The Surprising Truth About Your Cortisol Levels | Beat Hormone Chaos

It's basically light waking you up in the morning and telling the body it's daytime, release cortisol, it should come down, continue to go down. By bedtime, all should be right. But what I typically see is a suppressed or over exaggerated cortisol awakening response. I see a curve that's wonky, elevated, flat, losing its shape or when really bad, low. And then I see DHEA all over the place. So the stress loop is something that I always get on a patient because I need that to help me guide other therapies, like their gut, like the other hormones in their cascade, whether it be thyroid or sex hormones, how that's affecting their glucose, how that's affecting their weight, how that's affecting their mood. So that is absolutely important. If the person has any thyroid condition, I'm going to assess that. If they don't have a diagnosis, but I suspect it, I'm going to assess that. So that's typically a full panel for me. That's TSH, total and free T4, total and free T3, as well as TBG, which is a binding protein, as well as reverse T3, as well as autoimmune markers.