Confidently Have Your Hormones Evaluated
Saliva, Blood or Urine Testing for Hormones: Which One is Better?
When it comes to hormone testing methods, people ask me, "Which one is better, saliva, blood, or urine testing?" The answer is, "The relevance of any medium used for hormone testing depends upon the therapeutic purpose and interests of the clinician." For my colleagues and I, who practice Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN), saliva hormone testing provides highly relevant, comprehensive data that serves our purposes, perfectly. FDN seeks to identify and address the underlying causes of today's most common health complaints instead of simply treating symptoms. I am working to help you identify the root causes of dysfunction.
Physicians who practice allopathic medicine or "relief care" have a different view of things. From the FDN perspective, saliva provides multiple time-specific specimens, and the hormone values reflect real-life physiological conditions and responses.
Benefits Of Saliva Testing
Saliva test results provide an accurate and direct peek into current cellular or bioactive levels of hormones, gauging how well organs and systems are functioning. Functional assessments require us to consider hormone levels relative to each individual's health and stress levels. This practice is termed "clinical correlation," wherein we review test results with the client and interpret each lab report based on that individual's circumstances and complaints. Often saliva reveals multiple healing opportunities hidden to anyone using conventional high, low, or in-range values found on blood and urine tests. I often say, "I don't treat the test result; I treat the person."
Saliva is also the only medium that allows clinicians to provide real-time assessments. It is often preferable to measure testosterone in the AM. Moreover, we are highly interested in clients' cortisol and DHEA levels, the primary stress hormones produced in the adrenal glands and whose levels are known to change throughout the day according to a circadian rhythm. The same applies to melatonin, the "sleep" hormone. For an accurate functional assessment of the adrenals, we need to know that the client can produce expected hormone levels for each particular time of day. Urine hormone metabolites collected over a twenty-four-hour period cannot reflect the time-specific levels we require and, therefore, cannot be used for this purpose. Relying solely on total daily cortisol output can be misleading.
Cortisol should be high in the morning and low at night. This sum yields an average total output for the day. However, someone with adrenal dysfunction could produce a relatively low morning level that, when combined with a higher-than-expected nighttime cortisol level could yield the same daily output as the first person. In this case, the total cortisol output is useless information at best, or at worst, could lead one to assume that adrenal function is normal. This single inaccuracy or lack of insight is one of the reasons the modern medical community so widely ignores adrenal dysfunction.
Saliva collection is easily done at home, giving us the apparent benefits of time-specific hormone values.
Do you suspect hormone imbalance? Schedule lab testing and an exploratory session today.
