I do not get the blood test for cortisol levels as they are not accurate nor do they give enough information. The saliva test is the gold standard.

Re: time of day. Your morning cortisol should be tested first thing in the morning after you open your eyes. Certainly not at 11:30.
A general cortisol reading is quite useless. There is an arc of cortisol production, the highest being first thing in the morning after you open your eyes and by the time you are going to sleep at night, it should be at its lowest. Given that you have a 7.8 level at 11:30am is far too little information.

Gagel- thank you for suggesting the 24 hour saliva test. I received my kit and will take the last sample tonight at 11pm. Some sites say to have the samples shipped over night. Can anyone share how they shipped their test samples back?
Many thanks in advance!

You are supposed to do all saliva samples within 1 day. I did 4 in one day.

There are instructions on when and what you should do prior to taking a sample. Mine said to swish my mouth with water for 2 seconds, etc. I wasn't allowed to eat garlic or onions for 24-48 hrs prior, etc. It also gave me a range of time in which to do each one.

You can't tell from your result what it means because the hour ranges that you provided don't coincide with the test time. Beyond that, blood cortisol is very unreliable.

My saliva test said to put each sample in the fridge after it was completed. Box them together and then ship them off. I was provided a UPS label. It was not shipped with refrigeration.

If you are going to test for Vit D you may want to stay off of it for a couple of days, so that it doesn't skew your results.

....swish with water for 20 seconds, I believe...

Yikes. Mine said nothing about eliminating food. It said to collect samples- 1/2 hour after getting out of bed, noon, evening, and night. Instructions say to put samples into the freezer until shipping out tomorrow. "Will remain stable under average shipping conditions". Box says Priority Mail. I ate onions twice today! I am wondering if I should empty the tubes out and start over?!

You might want to see if you can find out something about your lab and their requirements on-line. I have not been able to find my lab stuff and I can't remember (hypo) everything that was on the sheet. There were a couple of other exclusions/requirements about medication,eating, and brushing your teeth, etc.
I would think that you would need new vials, because they are probably already contaminated. Washing them with water would contaminate them too.I had to write down the specimen time on my vials, but they gave me windows...

pumpkin

You need new vials, throw away the ones you used.
You need to do your first spit into the vial BEFORE you get out of bed, the first thing when you wake up. So obviously no brushing teeth!
Then you can relax and do the other 3 spits throughout the day every 4 hours or so. You dont need to refrigerate them, but priority mail is essential for any human sample. I use FedEx.

Pumpking43

I am hoping that you did some research and are not wasting your time. I wish you look with the testing. I found it somewhat a hassle, but worth the time to get a proper diagnosis.

good luck to you -

As Stilllisting mentioned, its a hassle, a real pain in the ass to do the spit test (saliva test for cortisol) but nowhere near the hassle of having low or high cortisol and not knowing it. Read the directions carefully in the kit, it will ask you to list current medications you have taken and when, a long list of symptoms that you need to check off, etc. You must fill in everything or the test wont be processed.