[Mini] Hormone panels & testing: what to know | Ep. 65

Ever wondered why your hormones fluctuate and how to get to the root cause of those pesky symptoms? Join me, Bridget Walton, as we unlock the mysteries of hormone testing, especially tailored for those curious about their hormone health. You'll gain a comprehensive understanding of the Dutch test, a powerful tool that sheds light on hormone metabolism and uncovers the root causes of imbalances. We also highlight the crucial role gut health plays, particularly if your cycles are irregular. Before diving into your hormone levels, we emphasize the importance of nailing down the basics: sleep, nutrition, and stress management. If you've recently transitioned off hormonal birth control, patience is key as your body adapts before you test.

Navigating the hormone testing world can be tricky, and costly mistakes are not uncommon. I share my own experiences to guide you in avoiding unnecessary expenses due to misguided advice on test timing. These lessons will help ensure your hormone journey is as smooth as possible. If you're hungry for more insights or need personalized guidance, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Bridget Walton. I’m passionate about connecting with you and supporting your path to optimal hormone health. Let's make informed decisions together and take charge of our health goals!

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Chapters

• 0:04 Hormone Testing Basics for Women
• 7:52 Avoiding Costly Mistakes in Hormone Testing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hi and welcome to this week's mini episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach, and on this mini episode I'm going to be talking to you about testing. If you want the longer form of this episode, then you can go back and check out the episode that came out on Tuesday this week. That's how this jam will normally flow around here Normal length episode on Tuesdays and minis on Thursdays. That's what you can expect, regardless of the episode length. Just remember that the information I share with you is for educational purposes only, shouldn't be used as medical advice or diagnosis. Of course, there is so much more information that is relevant for the context, for you and your situation. So if you ever are looking for more specific guidance on what to do or for testing or anything else that's going on, you can always connect with me through the link in the show notes or on Instagram at Bridget Walton, and I can help you with your hormone goals at Bridget Walton and I can help you with your hormone goals. All right, let's get into it. So I want to talk about hormone testing today because I get questions all the time about different. What is the right panel? What is the right time. What about birth control? When should I take the test? So I'm going to just run through four quick questions that I get the most often. So I'm going to just run through four quick questions that I get the most often. Maybe these resonate with you. The first question that I get is really just like hey, I want to test my hormones. What should I do, like, what test should I use? And the first question back really is okay. Well, why do you want to test your hormones? What do you want to find out? Because that certainly is an important factor in determining what panel to use. But I'll just walk you through the hormone panel that I use most often with my clients. It's called the Dutch test. There are a couple different tiers of the Dutch test, but overall the Dutch test and that stands for dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. The Dutch test and that stands for dried urine test for comprehensive hormones is a really comprehensive resource to understand what is going on, what is the root cause of your hormone imbalance. So if you go to the doctors, they take your blood and they test for estrogen and testosterone, for examples, you'll get those two pieces of information. You'll get those two pieces of information, but through the Dutch test, because it's using your urine sample or dried urine to get all of these markers. It's also showing you how your hormones are metabolizing, how they're breaking down, how your body is excreting them, and that is tremendously helpful in understanding what could be causing your PMS, what could be causing your heavy periods, what's going on with your liver.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Even right Saying, okay, what is the root cause, because that's what we love to do here is get to the root cause of an imbalance, and so, anyway, that's the test that my clients use and that I well think you may want to consider as well. Now, if you are somebody who has irregular cycles, I'll just kind of put this one asterisk here that you may also want to consider some gut testing. Our gut is tremendously important and relevant to what's going on with our hormones. I won't get super in-depth on gut testing today, but let's just bring it back to the Dutch test and overall, right, if you're saying, okay, I have PMS, maybe I'm going through perimenopause, I just want to know what's going on Like, let's take a look at the quantifiable numbers here, then that's going to be a really good resource.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Now, when is the right time to test? Another question I get a lot. I'll start off by mentioning timing as it relates to hormonal birth control, because maybe some of you listening are taking hormonal birth control now. You plan to stop soon so that you can try to conceive, and you're going to have to wait or, for most forms of birth control, I should clarify you will need to wait until after you are done taking it and give your body sometimes a couple of months, a couple of cycles, to get back into the groove of things in order to see, like, what's going on there. Naturally, hormonal birth control designed to interrupt your cycle is going to also interrupt what your hormone levels are looking like, so it just wouldn't really give you a helpful or accurate picture.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Now, aside from that, when is the right time to do testing? Well, I would encourage you to try dialing in the foundations before you go to testing, right? What do I mean by dialing in the foundations? Have you really focused on what's going on with your sleep? What's going on with your nutrition? What's going on with your stress? Are you moving your body? Are you eating whole foods, all of that good stuff that I talk about all the time here on the podcast? So look at some of those things first.

Speaker 1: 5:09

But also, if you're somebody who, like you're really motivated by the numbers, you want to see the data, you want to see where you're at exactly now so you can understand where you've got to go, so you can see the change. I love that. And that's another time when clients say, hey, I just want to know exactly what it looks like. Right, I've got. You know I'm not super tight on budget, right, because some of these tests aren't. You know, they're not like $10 tests by any means Then, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 1: 5:40

The other thing I mentioned I would mention and this is the last one I'll say on this note is if you are having, for example, symptoms of high estrogen and also symptoms of low estrogen example, symptoms of high estrogen and also symptoms of low estrogen then yeah, that could be a good opportunity to do a panel so you can understand what's really going on there. Similarly, if you have symptoms of high testosterone or high androgens, but also symptoms of low androgens, okay, of course, once you've done some troubleshooting, maybe the next best step would be to do testing. I guess my final honorable mention here is what does your budget look like? Is it something that is realistic for you to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a test, or are there other kind of troubleshooting steps that you want to take in the meantime? Steps that you want to take in the meantime, remembering that the goal of testing or, in many cases, right testing, helps to inform you of what's going on. What is the root cause specifically when I'm talking about functional lab testing and so it's not saying, oh Okay, well, let's look at high estrogen and let's change that. It's like, okay, what is the overall picture in your body and how can you address and support that root cause in your overall health? Hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 7:04

In the longer form episode I talked about some of the markers that you might see from your doctor. Sometimes clients will say, oh yeah, I just had x, y and z. You know, I just had estrogen, testosterone and DHEAS, run by my doctor, which can certainly be helpful in painting the picture. For this mini episode, I'll just say that it's important to understand what day of your cycle you're on when you go to the doctor and talk to your doctor about just hey, do you need me to take this on Like? Do you need me to go to the lab to get this sample on a certain day of my cycle, or what's the best range, because, as you know, dear listener, your hormone levels will be changing throughout the month, and so just having that understanding of what's the right day to go can really help.

Speaker 1: 7:52

I personally like did not ask that, or I didn't know to ask that question, and was given bad advice on when to take it, and I was like, wow, why did I just waste so much money on this test? So I hope for you that that's not the case. We'll wrap it up for the day there. If you have any questions on this, then well, maybe check out the longer form one, or you can always connect with me on Instagram. You'll find me at Bridget Walton, and thanks so much for listening. I'll see you back here next week for your normal Tuesday episode, and we'll see you then.