How Is It Diagnosed?
Doctors don’t diagnose serotonin deficiency. In most cases, they just focus on treating the symptoms. This is because serotonin is a multi-faceted medical condition whose cause is difficult to identify. There are no diagnostic criteria, and scientists do not know if the symptoms cause the deficiency or the deficiency causes the symptoms.
Although there is a test that measures the level of serotonin in your blood, doctors only use it to check for tumors that synthesize serotonin outside of the brain. Your blood level of serotonin in your blood does not accurately depict the amount in your brain.
Serotonin cannot pass through the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a semipermeable barrier that surrounds your brain and lets some substances pass through, but not others. Therefore, the serotonin in your brain must be synthesized in your brain. This is why your body’s overall blood levels of serotonin are not accurate enough to measure the level of serotonin in your brain.
Urine tests are also not accurate enough to measure your brain serotonin. However, they can be used to measure the amount of serotonin that your body is producing and how much is in your body.
Your doctor may recommend a urine test in combination with blood tests for serotonin-producing tumors, but not for serotonin deficiency.
It is important to contact your doctor to determine potential causes and create a treatment plan if you think you have serotonin deficiency.