Blog — neurotransmitters

By Dr. Zane Hauck, ZRT Laboratory Growing up, I never thought of myself as a runner, or really a good athlete in general. I played every sport possible as a kid, but I was never great and didn’t play high school sports. As an adult, I started playing team sports again and eventually was convinced to run a 5k. I ended up running the Warrior Dash and enjoyed it, so I continued doing 3.2-mile training runs. For the rest of my 20s I continued running 5k races with friends and played volleyball, softball, and some casual intramural sports, but was...

By Theodore Zava, ZRT Laboratory  While growing your own fruits and vegetables is both challenging and rewarding. Many people plant gardens with the expectation that they can control what goes into their food. Gardening, especially in urban areas, has grown in popularity, but unfortunately, it comes with some risks. Contamination with elements present in the air, soil, or groundwater is a concern in both urban and rural gardens, and fruits and vegetables are good accumulators of heavy metals. This blog post details sources of heavy metal contamination and what you can do to help prevent soil contamination and heavy metal...

By Dr. Kate Placzek ZRT Laboratory Urine is rapidly becoming the preferred medium for neurotransmitter testing to ensure objective neurobiological assessment. This is because a) urine is the primary route of peripherally-produced neurotransmitter elimination; and b) it is non-invasive and cost-effective. This blog takes a look at how dried urine testing provides a superior advantage over standard liquid urine collection methods. Is a 24-hour collection necessary – or even desirable? The gold standard of neurotransmitter testing in urine involves an inconvenient and mildly embarrassing collection of liquid urine over a period of 24 hours into a jug. The awkwardness of...

By Dr. Kate Placzek ZRT Laboratory As with any functional test that measures physiological function, the challenge lies in the interpretation of subclinical levels of measured parameters. However, it is within those subclinical levels that the neurotransmitter test becomes a powerful tool to identify what is contributing to a specific patient's health issues and how to map toward a successful outcome based on an individual treatment plan. Learning how to use a new test can be overwhelming, especially when it goes back to neurology which you might not have thought of since medical school. To assist health care providers in approaching neurotransmitter testing...

By Dr. Kate Placzek, ZRT Laboratory Estrogen.  We've heard Dr. Zava call it the "angel of life, and the angel of death." Too much can be hazardous. Too little can be problematic also.  Not many people realize this, but estrogen plays a role in more bodily functions than just reproduction. In fact, estrogen has many important functions in the brain.  Studies show that decreasing levels of estrogen can cause two of the most common perimenopause symptoms – hot flashes and mood fluctuations. Curious how this happens? Read on to learn the details of this biochemistry.  SUMMARY The main focus of this blog is the time in a woman’s life...