Hormones are the biological signals that keep our bodies running smoothly to maintain our health and well-being. They control our metabolic rate (thyroid hormones), help us adapt to stress (stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline), regulate our blood sugars (insulin), regulate our sleep patterns (melatonin) and keep us fertile (reproductive hormones oestrogen and testosterone).
And so for these reasons, if you want to understand your current state of health, then it’s vital to monitor your hormones via hormone testing.
Hormone testing assesses the hormone levels within your body. The different methods of hormone testing provide different perspectives about your hormones. When it comes to testing your hormones there are three ways it can be done –
- Blood testing – Blood testing is the best way to assess hormone imbalances that could seriously affect your health, and for this reason it is the most common method used by doctors.
- Saliva testing – Saliva testing on the other hand provides a great functional assessment of your hormone levels when we’re looking for hormone imbalances that affect how your body is functioning but aren’t serious enough to be life threatening. In our clinic we regularly use saliva hormone testing for issues such as hormonal acne, menstrual cycle problems (irregular cycles, period pain, PMS, heavy periods), fatigue, anxiety and burnout.
- Urine testing – In a similar way to saliva testing, urine hormone testing gives a fantastic functional assessment of hormone balance. Urine hormone testing is the preferred method of testing when we want to assess not just hormone levels but also how well the body is detoxifying hormones. If hormones are not detoxified effectively then this can lead to hormones building up within the body and affect important bodily functions such as fertility, weight control, energy production, liver function and inflammation.
How A Test Can Help You Understand Your Health
Behind most health issues is a hormone imbalance because hormones regulate the functioning of your body. So the benefits of hormone testing when a health issue arises are immeasurable. Hormone testing enables the root cause of health problems to be pinpointed, because many of the symptoms we experience can be due to multiple causes.
For instance, acne is often thought to be due to elevated male hormones (androgens) but often the androgen dominance driving it is not because the male hormones are high but because the female hormones are low. So with hormone testing the exact hormone imbalance can be pinpointed such as high testosterone or low oestrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone or luteinising hormone. And then is this because stress hormones like cortisol are high?
Hormone testing reveals this and then it becomes clear what needs to be done.
Likewise for weight gain. There are multiple hormones that can cause weight gain. Without hormone testing how would you know which hormone needs to be targeted? Are there problems with the thyroid hormones or is it a stress hormone issue or is it an insulin issue or is it a sex hormone detox issue?
You’d never know without testing the various hormones that could be a cause.
The health benefits of hormone testing go beyond correcting problems once they have occurred. There are hormone testing health benefits to be gained by proactively testing your hormone levels. This way you can prevent health problems before they start. It is always much easier to fix a problem when it’s in its early stages rather than when it’s become full blown.
And testing your hormones is such an easy and simple thing to do which is why we do it with all of our patients.
Symptoms Indicating the Need for Hormone Testing
Many symptoms we experience are telltale signs of a hormone imbalance. Here is a list of common hormone related symptoms to look out for –
- Fatigue can result from stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Anxiety and depression can result from stress hormone, thyroid hormone and sex hormone imbalances
- Mood swings can result from sex hormone and blood sugar regulating hormone imbalances
- Acne is often caused by sex hormone imbalances
- Female facial and body hair growth is caused by too much testosterone
- Breast tenderness can be caused by too much oestrogen or too little progesterone
- Menstrual cycle irregularity can be caused by sex hormone, stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Heavy or light periods can be caused by too much oestrogen or too little progesterone
- Infertility can be caused by sex hormone, stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Low libido can be caused by sex hormone, stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Weight gain and weight loss can result from stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Insomnia can result from stress hormone and thyroid hormone imbalances
- Hair loss can be caused by high androgens (male hormones) or low thyroid hormones
Because the symptoms of hormone imbalance are often not specific, as you can from the list above, the benefits of hormone testing are its ability to pinpoint what hormone is causing the issue. Then, once this is known a hormone therapy (natural and or pharmacological) can be put in place to bring it back to balance.
This is why we are big advocates of hormone testing and our philosophy is ‘test don’t guess’. Only when you test your hormones, with the best method for the situation, can you know how best to approach the problem and restore hormone health.
The Process of Hormone Testing
Blood Hormone Testing
Is a simple process but does involve a needle. Your blood is drawn via a needle in your arm at a collection centre.
Saliva Hormone Testing
Is non-invasive, no needles, and pain free. Collection of your saliva sample is obtained by spitting into a small plastic collection tube. You aren’t required to go to a collection centre and most people do their saliva collection in their home. The samples are then posted off to the laboratory to be analysed.
Urine Hormone Testing
As with saliva hormone testing urine testing is non-invasive and pain free. The difference her is that you will need a bathroom to do your collection. Collecting your sample will involve either urinating into a small collection container or urinating onto absorbent cardboard strips. The samples are then posted off to the laboratory to be analysed.
Interpreting Test Results
At one level interpreting test results is very straight forward, does the result fall within the defined range? If they don’t because the result is either below or above the defined range, it indicates an imbalance.
But, as with many things in life there are grey zones. A common experience many people have, especially our patients with hormonal acne or thyroid issues, is that their hormone test results fall within the defined range but they have symptoms which clearly indicate they have some sort of hormone imbalance.
This is where skill and experience in the interpretation of hormone tests are vital, otherwise a problematic hormone imbalance will be missed. We, for example, have looked at thousands of hormone test results and so we are able to pick up subtle hormone imbalances that aren’t obvious but still need to be corrected in order for the person’s symptoms to be eliminated.
How to Proceed After Hormone Testing
Once a hormone imbalance has been pinpointed the next step is to correct it. As naturopaths, we accomplish this with herbs, supplements, dietary changes and lifestyle modifications. For optimal hormone health you need to have a diet based on whole foods and get sufficient sleep, regular exercise, and good control of your stress levels.
To gauge whether you are on track or not, it’s imperative to do follow up testing, as this gives you the feedback as to whether you need to keep doing what you are doing or make changes to your treatment plan.
As I said earlier, test don’t guess!
So, if you want to understand your health better because you already have health problems or you have symptoms of a developing health problem, then the benefits of hormone testing can’t be underestimated.
Your doctor can organise blood testing that will give you a very basic assessment of your health, but if you want to look deeper into how well your body is functioning, then you’ll need to do saliva or urine hormone testing. For this type of testing you’ll need the assistance of an alternative health professional like us. We have the experience gained from working with thousands of patients to know what tests will be best for you and the expertise from looking at thousands of tests to interpret your test results accurately.
To get our help is easy, all you need to do is book an initial consultation with one of our hormone specialist naturopaths by contacting us or clicking here to book online.
