Blog — About Hormones

  Tracy Tranchitella, ND, ZRT Laboratory If you have ever experienced a near-miss collision or other accident, you have likely felt the rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins almost instantly. In that moment, your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate increased, your pupils dilated, and your brain felt immediately more alert. These are the effects of adrenaline, otherwise known as epinephrine, which is produced in the adrenal medulla when we encounter a significant stressor.  In a “life or death” situation, the stress response can literally save our lives by readying us to act and facilitating a physiological response...

Saliva testing is used for measuring hormones like cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, DHAES and testosterone, and its non-invasive collection asks patients to spit into a plastic tube. This sampling method allows patients to collect saliva at home at specific times, which is important for accurately measuring hormone levels. Why do we test hormones in saliva? Steroid hormones in the bloodstream are 95-99% bound to carrier proteins, and in this form are unavailable to target tissues. Saliva testing measures the amount of hormone available to target tissues – the bioavailable amount. For this reason, saliva testing better relates to specific symptoms of excess...

Hormone Health Educator Candace Burch hosted an informational webinar explaining how hormones affect our weight - specifically, how they inhibit our ability to lose weight and keep the pounds off. During the webinar, we received many great questions from the audience and Candace has answered them below. I've reduced my stress and eat well, but still have high cortisol levels. What else can I do? It sounds like you are making progress in reducing your stress and eating well, but as someone once said - "it's not always what you're eating, but what's eating you that is the real problem."...