Your Guide to Hormone Testing Kits

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Testing your hormones is a great tool to have under your belt to help you gain invaluable insight into the underlying cause of your hormonal health issues. If you are suffering from painful periods, heavy periods, fibroids, ovarian cysts, or fertility issues, I encourage you to order a test. A good place to start is with a comprehensive hormone profile test that tests your progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, DHEA-S, and cortisol levels. This information can help point you and your health care practitioner in the right direction.

Good news is with the technology today we can test our hormones in our own home!

There are many options for at home tests. My preferred is the Dutch (Dried Urine Test For Comprehensive Hormones) as it is the gold standard in hormone testing. This is what I use with all of my clients inside my 1:1 Root Cause Program and my 8-week Period Solution group program.

The Dutch test uses dried urine samples to measure your sex hormones, cortisol (some of them test the cortisol with saliva), and metabolites. The Dutch test is extremely precise, and the most advanced version of this test maps your cycle to show your true cycle variation in time.

Saliva testing is also readily used, but to be honest, I’m not a big fan. Like blood, saliva testing offers a single point collection, so it will not give you the precise cycle variation or precision like the DUTCH, but although not as comprehensive as DUTCH, it still provides very useful information that can let your practitioner know if further testing is required.

So which one is best for you?

If money is not an issue I’d go with the DUTCH. I’d also splurge on the DUTCH if you are experiencing hormonal imbalances that are causing severe pain, infertility, or other health issues that are getting in the way of your daily life. I'd also go for the DUTCH if you've tried diet and lifestyle changes yet are still suffering.

However, if you are for the most part healthy and only experiencing minor issues, or if you are simply curious about your hormone levels, the saliva test is definitely the place to begin because it is affordable.

What Day Should You Take Your Test?

Now that you know what test to order, make sure that you take it at the right time! For an accurate progesterone reading you must take it hallway through your luteal phase. I like to stick to the rule of thumb of 7 days before our period is expected. Not everyone has a 28-day text book cycle (a normal period is anywhere from 25-36 days long), so day 21 is not the right testing day for everyone.

For example, if your cycle is 28 days, you would test on day 21, but if it is 31 days you’d test on 24, and if you have a 35-day cycle you’d test as late as day 28!

If you have irregular cycles, that’s where it gets a bit tricky. Your options are to either do an ovulation test or track ovulation signs, and then test 5-7 days after that. If you are not ovulating, it will be very difficult to get an accurate progesterone level, but since you are not ovulating you know you will be progesterone deficient anyways, so I’d just test on  day 21.

What about thyroid?

Thyroid is best tested with blood. Many doctors will only test TSH, however TSH is NOT enough! Here’s why:

1.   Conventional vs Funtional ranges: most docs are not even using functional ranges, so they don’t even give a red flag to their patients until shit has really hit the fan. In conventional medicine only TSH over a 5 mIUL is flagged. But in functional medicine we want it under 2.

2.  Leaves out FT3, FT4- Guess what? You can have normal TSH but abnormal FT4 and FT3. T4 is important because it’s converted into T3 which is the active thyroid hormone. You can also have normal TSH, normal FT4, yet low FT3. Mind blown huh? This is why I’m not a fan of T4 only thyroid medication and much prefer a combo T4 & T3 thyroid medication (but that’s a different post). If your body is getting enough TSH and FT4 but can’t convert it to FT3 then there is a problem. 

3.   Doesn’t rule out Hashimotos- it’s estimated about 80% of hypothyroid cases in the US are actually autoimmune thyroiditis (Hashimotos). This is why it’s imperative to test antibodies. And yes, you can have a normal TSH, FT4, FT3 and still have elevated antibodies.

This is why you must get a FULL thyroid panel which is super easy to take in the convenience of your own home with the LetsGetChecked fully thyroid panel. Click here to get your test for 25% off.

Happy Testing!

Jenna xx