Saliva Hormone Test Kit

Description

Saliva Hormone testing: Cost $370

We utilize the most cutting edge lab which is FDA approved. They pool two small samples easily collected throughout the day… this gives an average of the values for Estradiol, Estrone, Estriol, Progesterone, Testosterone, cortisol in AM, DHT, melatonin, 17-OH progesterone, Androstenedione, and DHEA . While these hormones do not have diurnal rhythms, their values fluctuate greatly throughout the day. Therefore, an average of these hormones is far more clinically relevant than a single AM value used by other labs. Cortisol is checked minimally AM . Saliva measures the free bioavailable hormone levels in the body, while serum measures only the protein bound non-bioavailable hormone levels. Therefore, serum is a much less accurate measurement than that of saliva when assessing functional hormone levels. This is why we use saliva hormone testing instead of sending you to the lab to have blood drawn!

“But my blood test says my estrogen level is FINE!” or…

“My ESTROGEN levels were low and my doctor gave me pellets! And now I’ve gained weight and feel terrible” or… “the doctor said I don’t need any progesterone because it looks good” or worse… “the doctor put me on 200mg of progesterone to help me sleep!” (which is using a hormone like a drug… in fact when a pregnancy reaches term gestation, progesterone levels range from 100-200 ng/ml so your doctor is giving you the levels for a PREGNANT WOMAN ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH!)

Imagine how many times women have told me that. Often a client says it with palpable frustration in her voice. She’s already seen her OB/GYN and been told there’s no problem with her hormone levels or worse… that the levels are LOW and she needs estrogen.

But since she is still experiencing symptoms like heavy monthly bleeding or disruptive night sweats and weight gain she comes to see me. When I explain that her symptoms may be due to over estrogenization, she feels exasperated — as if one of the doctors must be misleading her. And she can’t figure out which one of us it is.

I understand my client’s frustration. By the time she comes to my office, a woman with heavy monthly bleeding may be anemic, which makes her feel tired. Of if she’s older she is still suffering from weight gain, headaches, and hot flashes. If additionally her sleep is being disrupted with night sweats, she feels beyond tired and well into exhaustion. Now it appears that she has to try to determine which doctor is telling the truth. No wonder she feels confused and irritated!

In all honesty, I can tell her that both doctors are correct, on a certain level. One medical doctor is looking at the level of estrogen indicated on the lab report. Since that number is within the normal range or low, the woman has been told her estrogen level is fine that she needs supplementation.

However, I’m looking at the symptoms the client is experiencing holistically, and — recognizing what causes these symptoms — I can determine that she most likely has too much estrogen at the cellular level, regardless of what the lab tests show.

That’s why I NEVER operate with blood test results for hormones. We ONLY use saliva testing and pay attention to the client and how they feel!

$370 for normal testing

Please call the office if you have any questions.

The Anatomy of a Blood Test

To understand how a person with a normal or low level of estrogen on a lab test can still be experiencing the effects of over estrogenization at the cellular level, we have to get a little technical about how a blood test works.

There are three reasons why a blood test may not indicate a person’s estrogen exposure at the cellular level.

1. Estrogen can hide. It often moves through the blood encased in a protein wrapper. This wrapper prevents the estrogen from being detected by the testing reagents.

2. Estrogen is lipophilic (fat-loving), so it sticks tightly to the cell membrane of the red blood cells. A laboratory does not test the red blood cells, but rather it tests the blood serum, the liquid component of blood. Therefore, the estrogen attached to the red blood cells goes undetected by the lab.

3. The way a lab determines normal amounts of estrogen is based on data collected from a population and plotted on a bell curve. This bell curve reflects the reality of a population, not the ideal for that population.

For an over estrogenized population like the United States, the typical level of estrogen is much higher than what is best. But since high levels of estrogen are the norm, a patient may quite naturally be told that her estrogen level is normal when it is actually high.

Serum Estrogen Levels

Serum estrogen levels might be helpful in the initial stages of treatment when your practitioner is determining the need for hormone therapy. Serum testing is a decent monitor of estradiol levels when you are being treated with a natural bioidentical estrogen patch, pellet or gel. The serum testing IS NOT helpful if you use creams as estrogen levels do not rapidly cross into the serum.

