Neurotransmitter testing at home: When is it worth adding cortisol?

If you’re looking into testing because of brain fog, low motivation or poor sleep, it’s easy to assume the 30-marker kit gives you a more detailed neurotransmitter test. Both kits give you the same 26-marker urinary profile. What the combined kit adds is a picture of how your cortisol changes from morning to bedtime.

Think about what you’d like to learn. Perhaps your practitioner has suggested looking at serotonin and dopamine alongside your concerns about mood or concentration. The Advanced Neurotransmitter Test Kit covers those markers. Perhaps you also struggle to get going in the morning, only to feel wide awake when you want to sleep. If you’d like to see how your cortisol levels compare at those two times, the Advanced Neurotransmitter & All Day Cortisol Test answers that extra question.

The two kits at a glance

One kit is enough for either choice. If you want both sets of results, the combined kit includes the entire urinary panel.

What can the neurotransmitter results tell you?

Take serotonin as an example. Both kits measure tryptophan, an amino acid your body uses to make serotonin, serotonin itself, and 5-HIAA, a substance produced when serotonin is broken down. Likewise, you’ll see dopamine alongside two of its breakdown products, DOPAC and HVA. The panel also includes GABA and glutamate. Creatinine helps the laboratory account for how concentrated your urine was.

The benefit is that you can review several related measurements together. If poor concentration prompted you to test, for example, your practitioner can look at your urinary dopamine result alongside DOPAC and HVA and explain how each compares with the laboratory’s reference range. These are measurements of what your body excretes in urine. They can inform a discussion about your symptoms, but they can’t tell you how much dopamine is in your brain or establish why you’re finding it hard to focus. Specialist laboratory interpretation is included with both kits.

What do four cortisol readings add?

Cortisol normally rises around waking and falls towards bedtime. That makes the time of the sample important. A morning result can tell you where you fall within the expected morning range, but it leaves an evening question unanswered. With the combined kit, ZRT plots your four saliva results against the expected range for the times you actually collected them.

Say you feel exhausted after work, then get a second wind at 10 pm. The bedtime sample lets you see whether your cortisol was still relatively high when you felt alert or had already fallen within the expected bedtime range. Either result gives you something specific to discuss. You can bring your practitioner the graph and say, “This is when I felt wide awake, and this was my reading.” The graph shows what happened on your collection day.

How to get more from your collection day

1. Plan around the collection times. Read the kit instructions before you begin and set reminders. For the urine test, you collect four small samples using the supplied collection materials. There’s no need to save every urine sample in a large container for 24 hours.

2. Make a short note when you collect. Record the actual time and a few words about how you feel. “Woke at 7 am feeling refreshed” or “10 pm, tired but struggling to switch off” will be easier to compare with your report than trying to remember the day afterwards.

3. Read the results alongside those notes. Start with the laboratory’s interpretation. If you chose the combined panel, find your morning and bedtime points on the cortisol graph, then look at the two readings in between. Results are usually available 3–5 working days after ZRT Laboratory receives your samples.

Ready to choose? For the full urinary profile, choose the Advanced Neurotransmitter Test Kit. To see your morning-to-bedtime cortisol pattern as well, choose the Advanced Neurotransmitter & All Day Cortisol Test.

Not sure which test fits your symptoms? Email info@hormonelab.co.uk with your age, the symptoms you’d most like help with, when you notice them, and any medicines or treatments you’re using. Our team will pass your enquiry to our doctors and get back to you within 24 hours with a test suggestion.