A: GABA and l-theanine could be such a big game changer for anxiety. I have not used
Zen sublingual, but I do use a chewable by Source Naturals that I like as
well. For whatever reason, I feel like the chewables or sublinguals for GABA just tend to work better than swallowing a pill. I haven't studied the pharmacokinetics or pharmacology of that particular supplement, but that's been my experience. I'm not sure if most of you have found that as well.
As far as your cortisol levels rising really early in the morning and then up and down all day, this is often related to blood sugar swings. The program really focuses on blood sugar balance. So, the diet will be very helpful for you.
You can also consider getting a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, to observe your blood sugar levels throughout the day. It can also tell you if and when you get hypoglycemic. A lot of times people get that low blood sugar in the middle of the night, which causes them to wake up really early in the morning, which then in turn causes them to have a cortisol surge. Then when our blood sugar swings we can get anxiety with those racy thoughts that happen when we wake up in the middle of the night, and we think, oh my gosh! I've done everything wrong in my life. This is often due to that hypoglycemia and that cortisol shooting up because whenever we have low blood sugar our cortisol basically helps us make new glucose, which can cause that spike.
So, the first thing I would look at would be what's going on with your blood sugar because that can send your cortisol all over the place like that is. In functional medicine
training, that's the classical blood sugar swing impact resulting in the cortisol roller coaster. We also have a handout in the portal called Troubleshooting Cortisol/Blood
Pressure issues, so I would take a look at that.