We like to see both serum and saliva results when possible. But ultimately will mainly work based on saliva results.

Saliva Estrogen Levels

Saliva can be very useful for testing the free levels of all three types of estrogen. It is useful to check for the initial levels to determine the need for hormone therapy and to monitor estrogen levels with all types of hormone therapy. There are specific salivary ranges for estradiol levels with and without therapy and for each type of therapy (patch, pellet, cream or gel). This is because the estradiol levels can be a little higher when you’re receiving treatment, so the usual “normal ranges” may not work. The only limitation with salivary measurements is when the estradiol is being given by cream base and the level gets too high, it may take 6-12 months for the salivary levels to normalize with creams. This is important to remember if you have taken any of the over-the-counter estrogen creams even a year before your appointment because it could “skew” your saliva test and give a false positive.

Blood Tests Versus Symptoms

Since a simple blood test done in most laboratories cannot reliably tell us if there is too much estrogen in the blood stream, practitioners must look at the symptoms to help them determine the cause of a woman’s problems. Heavy, painful periods, difficult or prolonged menopause, early puberty in girls or delayed puberty in boys, obesity, and certain types of cancers (breast, ovarian, uterine, and prostate) are all associated with elevated levels of estrogen continually bathing the cells of the body.

After I explain to my client how it is possible for her to have a lab report that indicates normal or low levels of estrogen while she has a body that is telling her differently, my client usually begins to calm down. That’s when we can get to work.

I explain to her the many ways that the typical Western diet, which is heavy in animal products and processed foods, contributes to too much estrogen. By the end of our appointment, my client has usually committed to making some changes in her diet in order to improve her health.

Diet and Estrogen

A low-fat diet of whole plant foods is surprisingly effective in lowering the amount of estrogen reaching our cells and wreaking havoc with our bodies. “Beans, greens, squashes and yams, is the the meal mantra I teach my clients. If twice a day we fill our plates with foods from these four categories, and then add a smaller snack of fruits and grains once a day, our bodies will respond with surprising health and energy. Any whole-foods, plant-based diet devoid of oil and with limited amounts of higher-fat plant foods like nuts and seeds will produce similar results.

Call us if you’re ready to be heard.

337-989-0572

The most accurate way to check hormones – Tests include Estradiol, Progesterone, DHEA, Testosterone & Cortisol

SALIVA VERSUS DUTCH URINE TESTING

There is no published clinical data available yet for DUTCH urine tests and they are so complicated to interpret and find correlations with clinical symptoms.

I am not yet fully convinced of its clinical relevance, especially for clients who are supplementing with topical progesterone.

The major difference between salivary and urine metabolite testing is seen with topical application of progesterone and other steroids- urine does not show any significant change in hormone levels whereas we see a clear dose-dependent increase in salivary hormone levels. It is just not possible with urine testing to monitor clients who are using topical applications and topical dosing is the optimal way to apply natural hormones.

Something else to keep in mind is that urine testing doesn’t work for clients with compromised renal function as the hormone levels are to be corrected with creatinine levels. The degree of hydration also has a significant impact on the testing accuracy. How much water/ other fluids we consume every day differs from person to person. We find most men and women DOT NOT DRINK ENOUGH WATER!

Oral hormone supplementation is also difficult to monitor because of high levels seen in urine due to the first-pass effect. Therefore, it is difficult to get a better assessment of true bioavailable fractions, which is not the case with saliva. Salivary levels are a much better indicator of the bioavailable fraction of hormones, which correlate well with clinical symptoms!

Finally, clients using vaginal applications are absolutely not good candidates for dutch urine testing for obvious reasons, unless we ask those clients to discontinue their hormone use at least 4 days prior to sample collection.

SALIVA VERSUS SERUM HORMONE TESTING
Saliva testing is proving to be the most reliable medium for measuring adrenal/ovarian hormone levels.

We have seen numerous clients with seemingly conflicting results when doing both saliva and serum blood testing for natural hormone replacement. This tends to confuse both the client and their medical doctor (and sometimes me too!).

In an effort to put some understanding and comfort to both doctors and clients, I’d like to offer the following as the best explanation I have for this “phenomena”.

