The endocrine glands produce hormones.  For example, the pituitary gland in the brain produces several different hormones including growth hormone, and the adrenal glands located on top of the kidneys produce seven major hormones.

Borreliosis patients usually have multiple endocrine hormone deficiencies.  This is based upon results in about 800 panels of test results.  At my office we use a twenty-four hour urine collection method that tests men for nineteen different hormones and women for twenty-one different hormones.

Hormones that are bound to proteins (such as proteins in the blood) are not active, and are therefore ineffective.  It is the unbound hormones that are free to do their work in the body.  The kidneys filter and retain most proteins so that they stay in the blood.  Thus inactive hormones that are bound to proteins also tend to stay in the blood.  Hormones that are unbound pass more freely through the kidneys’ filtering system and show up in the urine.  Since hormones in the urine tend to be unbound, active and working, this may better reflect true endocrine functional status {as opposed to other types of testing}.

For example, a free testosterone level in the blood is thought to be a better test by some doctors, as opposed to a total testosterone level which measures protein-bound and unbound testosterone.  A normal total hormone level in the blood does not always indicate what is really happening, if too much of the hormone is bound to proteins and not functioning actively enough to exert its full endocrine influence on the tissues of the body.

Hormone levels in blood and saliva can fluctuate significantly during the day.  If you draw a blood or saliva specimen, it only tells you what the hormone levels are at that precise moment in time.  However, a twenty-four hour urine specimen indicates how much hormone production is actually occurring throughout the day. This broader time frame of hormone production and collection should therefore give a truer picture of endocrine hormone status.

In short, twenty-four hour urine hormone testing has, in my opinion, three distinct advantages over blood and saliva testing.  It more accurately reflects daily total hormone production, it measures free active working hormones, and it tests for 19 or 21 different hormones.  All together it gives more of a “big picture” of the endocrine system for a lot less money.

Treatment of those hormones that are found to be below the normal range is straightforward. In general, it is more ideal to have hormones in the upper half of the normal ranges, not just in the normal range.  The laboratory I use has tested normal healthy people.  Their normal ranges are matched by sex and age. Borreliosis patients that are chronically sick may respond better to the influences of hormones on their tissues if the hormone levels are in the upper half of the normal range.  Healthy people may do fine in the lower half of the normal range, but those who are sick may often need extra help with hormone supplementation.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  I have found that borreliosis patients respond dramatically to hormone supplementation.  A typical borreliosis patient needs about three to six different hormones.  Most of these hormones are prescribed and are either natural or identical (bioidentical) to hormones produced in the body, as opposed to over-the-counter or synthetic drugs.

Symptoms and diseases caused by endocrine hormone deficiencies are similar to those caused by tick-borne infections and hypercoagulation.  The three treatments with the most dramatic results in borreliosis patients are antibiotics, heparin and hormones, and patients seem to do better when all three treatments are done.  A three-stranded cord is not easily broken.

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