Salivary cortisol strips and 16 weeks of Shoden® — the data and what it means
Documented submission — lab results and tracking data provided by the customer. Reviewed for accuracy. Not a clinical trial. Individual results.
"Bi-weekly morning cortisol measurements before and after a consistent protocol. The variability, the trend, and an honest assessment of what changed."
Nine months, four blood panels, and a PCOS protocol I could actually track.
Sample Customer (illustrative — the journey below is fictional, structured to show how a real submission flows on this page) was diagnosed with PCOS at 28. By 33, she had cycles ranging from 24 to 62 days, persistent fatigue, and a fasting insulin number she had stopped looking at. Three gynaecologists had recommended either oral contraceptives or metformin. She wanted to try something else first.
The protocol that emerged after a consultation with an integrative endocrinologist focused on three things she could measure: fasting insulin, hs-CRP as an inflammation marker, and cycle length. The supplements were tools to move those numbers; the lifestyle work — sleep, walking after meals, resistance training twice a week — did the heavier lifting. This is the data from nine months of consistent tracking.
The protocol
The supplement layer was deliberately small. Inositol (myo + d-chiro at the 40:1 ratio the literature consistently uses) for insulin sensitivity. Omega-3 algal-DHA for inflammation. Vitamin D3 + K2 (the baseline panel showed serum 25(OH)D at 14 ng/mL, severely deficient). Magnesium glycinate at 400 mg for sleep, which had been broken for years.
"I had been told 'PCOS is just managed' so often that I had stopped expecting numbers to move. Watching fasting insulin drop from 22 to 9 over six months changed how I think about my own body."
Cycle tracking happened on a paper diary at first, then on a wearable from week 12 onward. Bloodwork was every twelve weeks at the same lab, fasted, before the morning dose of anything.
Inflammation markers moved next. hs-CRP dropped from 3.4 mg/L at baseline to 0.8 by week 24. Vitamin D status was the slowest to recover — D3+K2 at 4,000 IU daily for six months brought serum 25(OH)D from 14 to 38 ng/mL. The cycle change came last. Cycles became regular at week 28.
The numbers that moved
| Marker | Baseline | Week 12 | Week 24 | Week 36 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fasting insulin (µIU/mL) | 22 | 16 | 12 | 9 |
| hs-CRP (mg/L) | 3.4 | 1.8 | 0.8 | 0.7 |
| 25(OH)D (ng/mL) | 14 | 26 | 32 | 38 |
| HOMA-IR | 4.8 | 3.4 | 2.4 | 1.8 |
| Cycle length (days) | 24–62 | 32–48 | 28–34 | 27–29 |
Tracking, week by week
I am not "cured." PCOS is a hormonal pattern, not a single disease, and the supplements are not the whole story — sleep, walking after meals, and twice-a-week resistance training did the heavy lifting. But for the first time in eight years, I have numbers I can track and that respond to what I do. That is what changed.