Saliva testing is absolutely the most accurate test to determine steroid hormones (i.e. progesterone, estrogen, DHEA and testosterone) levels when attempting to determine who needs hormone replacement and to assist in monitoring the results.

Steroid hormones are fat soluble. This means that they dissolve in fat or oil and not water. Since oil and water do not mix, the body makes carrier proteins, called hormone binding globulins, that when attached to a fatty hormone will allow it to mix in water. This allows the fat soluble hormone to travel in the watery bloodstream.

Those steroid hormones attached or bound to carrier proteins in the blood are not active, only the unbound or free hormone molecules have the ability to cause the effect they were made to have on the body.

If we look at the hormone as a piece of candy that your taste buds can recognize, then the candy wrapper is the carrier protein surrounding the active hormone and protects the candy or the message of the hormone while it is bound and circulating. If we measure the amount of hormone or candy in the blood we will find that over 99% is wrapped, or “bound” as we refer to in scientific language. Your blood stream is your largest hormone reservoir in your body, but the hormones are inactive!

Once hormones are absorbed from your blood stream into your tissue, they lose their carrier protein and become active.

Your salivary glands contain the same concentration of active hormones as your tissues contain. If we measure the amount of hormone in the saliva we measure how much is unwrapped or active and able to deliver the flavor or the message of the hormone to the breast, uterus, ovaries, brain, and other organs of the body.

There are a number of factors that determine how much hormone, especially estrogen, is unwrapped and active in the body. Increased weight, diabetes, stress, low fiber/high fat diets can all increase the amount of estrogen that is active. If too much is active, you will produce symptoms associated with too much estrogen from the list below.

The total amount of estrogen (wrapped) in the blood can be high, normal, or low. It’s the unwrapped amount that we’re interested in.

Exercise, maintaining your ideal body weight, high fiber diets, eating the proper fats, eliminating stress, avoiding external estrogen can all decrease the amount of active estrogen in the body. Because there are so many variables it is impossible to know what the level of your individual hormones are without testing. This would be like looking at you and guessing what your blood sugar level is, or if your blood pressure is high, normal, or low. Since no doctor would treat your blood pressure or your blood sugar without first testing for your individual levels, no doctor should treat your hormone levels without first determining their exact amount so they can accurately be balanced or brought normal levels.

Not only can saliva determine the amount of active (“unwrapped”) estrogen, it can also determine the active amounts of progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, and cortisol (your stress hormone) . All of these hormone levels may be altered by menopause, your weight, your age, your stress level, your diet, and multiple other factors.

The bottom line: saliva provides a convenient, stress-free, way to collect a diagnostic body fluid from which to determine, and then monitor, the free or bio-available fraction of steroid hormones circulating in the bloodstream and entering tissues. In addition, saliva testing is the more accurate way to measure levels of human bio-identical hormones delivered topically through the skin to manage hormone imbalances. Utilizing blood testing prior to starting hormone replacement is also a tool for beginning someone on natural hormones.

But please monitor, at the minimum, every 6 months with saliva testing.

Note on CORTISOL testing: To diagnose cortisol deficiency, the physician or naturopath should consider symptoms first and the free cortisol levels second. A serum cortisol test shows the total cortisol in the blood, but this level is affected by the amount of cortisol-binding globulin. Serum free cortisol levels are available at some laboratories, but one’s cortisol level prior to being stuck with a needle after driving to a lab is not likely to represent one’s usual level.

Our testing kit checks the following key adrenal hormones: Estradiol, Estrone, Estriol, Progesterone, Testosterone, Cortisol in AM, DHT, melatonin, 17-OH progesterone, Androstenedione, and DHEA .

Whether you are checking your hormones for the first time or if you are monitoring the effectiveness of your natural bio- identical hormone creams… saliva is the best way to test.

This kit is sent to your home. You simply follow the easy directions on collecting saliva (stated in the kit) and it is then sent via postage directly to our lab for evaluation. We receive the results in 10-14 working days after their receipt of your saliva. Once we have the results we will contact you and set up an appointment to consult and go over all results and our recommendations for supplementation as needed.

Perfect for checking adrenal hormones in MEN & WOMEN!

THIS TEST IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE NO MATTER WHO ORDERS IT.

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