The ZRT Laboratory Blog
The ZRT Blog is an extensive resource for patients and health care providers searching for health and hormone testing information. Here, you can read about ZRT’s cutting edge research, advances in testing, wellness advice, and health industry highlights.
The Italian magazine Evolutamente recently published a well-researched article exploring the link between melatonin and COVID-19, pneumonia and inflammation. It’s a compelling article so let’s take a look at the key argument and see why melatonin could be so important.Melatonin and HealthMelatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland during the hours of darkness to usher the initiation of…
Tags: Immune System, Melatonin, Covid19
Here in the Pacific Northwest we love talking about the sun! We grumble about it being hidden away behind heavy rain clouds for months at a time in the winter; we delight in the first breakthrough rays in the spring, realizing our pagan longing for it, watching, as if for the first time, as everything around us wakes up from a deep slumber; we marvel at its delightful, almost intoxicating warmth…
Tags: Vitamin D, Sleep, Depression, PMS and PMDD, Metabolic Health, Melatonin, Blood Spot Testing
Quick Takeaway: Studies suggest high blood levels of 25-OH vitamin D may prevent melanoma and appropriate D levels may affect the prognosis in both primary and metastatic melanomas. Keep your levels in blood between 50-80 ng/dL. Additionally, melatonin and its metabolites protect the skin from sun and help guard the DNA there when faced with the mixture of cancer-inducing ultraviolet…
Tags: Skin Vitality, Vitamin D, Melatonin, Cancer
On Nov. 24, the sun set in the tiny Greenlandic town of Ittoqqortoormiit. For the next three months, the Inuit inhabitants of this isolated, icebound landscape will take their children to school in the dark, work in the dark, and pick them up in the dark. And though townspeople admit that, "it can get depressing for people who weren't born here, especially in December," the local mindset is that…
Tags: Hormone Balance, Vitamin D, Melatonin
Last week, I discussed Melatonin's Role in Sleep. By focusing on MT6s, we may be focusing on the tip of the melatonin iceberg. We see very high levels of MT6s in the urine as a result of pineal synthesis and release of melatonin in response to dark stimulation. Melatonin is released, fulfills its role as central nervous system sedative, resets our cellular clocks and is then sulfated and to a much…
Tags: Hormone Balance, Melatonin, Sleep
Melatonin is a ubiquitous little hormone that comes in an indolamine package similar to serotonin, its precursor. Thanks to its unique structure, it can travel easily through the blood stream and readily crosses the blood-brain and placental barriers. It is synthesized and used all over the body to perform a number of indispensable roles. It’s the main reason our bodies know what time it is and…
Tags: Hormone Balance, Sleep, Melatonin
The “Uncovering the Truth About Sleepless Nights,” webinar covered the key symptoms of sleep hormone imbalance, long term consequences of sleep deprivation and how 4-point measurement of sleep-wake cycle hormones provide a true 24 hour sleep-wake pattern. In case you missed it, click here to view the recording. Many great questions came in during the webinar. So many, in fact, that I wasn't able to…
Tags: Hormone Balance, Sleep, Patient Education, Melatonin
Many people assume that thyroid hormone deficiency or thyroid imbalance are to blame for weight loss failure, but there are some key factors to consider that might be affecting thyroid hormone function rather than focusing entirely on thyroid hormone levels: For a woman who has recently gone on the Birth Control Pill or HRT (or had her dose increased) it may be interfering with thyroid hormone…
Tags: Weight Management, Menopause, BHRT, Thyroid Health, Melatonin
I've been up to my elbows in melatonin research for a week now.I always felt like I had a pretty good working knowledge of where melatonin came from in the body, roughly how it was synthesized, the signals that propagate its production, and where it acts. Like most clinicians, I tended to think of it for sleep problems in general and as an adjunct treatment for some of the comorbidities associated…
Tags: Melatonin, Hormone Balance, Sleep
