Re: Urine cortisol exam, are my values low?

Hey Luis,

I'm not familiar with urine cortisol sampling and have not read much about interpreting them so cannot comment really on your levels, however the range you listed 4.5-176 is REALLy broad and i imagine that pretty much everyone would be 'in range' on such a test. Even so, with that test your way less than half in the range so it's low range, but it doesn't really tell anything about free cortisol available to use, just how much is excreted.

Although you are in Italy, it is possible for you to do 4X cortisol test with ZRT labs, they accept international clients. Studies show saliva cortisol samples are viable for up to 4 weeks at room temperature, and viable for months via refrigeration and freezing so you can use a swift postal service to send the samples back to them, it doesn't have to be overnight courier, or have to be frozen, although you can freeze samples if you wish and they will thaw by the time the lab receives them.
I mention this is you are interested in getting a clearer picture of your cortisol values and your diurnal curve.
Canaryclub.org is the cheapest place i found to get hormone saliva samples, they use ZRT labs.

From what i've gathered so far there are a portion of people who DO have normal DHEAs while having adrenal issues. At the initial stages of stress, whatever the stressor may be, cortisol levels rise and DHEA matches the rise by also rising.
Then as the stress continues, cortisol levels begin to drop, while DHEA stays elevated, then as the stress continues further, cortisol and DHEA drop to lower levels, then as the stress continues even further both levels are below the ranges of 'normal' values. This relationship between cortisol and DHEA has been observed and noted by those aware of adrenal issues, aswell as studies.
So your DHEA looks like a good level, so you may have high free cortisol levels or perhaps cortisol levels which are beginning to drop, and your DHEA will soon follow suit if your 'stressor' is not discovered and healed.

You didn't mention any other symptoms except anxiety, which is a common symptom in low estrogen and low testosterone, which your values, especially T, are low end of range and low out of range so that *could* be causing you anxiety.
Are you male or female?
It's unusual to be progesterone dominant. The balance of estrogen and progesterone is so crucial to feeling well...and when the ratio between the two becomes out of balance, symptoms are felt, psychological symptoms especially.

Doctors commonly think therapy is called for, it's an archaic system and hasn't evolved much since the lobotomy in my opinion! They just use pills instead of frontal lobe spikes!

Interesting that you have high cholesterol AND progesterone. Are you consuming a high cholesterol diet? Cholesterol is needed to synthesise hormones, so it's odd you have low values for all other hormones except Prog. That suggests that perhaps there's an hormone conversion enzyme deficiency, or perhaps your body is using most of your Pregnenolone for cortisol production, due to the stressor(s).

What are your symptoms aside from anxiety?

You thyroid results look good to me, having a high T3 (active hormone) is preferred according to 'Stop the Thyroid Madness' website and book. Have a read at the articles on that site, really informative and helpful. Your TSH is not low so having a high T3 with a good middle range TSH doesn't generally suggest HYPER or HYPOthyroidism. It looks on the face of it that at the time thyroid test was done, your thyroid was working well.

Your B6 level is high...way high. I wonder why that could be? Do you supplement B's?
Normally B6 is known for inducing dreams...do you have many, vivid dreams?

Wish i could be more helpful - if you're wanting to assess adrenal function better then symptoms and diurnal cortisol salimetrics give a clearer picture.

One thing to mention about the cortisol saliva test - if you do have it done, it's generally advised to do it on a day when you are having a 'normal' day - not too much stress, no partying the night before etc.
This helps give normal values on an average day for you.
However, to give a full picture of adrenal health it's nice to know cortisol production during stress, to be able to assess whether the adrenals produce cortisol under stress.

One way to gather this info is to do some exercise of some sort and take a saliva sample an hour later. I read many studies on the cortisol response to exercise and they found that an hour after exercise on average levels would peak.

So when i did my test, i had a relaxing, normal day morning, and lunchtime saliva reading. Then i did some step-arobics type of exercise for 1.5 hrs before taking the 4pm reading.
I then took the night-time reading at 11pm, many hours after the exercise, and when i had been relaxing for many hours to give a clear 'before bed' cortsiol reading.
When i got my results i expected the 4pm result to be high to correlate with the heavy exercise i had done - but it was low. My results for the entire day was low. So i was able to see from my results that there was no morning peak of cortisol on a 'normal' day, and that under stress of exercise there was no peak of cortisol. So it gave me a fuller picture of adrenal health than if i had just relaxed all day to do the test.
My DHEAs on that test was also low...the level of a 65yr old..i'm only 35!

It's often advised to have a relaxing normal day when taking the saliva but i wanted to know cortisol production under stress, aswell as while relaxing without stress.