Haha - I get how it could start to sound that way, but no thats certainly not how I would describe them myself. Cortisol, adrenaline, and the other adaptive hormones all play extremely necessary and important roles in our biology, and without them we would all die extremely quickly - they are there, after all, to help us survive.

The difficulties with these hormones comes entirely from the ways in which our current diets, food and exercise beliefs/dogmas, and environments keep those hormones chronically activated and high.

We need cortisol to kick in when we run out of sugar, we need adrenaline to activate during stressful moments, and we need estrogen to support fast growth during ovulation for instance, but keeping these hormones elevated chronically through low calories diets, polyunsaturated fat consumption, and stressful exercise ultimately leads to pathology.

I think this question goes to statement that some people might have heard at some point that sounds a bit like, "You can't get well in the same environment that made you sick", and I would have to disagree.

Whatever your job is,, and whatever your current circumstance are, changing the fuel you put into yourself and your ability to use that fuel can certainly make an impact to your health, even if the environment you are still living in is not "perfect". I would actually argue the opposite, that if you are living in a stressful environment you probably need MORE high quality and usable fuel than someone living in a pristine one.

Yes I did - though I see this as being very different from using steroids in the way that bodybuilders do for instance.

Substances such as thyroid, progesterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA...and even testosterone, would have simply been a normal part of our daily diets, as all traditional peoples are known for eating animals nose to tail, and as such I do not see the intake of these substances as "steroid use", but rather as a simple and natural way of supplementing otherwise deficient diets, just as we do with vitamins, minerals, and herbs.

The major difference is that substances like thyroid, progesterone, and pregnenolone have astounding capacities for regeneration, restoration, and protection, especially in large doses - can you imagine that a woman during a healthy pregnancy can be producing as much as 500mg+ of progesterone every day!

What i would say however is that, if you're interested in using these substances to support your own health, make sure you first do plenty of reading and research, or spend some time with someone who really knows how these things work in the body and how to use them in the most supportive ways possible.