Blog

By Dr.David Zava, ZRT Laboratory COVID-19 is Making Blood Draw Clinics a Scary Place to Be In today’s scary world of rapidly spreading COVID-19 infections, most individuals are hesitant to have their health care provider, or worse, a stranger at a blood draw clinic, violate their mandated social space of 6 feet to allow them to stick a needle in their vein and draw blood for testing hormones. It is understandable why during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic both the physician and staff would rather limit physical contact as much as possible with a potentially infectious COVID-19 patient, and vice versa. Some...

By Dr. Kate Placzek, ZRT Laboratory. Many children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) struggle with fitting in and according to some experts, may receive as many as 20,000 negative messages by age 10 than their neurotypical peers. Little wonder then that many struggle with self-esteem and the belief that they are somehow broken. Being labeled as “different” – and this difference perceived as unacceptable to others – can impair an individual’s social development and actually exacerbate their struggles. One study found that children with ADHD whose families expressed high levels of criticism failed to experience the usual decline in...

By Dr. Beth Baldwin, ZRT Laboratory If one were to create a word cloud of our clinical consulting calls in 2020, the word “phosphatidylserine” would likely float to the center in a large, bold, brightly colored font. After a year spent coping with a global pandemic, record high unemployment, social distancing, and remote learning for students, accompanied by not only an extreme wildfire season but also a contentious presidential election in the U.S., people are stressed – and it shows. We are seeing plenty of patients with abnormal salivary cortisol profiles, absent, blunted or exaggerated cortisol awakening responses, and symptoms typical of both high...

Tracy Tranchitella, ND, ZRT Laboratory. Following on from part 1 of this 3-part blog series discussing 3 important nutrients that can enhance our immune function against viral infection as well as regulate the inflammatory response to COVID-19, this second part of the series discusses the essential mineral zinc. The Many Roles of Zinc The body uses zinc in countless ways. After iron, zinc is the most abundant trace mineral in the body and is present in every cell. Zinc is necessary for the activity of over 50 enzymes that aid in metabolism, digestion, nerve function and many other processes. We need zinc...

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...