Hormone Assessment
What are your hormones doing?
Periods doing funny things? Are you fatigued and irritable? Has your sleep quality declined? Do you find it difficult to lose weight?
It could be your hormones, but your doctor says you're fine. You may need to look deeper.
How can you best assess what is going on?
If your doctor says you're fine, you may have a subclinical hormone imbalance. This means it is not serious enough to be classified as a hormone disease, but it may be serious enough to cause you grief!
Identifying a subclinical hormone problem is a little bit like putting together a puzzle. Usually, there is not one simple test, but a combination of test results and symptoms. Here are some hints on how to proceed.
Hormone testing: Blood, saliva and urine tests
There is no perfect hormone test. You may need to look at hormones from a few angles.
Blood testing is good for some things, such as detecting menopause and confirming ovulation, but blood testing cannot accurately measure hormone levels during hormone replacement treatment.
Saliva testing is better for monitoring hormone replacement, and it is also a good choice for assessing oestrogen dominance and cortisol. Saliva levels can be somewhat unreliable. Both blood and saliva tests have the disadvantage of being a 'snapshot' look at hormones that fluctuate greatly during day.
24-hour urinary hormone testing is a new approach. It has many advantages. Firstly, it measures total daily hormone production and metabolism. This avoids inaccuracy due to fluctuations. Secondly, it measures hormone metabolites as well as primary hormones. Hormone metabolites are hormones whose molecular structure has been changed in order to be excreted from the body. Some metabolites such as 16-hydroxy oestrone are particularly risky for breast cancer.
Testing beyond hormones
Just knowing your hormone levels is not enough. Hormone balance and function is affected by other aspects of health, such as bowel and liver function. Your Naturopath will need to test for basic biochemistry, insulin balance, inflammation and more. Most of this is done by blood test, but some new urine metabolic testing is available.
Diagnosis by Symptom evaluation
Your symptoms and medical history give us the best information. First consult is one hour to allow us time to gather this information.
You can start by checking your own hormones with our self-assessment quizzes.
What are the most common hormonal conditions?
- Thyroid disease
- Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
- Insulin resistance causing weight gain
- Adrenal insufficiency
- Menopause and Male Menopause
- Oestrogen dominance causing PMT, heavy periods and fibroids
- Endometriosis
- Infertility
Under-active Thyroid.
Too little production of active thyroid hormone (T3) is easily overlooked by conventional blood tests. See Lara's article on underactive thyroid for more information about thyroid testing and treatment.
PCOS
PCOS is a condition of high testosterone in women. It is associated with facial hair and infertility. This diagnosis is readily given by doctors, but is not always correct. See Lara's article on PCOS and our PCOS quiz.
Oestrogen Dominance
Oestrogen dominance is the ratio of too much oestrogen compared to progesterone. It is caused by estrogen-mimicking pollutants in our environment, use of the birth control pill, over-production of stress hormones, and poor liver detoxification of oestrogens.
Symptoms include heavy periods, fluid retention before the period, breast tenderness, fibroids and weight gain on the hips.
It can be treated by improving oestrogen clearance, and by the use of natural progesterone cream.
See Sensible News Issue 21 for more information on oestrogen dominance.
Menopause
There are many ways to approach the hormonal changes that occur at menopause.
Male Menopause
Testosterone declines with age. This can occur gradually or more suddenly. Symptoms are: Depression and fatigue, High blood pressure, High cholesterol, Decreased libido and erectile dysfunction, Enlarged prostate.
Saliva or blood tests show low testosterone and sometimes elevated oestrogen. Read more about male menopause here.
Treat with bio-identical testosterone and oestrogen-reducing supplements.
Insulin Resistance
Chronically high insulin from a diet too high in bread and sugar. It directly affects the production estrogen and testosterone. See Insulin article for more information about insulin.
Adrenal Insufficiency
Deficiency of adrenal hormones is at the root of many other hormone problems. The adrenal glands, or stress glands, produce two major hormones: cortisol and DHEA. With stress, cortisol can become deficient or excess. Deficient cortisol causes immune deficiency and fatigue. Excess cortisol causes weight gain and insulin resistance. DHEA declines with age. Deficient DHEA causes fatigue and reproductive problems, including infertility. Menopausal women with DHEA deficiency will have low testosterone as well as low oestrogen. They can benefit from DHEA supplementation. Depletion of adrenal hormones underlies many cases of under active thyroid.
Symptoms of Adrenal Insufficiency: Allergies, Fatigue, poor tolerance to thyroid hormone, Cold Hands and Feet, Low blood pressure.
See Low Blood Pressure article, Stress article, and DHEA article for more information about adrenal insufficiency.
Appointments at Sensible-Alternative
For hormone assessment, please make an appointment with one of our Naturopaths.
Locations in Crowsnest Pass, Canada and Sydney, Australia.
1) Dr Lara Grinevitch - Crowsnest Pass, Canada
Lara sees patients on Mondays.
Text message or leave a voicemail on Lara's cell: 1 587 880 4436
Phone Crowsnest Clinic: 1 403 563 3334. (Clinic phone is attended Tuesday-Friday)
2) Biljana Koga or Deborah Gibson - Sydney, Australia
Two Sydney locations: Chatswood - Cronulla
Sydney phone number: 02 8011 1994
To email our Sydney head office: click here.
