Adrenal stress labs assess the amount of stress your body has endured over the decades by measuring your daily fluctuations in cortisol (the stress hormone) and DHEA levels to assess the overall health of your HPA Axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenals).
If your HPA Axis is not balanced, it often throws off the rest of your endocrine system, so resetting the HPA Axis is usually one of the first things that we do. When it gets reset, you should feel more energy and the rest of your hormonal system should start to fall back into place.
An imbalanced HPA Axis often results in adrenal insufficiency, in which case you could be experiencing some of the following symptoms:
• Fatigue
• Loss of endurance
• Digestive problems
• Slow metabolism
• Weight gain
• Food cravings
• Blood sugar issues
• Brain fog
• Insomnia
• Hair loss (female)
• Loss of libido
We use three labs we for assessing the HPA Axis:
Adrenocortex Stress Profile (Genova Diagnostics – $195) is the least expensive and uses saliva collected in vials over the course of the day to measure daily fluctuations in cortisol and DHEA.
DUTCH Complete (Precision Analytics – $345) uses urine collected on filter paper over the course of a day and then air-dried. It also measures levels of progesterone, the 3 estrogens, testosterone, melatonin, and their breakdown products.
Rhythm Plus (Genova Diagnostics – $495), a saliva test that not only captures the levels of stress hormones over the course of a day, but also captures the levels and fluctuations of estrogen, and progesterone over the course of a month which is very helpful for assessing and treating various menstrual conditions. Hormonal imbalances such as unopposed estrogen, high follicular progesterone, anovulation and luteal phase defects are easily identified. This hormone test is especially useful in treatment of patients with chronic menstrual disorders.
Click here for a patient case study that utilizes an adrenal stress test.
(925) 297-4785