54: Hormone Testing
I recently tested my hormones. This is a collection of salivary samples I sent in to the lab (you want saliva or urine testing - not a blood test). I was surprised to find that I am low in estrogen but high in progesterone and testosterone! I’ve put myself on a balancing protocol because, even though I’m considered peri-menopausal, I’m into hormones without drama. 💃💪
I’m so happy that I can now offer hormone testing to you! I’m sharing all about it in this week’s podcast episode. Tune in to hear more about how hormonal testing can help get to the root cause of your weight gain, sleep issues, painful cycles, hot flashes, urinary problems or low libido.
EPISODE 54: Hormone Testing
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
(0:44) Welcome back to the club!
Introducing today’s topic: Hormones!
I just completed my advance training hormone course 💃
Hormones play an incredible large role in our lives on an every day basis.
(2:23) What we studied in this course:
Adrenals, male hormones, female hormones: cycling, peri and post menopausal, anatomy, and physiology.
What tests give us the best information.
How to analyze the tests and give clients hard data about and solutions about what’s going on in the body.
There are ideal ranges of hormones that our bodies should maintain at each stage of life.
Whether you currently have (or should have) a menstrual cycle, are peri-menopausal or post-menopausal, maintaining the correct balance of hormones is imperative for virility and longevity.
Imbalanced hormones lead to infertility, painful and intense cycles, skin issues, mood swings, poor sleep, hot flashes, urinary issues and low libido.
(4:08) “Unexplained Infertility”
I wish something like this would have been offered to me when I was diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” which pretty much means they don’t know.
Wish I would’ve known what years of being the pill was doing to my body.
The US has the highest rate of hysterectomy in the industrialized world and is the second most frequently performed surgical procedure after C-section for US women. Studies show that many of these are not necessary and that 90% are performed electively.
There are, of course, times these are medically necessary but they are much fewer and far between than are being performed.
Sadly, I think it’s very common for conventional medicine to jump to things like major surgery and synthetic hormones before addressing root causes that may be naturally overcome through dietary, lifestyle and supplemental solutions.
Many hysterectomies are performed because of the underlying root cause of estrogen dominance - when the body has too much circulating estrogen - it can wreak havoc on a woman’s body.
(7:26) Estrogen Dominance:
Many issues like excessive bleeding and painful, symptomatic cycles are because of estrogen dominance.
Estrogen dominance also perpetuates weight gain. There a lot of reasons why a woman can be in estrogen dominance.
Diet, gut issues, poor liver clearance, not pooping, adrenal dysfunction, too much exposure to xenoestrogens which are estrogen mimicking compounds in things like our personal care products.
I mean, there are a lot of things to cover before we start cutting people open and taking out organs. In follow-up surveys, many women report that their symptoms were made worse after surgery or now they are experiencing new problems.
(11:25) Serum Testing:
Even though this is the most common test choice in the conventional medical community, it’s not the best one. It’s not the most comprehensive and quite often will come back “normal” even though a woman is clearly experiencing hormonal issues.
The problem with the blood test is that 99% of the hormones circulating in the blood are inactive, they function as a circulating reservoir of hormone, but not the physiologically active form of the hormone. The hormones circulating in the blood are bound to proteins, you want the unbound free fraction measure of hormones.
Now some doctors might offer free fraction serum testing, but it’s often quite expensive and not still not ideal. The other drawback to the blood test is that, especially for women who still have a period, those hormones are and should be constantly changing over the cycle.
Taking a single sample blood test does not give you the full picture of what’s happening. It would be like wanting to buy a house, but only getting to look in through one window to get a sense of what the whole house is like.
A blood test does not tell you if estrogen and progesterone are rising and falling and sustaining output at the appropriate times. Even for menopausal women who can get away with more of a one-day snapshot of hormones, blood tests are still not going to offer the most robust information.
(15:56) Dutch Test:
A really good method for testing hormones is through saliva or dried urine. These tests have you collect multiple samples of your spit - whether it’s all in one day in the case of adrenals, male or menopausal hormones samples, or for women who still cycle, you would take a sample every few days. It’s essentially the same for the dried urine testing.
Now what’s cool about the DUTCH test - which is the urine test - looks at how estrogen is being metabolized and whether or not it’s being detoxified down the most preferential pathway.
There are several pathways but we want to make sure that estrogen is being mostly being shuttled down the least estrogenic and genotoxic pathways.
The DUTCH test gives us this information which is really cool and so helpful.
(18:17) Adrenal Testing:
Because the adrenals have so much influence over the sex hormones it is highly recommended to have an adrenal test as well. I mean, if you’re stressed, and who’s not, there’s a likely chance that cortisol is impacting your sex hormones is a negative way. Especially if you already have hormonal dysfunction, anxiety, sleep issues, exhaustion, a compromised immune system, adrenal testing is really important for piecing together the whole picture of what’s going on.
