire context of your past, present, and future—not avoiding it. She notes, “You have a narrative, you have a story, you are responding in this moment because of everything else about you.” Essentially, your current reality is rooted in the stories of your life—so don’t ignore them; make sense of them!

In terms of the how, she touts a five-step brain-building process (which includes gathering, reflecting, writing, reconceptualizing, and active reach—find a full tutorial here). “It takes time to get to the point where you train yourself to access that,” she notes, “but these five steps train you how to get to that ‘wisdom mind’ so you can put the present, past, and future in context.”