Posted by bleauberry on August 21, 2009, at 14:56:11
In reply to Took an online health test, posted by Dima on August 20, 2009, at 1:44:43
> Sorry if it looks like I'm advertising. Let me know if I can't have the link in this.
>
> I found a twenty dollar online test at http://www.ehealthassessment.com/ that looked pretty legit, so I paid up and took the test, which consists of 600 medical questions I believe. It gives you results in a list which shows how high of a chance there is that you have any of a number of conditions. I received a high rating for depression, hypoglycemia, and adrenal axis stress. I've been looking into adrenal fatigue already, so this slightly reassures me on that front.
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> Does anyone have any thoughts on this test? I'm going to bring up hypoglycemia and adrenal fatigue to my doctor and see what she wants to do.Adrenal fatigue, or hypoadrenalism as it is properly called, did not used to be a bonifide syndrome but today it is. My doctor showed me the pages of his medical textbook that addressed it. That is when he followed the medical textbook in prescribing low dose hydrocortisone, after failing herbs and adrenal cortex extracts. Most doctors are lagging behind the curve on this.
The problem with any of these diagnostic tests is that they will tell you what is wrong, but not why. It doesn't matter if we know the washing machine is broken, we need to know what is wrong with it. Is it fixable? Yes? No? Can we figure it out? Ya know?
If serotonin is low, it is low for a reason. It probably is not the brain's fault. Something else in the body is awry, impacting the brain negatively. To address the brain does not fix the problem, but can serve to at least put a bandaid on it that may endure and may not depending if the disease progresses or not.
Something is impacting the brain. If the adrenals are weak, there is a reason for that. We can take steps to assist the adrenals, but we really need to fix what is impacting them. That is usually inappropriate food choices, inappropriate dealing with stress, extended pressure from illnesses, doing too much too fast for too long, heavy metals, candida, lyme, lyme-like, and other co-infections.
Whatever the test, it is helpful to know where the problems are. But the tricky part is figuring out why that problem exists. It's taken me 3 years and some good clinicians to finally see the whole picture with me...what went wrong, why, when, and how to best attempt to repair it.
If you do the cortisol test, please know that a one-time morning test is absolutely worthless. It tells you nothing. What you need is the 24 hour cortisol test that measures saliva cortisol at 4 different times throughout a normal day. It is called the Adrenal Stress Index test. It also includes your DHEA, some immune markers, and gluten sensitivity, as extra bonuses.
Let me know if you need to know more about this stuff along your journey.
poster:bleauberry
thread:913082
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090818/msgs/913354.html