24 hour cortisol test for night owls

[Merrick]

How does this test work if you're a night owl? I took one years ago and the reference range where you're supposed to be the highest is 5-9 am (3.0-6.0 ng/ml). Then from 10 am-2 pm the range is supposed to be 0.5-2.5 ng/ml. But what if you wake up at noon? I assume it's still supposed to be between 3.0-6.0 ng/ml at that time, yes?

 

[Judee]

I don't know if this will be any help to you but this was the results from my cortisol x5 saliva test [it actually included DHEA (hence the x5 wording) but I didn't include that result because you asked about cortisol.]

You can see that my "night owl" schedule doesn't exactly correspond with their morning, noon, evening, and night designations but that is how the testing company advised me to do it when I called.

She said take the first sample when I got up at MY normal time and then each one after that approximately 5 hours after the previous one until all vials were filled. (Hope my wordings not too confusing.)

Cortisol Results at 11:23am 5.4 Range 3.7-9.5 ng/ml (morning)
Cortisol Results at 3:52pm 1.9 Range 1.2 - 3.0 (noon)
Cortisol Results at 8:19pm 1.2 Range .06-1.9 (evening)
Cortisol Results at 1:06am 0.6 Range 0.4-1.0 ng/ml (night)

Does that answer your question? Let me know.

Edit: Sorry the lines run together. My typed in version has a lot of spacing between the times, results and ranges but when I save it the spacing disappears even after I go back and add more spacing.

 

[pamojja]

Edit: Sorry the lines run together. My typed in version has a lot of spacing between the times, results and ranges but when I save it the spacing disappears even after I go back and add more spacing.

While posting you see 3 dots in the formating bar above the editing textbox. If you click on it, you can select 'Code' and type your text into a appearing additional textbox, which allows additional spacing:

Cortisol Results at 11:23am    5.4     Range 3.7-9.5 ng/ml (morning)
Cortisol Results at  3:52pm    1.9     Range 1.2 - 3.0 (noon)
Cortisol Results at  8:19pm    1.2     Range 0.6-1.9 (evening)
Cortisol Results at  1:06am    0.6     Range 0.4-1.0 ng/ml (night)

 

[Merrick]

Wow, that's interesting, ok. My reading at 12 noon (my first reading of the day) was very low, 0.61 ng/ml and the rest of my readings were in the normal range. What do you make of that (or what does anyone make of that who's reading this thread)?