Are you stressed out? Who does not have stress? It's inevitable. You are human and you will experience this symptom. The thing is that stress is not a bad thing, what is bad is having poor coping skills and letting it affect your health in a negative way. Without stress, we cannot survive, it is […]
Who does not have stress? It's inevitable. You are human and you will experience this symptom.
The thing is that stress is not a bad thing, what is bad is having poor coping skills and letting it affect your health in a negative way.
Without stress, we cannot survive, it is essential to learn how to manage it so it can work in your favor instead of against you.
When stress becomes a chronic response, that is when it starts to affect your body in a negative way. Elevated cortisol levels are linked with a poor immune response, insomnia, anxiety, poor health, cardiovascular risk, and more.
Did you know you can get this response measured to see where you are at that is the best thing you can do to get on top of it now!
Awareness is key. Once you can identify your stress response, you can learn new actions to take to get it back on track.
At NES, we offer a 4-point salivary cortisol test to help us better understand the secretion of this hormone throughout the day and to get a deeper understanding of your circadian rhythm.
The downside of doing this in a simple blood test is that you can only get one reading and that may look normal.
A full day picture is a better analysis of how cortisol is being released in your body by the adrenal glands. There are different types of rhythms and the most optimal one is when you are thriving and “in the zone” based on the circadian slope.
You can have other conditions where your cortisol may be below in the morning and high in the evenings, or you can either run high cortisol all day or low cortisol all day.
Once this is better understood, a specific treatment plan will be recommended for you to get your adrenal health in excellent shape and back on the nice curve.
A normal and optimal cortisol curve shows a high level in the morning and a low level at night. Ask us more about cortisol testing!
At your doctor’s appointment, a take-home salivary cortisol test may be recommended for you to better understand and evaluate your adrenal health.
Your adrenal gland release cortisol and do so in a circadian pattern, high in the mornings, low at night. It mimics the light and dark cycle; it should be the highest during the hours of sunrise and lowest during the hours of sunset.
This test is a salivary cortisol test that requires you to collect 4 saliva samples at specific times during the day. The kit comes with prepaid mailing instructions and is to be completed and shipped out by the patient upon completion. The results will be sent directly to your doctor.
At your next scheduled follow-up appointment, the results will be reviewed and if a treatment should be required, it will usually be discussed at this visit.
A repeat test will typically be required so that a pre and post-analysis of your cortisol levels can be determined to see if therapy and results are improving symptoms.
