Is Stress Affecting Your Overall Health? Find Out!

How Does Stress Change Hormone Levels?

Occasional unplanned events can cause sudden spikes in our stress levels, while ongoing chronic stress can wreak havoc on our hormonal system.

Adverse health conditions can target all areas of the body, yet often get written off as something else. For this reason, we offer comprehensive as well as simple "touchless, at-home"  tests to help you on the path to getting your hormones back into balance.

Stress may be the underlying cause if you have any of these symptoms:  depression, high blood pressure, insomnia, disrupted sleep, anxiety, libido loss, weight control issues, muscle, and joint pain, or hair loss.

ZRT Canary Club Sleep Balance Profile

Selecting the ZRT Sleep Balance test is for individuals with one or more of these symptoms:

• "unable to fall asleep quickly" while also "unable to wake up in the morning"
• daytime sleepiness so severe it interferes with work, decision-making, and social functioning,  
• recurring sleep issues during all phases of menopause, (compounding the severity of menopause).

ZRT Sleep Balance assesses the balance of your sleep hormones, cortisol, and melatonin. 

Cortisol helps you awake in the morning and helps you not "feel sleepy" in the first few hours after waking. 

Melatonin helps you to fall asleep at night, and to remain asleep until you need to wake up in the morning.  

Imbalances between cortisol and melatonin can create sleeping problems.  

ZRT Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR)

Selecting the ZRT Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR) test is for individuals who have had a full night's sleep but lack the expected "suddenly awake" response first thing in the morning.

Most people (approximately 75%) have a normal CAR and the remaining 25% do not.

You may have had the "wake-up" response when you were in your twenties but notice it missing now.  Maybe you are just wondering why you are having frequent difficulty waking up in the morning although you have had a restful full night's sleep.

Collecting 6 samples of saliva in precise time intervals in 24 hours is often useful for:

• PTSD, major depression,
• chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, systemic hypertension
• upper respiratory illnesses, atopic and allergic conditions,
• insomnia (excluding isolated night waking),
• and other severe stress conditions.

ZRT Women's Sex & Stress Hormone Panel (Canary Club formulation)

Selecting the ZRT Women's Sex & Stress Hormone Panel is for women struggling with the effects of chronic stress on their sex hormones. 

Canary Club asked ZRT to formulate this hormone panel to respond to the growing number of women reporting the compounding effect stress was having either on their sex drive, menstrual cycle, or worsening their menopause transition. 

The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that women are more likely than men to report increased stress levels — and to feel the physical and emotional symptoms of stress.(1)

From worrying about money, deadlines at work, caring for family members, and balancing their own personal needs, everyday stress can lead to sex hormone imbalance with these characteristic symptoms:

• Low Libido.  Dealing with too much ongoing stress can impact your sex life, potentially causing relationship issues.(2) 
• Painful Joints During Menopause.  During menopause, many women experience joint and muscle pain.  Ongoing stress may make this condition worse. 
• Menstrual Complications.  Ongoing stress may be a contributing cause of various symptoms during the menstrual cycle, including sleep issues, breast tenderness, low sex drive, mood swings, and irregular menstruation.

This test panel samples the stress hormone cortisol 4 times in a 24-hour period, and measures levels of four key steroid (sex) hormones: estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and progesterone (Pg).

As an advocate for your own health and well-being, you will gain insight into the hormones that are directly linked to sex drive or to stress-related health conditions.  This information can help your healthcare provider recommend behavioral changes and nutritional and supplement protocols.

Your Hormone Management Testing Plan

When you know you have done your best to manage your stress—yet you continue to have adverse health conditions due to the impact stress is having on your hormones—it is time to consider hormone testing. 

• Step 1:  Start by choosing the appropriate hormone stress panel as described above.
• Step 2:  Take the test panel to establish the starting hormone baseline at the onset of your plan.  Consider developing your plan alongside:
  • a licensed health care provider for medical conditions, especially for severe "out of normal range" results
  • or a health care consultant for nutrition and supplements that will support your results
• Step 3:  Develop a plan based on your lab test results, establishing a one-year or more outlook.
  • Be diligent to address the factors you can, such as work or home stress, poor diet, and lack of exercise.
  • Keep logs of your intakes, and daily routines related to your hormone test results.
• Step 4:  After 6-12 months of actively working on your plan, take the same test again, or take a smaller panel that assays specific areas of concern to determine your progress.

 References

(1)  Stress in America™ Press Room,  "Gender Stress",  https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2010/gender-stress.pdf    Published online (PDF)  2021-MAR
(2)  By Elizabeth Scott, MS, "How Stress Can Cause a Low Libido", https://www.verywellmind.com/how-stress-can-lead-to-low-libido-3145029  Published online 2020-FEB-29
Lisa Dawn Hamilton, PhD, Cindy M. Meston, PhD; "Chronic stress and sexual function in women", https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199300/ Published online 2013-JUL-10
Cleveland Clinic, "Stress Relief for Overwhelmed Women",  https://health.clevelandclinic.org/stress-relief-for-overwhelmed-women/  Published online 2021-MAY-3