We actually produce sex hormones from our adrenal glands and once a woman moves into menopause, the adrenal glands become an important part of her hormone production. But if you’re totally stressed out and have compromised adrenal health, they may not have the capacity to offer you that hormone production and so that is something we want to address and nurture.
(21:48) Gastrointestinal Test:
You may be thinking - what does my gut have to do with my hormones? Everything my friend! The gut is the epicenter for health, it influences every aspect of your body. Quite often, fixing gut issues will fix an adrenal or hormonal issue.
My mentors have seen this over and over in their clinical practice. Remember that GI dysfunction, leaky gut and food sensitivities are all stressors on the body that can drive cortisol. Too much cortisol can lead to weight gain, anxiety, sleep problems and hormonal dysfunction. If you don’t identify and remove those as part of the problem, the problems perpetuate.
I’ve found that nobody really wants to do a gastrointestinal test unless they actually experience gastrointestinal distress - many people think they don’t have gut issues unless they have clear signs of diarrhea or constipation or bloating, etc - but that is not true at all. If you’ve got migraines or joint issues or neurological problems or skin conditions or fibromyalgia - all of those things and more - you’ve got a gut problem.
It’s the foundation for all health and as Hippocrates said over 2000 years ago - all disease begins in the gut. He was right. So I just want to throw that out there and stress the importance of testing what is happening in your gut - are there pathogens? Bacterial imbalances? Yeast overgrowth? Oh and talk about hormones - here’s one of the gut markers we test for that can lead to estrogen dominance.
So theres this enzyme called Beta-glucuronidase that is in the gut. When there is too much of it, it can block estrogen from being metabolized and detoxified properly, which will cause the estrogen to recirculate in the body instead of being excreted and this can lead to estrogen dominance. As a I mentioned before, estrogen dominance leads to a whole host of hormonal issues. If you have breast cancer history in your family, you do not want to be estrogen dominant.
Now, when I did my gut test last year, that Beta-glucuronidase was high for me. So I took the appropriate measures which included taking a supplement called Calcium D-Glucarate and I didn’t put this together until much later. But after I did my gut healing protocol, my body weight set point shifted down around 3lbs which I thought was so interesting and really surprising to me.
I wasn’t trying to lose weight and I thought is was from eradicating the dominating bad bacteria in my body - which it could have been - letting go of that stressor to the body could certainly have shifted my weight. But it could absolutely have been that I lowered the Beta-glucuronidase enzyme, which would help me better process estrogen and also lose weight. So I can’t say for sure - but those are a couple of examples of how gut dysbiosis can influence weight and hormones.
(29:50) Salivary Cycling Female Hormone Test:
Now what was interesting was that I just ran a hormone panel on myself - I chose the salivary cycling female hormone test which is the best for showing how not only estrogen and progesterone are functioning throughout the cycle, but also the precursor hormones that kick those off in the cycle - Follicle Stimulating Hormone and Luteinizing Hormone.
These are invaluable markers, especially if fertility is an issue. But I was kind of expecting to see high estrogen - estrogen dominance - based on some ovulatory and period things I have going on - turns out I am LOW in estrogen and high in progesterone and testosterone which I was not expecting at all. I mean, I am of perimenopausal age but just so you know - women of all stages including menopausal women can be estrogen dominant. But to be high in progesterone and testosterone - I was not expecting.
That’s the thing, we can do our best to make an educated guess about what’s going on - but had I assumed I was lacking progesterone and had too much estrogen - which is what many people assume - and decided to take a progesterone supplement - that would make things worse. So the hard data really helps give us accurate direction about what to do. I chose a few targeted supplements to help reduce the progesterone and testosterone while bringing estrogen into better balance. I also did an adrenal panel on myself and, while it wasn’t too bad, my cortisol rhythm is not ideal which explains why I’m dragging in the afternoons.
I’m also taking some things to bring that into better balance and support my adrenals because as I mentioned, adrenals play a huge role in the transition from peri to menopausal and when they’re not functioning optimally makes menopausal symptoms so much worse.
I’m all about going into menopause without drama thank you very much. And if you are all about hormones without drama, then I am here to help sister friend and mister friend. Don’t forget I can help your honey too.
Men go through something called andropause which is the man version of menopause and all that low testosterone and erectile dysfunction and low energy and belly fat is all a part of that and I’m so happy that I now have the answers, the direction, the protocols, the healing solutions to help you guys and gals through all of it. Wahoo!
(37:26) Staying connected about hormones:
I have so much information and I’ll be sharing it with you along the way here, but if you are interested in staying in the loop about testing, Q&A sessions I may have or even a choose-your hormonal path program, click here and fill in your info and major hormonal concerns or questions, then I will email you with answers and information!
(40:00) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!