At-Home Test: Complete Stress Hormone — Dried Urine Cortisol & DHEA Metabolite Test
Saliva testing is excellent for measuring free, active hormone levels at specific points in time — but it doesn’t capture total hormone production or how those hormones are metabolized over time. The Complete Stress Hormone test uses dried urine collection instead, providing a more complete picture of adrenal function: total cortisol production, cortisol metabolites, and DHEA and its metabolites, offering insights that saliva alone can’t provide.
How the Complete Stress Hormone Test Reveals Adrenal Function
All you need to do to collect a dried urine sample is saturate a filter card — once it dries, it’s ready to send, with no need for a blood draw at the lab or carrying a urine jug to work. Urine is the best way to measure adrenal hormones (like DHEA), hormone metabolism, and related markers — areas where saliva testing has known limitations.
A saliva cortisol test only captures free cortisol, which represents roughly 1% of total cortisol production, and doesn’t measure how much total cortisol the body is making or how quickly it’s being metabolized to cortisone. The dried urine method used in this test captures total cortisol production and cortisol metabolites, along with DHEA and its metabolites (etiocholanolone and androsterone) — together providing a far more complete picture of adrenal function than a saliva snapshot and making treatment recommendations more specific to your actual situation.
Ideal For
- Anyone with persistent fatigue not explained by sex hormone testing alone
- Those wanting to understand total cortisol production, not just a single free-cortisol moment
- Symptoms of high or low cortisol — fatigue, muscle weakness, sleep disruption, weight changes
- Anyone whose saliva hormone results raised questions about adrenal involvement
- Those preferring a simple filter-card collection method over saliva tubes
The Metabolite Note — Why “How It’s Broken Down” Matters
Two people can have identical total cortisol production but very different symptoms depending on how efficiently their bodies convert cortisol to its inactive form, cortisone, and clear the metabolites. The Complete Stress Hormone test’s focus on cortisol metabolites — not just cortisol itself — captures this metabolic dimension, which is part of why dried urine testing gives a fuller picture for adrenal-focused investigations than saliva testing alone.
Combined with DHEA and its metabolites (etiocholanolone and androsterone), this test gives a complete adrenal function picture — useful both as a standalone investigation for unexplained fatigue or stress symptoms, and as a complement to the Hormone Trio or 8 Key Hormones saliva panels for a fuller endocrine picture.
How to Use
Saturate the filter card with a urine sample as directed in the kit. Allow to dry completely before mailing using the provided prepaid packaging. Results include reference ranges for total cortisol, cortisol metabolites, DHEA, and DHEA metabolites.
Full Ingredients
This is a diagnostic test kit, not a topical or ingestible product. The kit includes a dried urine filter card collection device and prepaid return packaging for laboratory analysis of cortisol, cortisol metabolites, DHEA, and DHEA metabolites.
