STIM Test
 

I wanted to let people know about a test that can be done for those still having symptoms 1 year post trauma. It took me 6 years of traveling to top neuros across the country and doing research every day to find out about this. An endocronologist can do what's called a STIM test where you sit an infusion lab for about 5 hours in fasted state. They gave you insulin to drop you blood sugar levels below 40 and see how your stress hormones respond. Due to the pulsating nature of hormones, this is the most accurate(98%) way to test for growth hormone deficiency and other vital hormones by doing blood samples every 30 minutes.

Once in hypoglycemic state, the body should produce >5 levels of growth hormone. Anything below is considered deficient. Mine produced 3.2. All of my other blood test were normal. I pursued hormone therapy 3 years ago and was told I'm fine and I crossed it off my list of therapies to try.

I'll use injectable growth hormone for the rest of my life now. The research I had said 27% of patients with symptoms 1 year after trauma have some sort of pituitary dysfunction. I think it's worth consulting with a Endocronologist if this a test you should consider. It's expensive at $2,500(insurance may or may not cover it) and is admittedly not comfortable and carries some risk for when the drop your blood sugars.

This may not fix me completely, but I do think it's part of the puzzle. Just something I want people to be aware of and do your own research as I wish this information was available to me 5 years ago.

Hypopituitarism in Traumatic Brain Injury—A Critical Note

Excerpt...
"Several prevalence studies on post-TBI chronic hypopituitarism have been conducted over the last 15 years as summarized in Figure 1. As given in Figure 1A, the overall prevalence from studies performed in adults was 26% which is very similar to results from the meta-analysis by Schneider et al. [1]. However, the rate of hypopituitarism varied considerably from negligible to well above 50% in adults, a diversity most probably reflecting methodological differences in terms of patient selection, study designs, and diagnostic procedures, as will be discussed in the following..."

Given how near impossible it is to find a Dr. to run this test, I imagine numbers are much higher. Either way, 26% is significant enough to consider this as something to explore/rule out.

My levels started at 0.03 with first blood draw, and it went up only to around 0.92, that's it. Growth hormone injections have helped heal my brain.

By the way, were you ever having intense fatigue, muscle atrophy, bone atrophy, or pits on your scalp? I had all of these because of the low growth hormone levels.

Instead fatigue but not the other stuff. I was feeling slightly better of 6 weeks into GH therapy. Just did trigger point injections into temple and having bad side effects.

How long did it take for you to notice difference?