Hormones are pretty important. They are chemical messengers that control most of the physiologic processes that happen in your body. Hormones tell your body when to grow and when not to grow. They control healing and how fast you age. Hormones directly regulate your brain neurotransmitters. Low hormone levels means low transmitters and the result is your brain does not work right. Hormones control all your organs. They decide whether you have the energy to pick up your shoes in the morning and whether you ever fall asleep at night. They control how strong your bones are as well as your blood vessels. Hormones control baby making and even whether you want babies. They control how fat or skinny you are and whether you have a full head of hair. They run just about everything.
There are over 50 hormones running your life behind the scenes. The quality of your life is really about the quality of the hormone regulation of your body. They chemically regulate the processes of your life. As you might guess, the health of your hormone system is of vital importance to you on every level. Yet how many of you pay any attention to the health of your hormone system?
If you have had thyroid issues in the past, you will be aware of the importance of balanced thyroid hormone levels. Any women that have hit menopause know all about the importance of estrogen and progesterone. And if you are tuned into the regulation of stress, you are probably aware of the hormone cortisol. So that only leaves 46 more hormones that are just as important as those mentioned to be aware of and support.
Considering how important these chemical messengers are, why aren’t we taught more about them so we can support our health by supporting our proper hormone levels? The why is actually pretty simple – no one understands them fully. They are very complex and how they interact is still the playground of research scientists. Your average MD is familiar with thyroid and estrogen because drug companies make synthetic forms of these to treat certain conditions. But in the world of medicine, there is a lot to deal with in the body. If there is not an approved treatment for a measurable condition, it is largely ignored. If you go to an endocrinologist – a hormone specialist – the primary thing they do is test and wait. Everything is so complex. The safe course is to do very little and wait to see the results.
Science has moved forward over the years. The level of testing is getting ever more complex and the quality of information we can gain from testing is truly amazing. I recently got signed up as a provider with a new hormone-testing lab that is taking things up to the next level. Up until now all we could do is draw blood or use saliva to test for the specific levels of a small number of hormones. This was useful but left a lot of unknowns after all was said and done.
For instance, if we were to test for a popular male hormone, testosterone, we would see if there was enough testosterone in the blood of the patient. If there wasn’t enough testosterone, we might prescribe a hormone gel to apply every day to raise the hormone levels. The problem is this usually does not work. A blood level test does not tell us if the body is simply worn out and not producing testosterone, or if something is destroying the testosterone, or if it is being converted into something else. Now we can find out that kind of information with a simple urine test. We can check not only a bunch of the hormones, but their breakdown metabolites as well. Breakdown metabolites are the chemicals the hormones break down into when the body is destroying them to eliminate the waste.
With this information we can now know if too much hormone is being made and destroyed just as fast, or if too little hormone is being made. It will even tell us if the hormone is being changed into something else. With this information we can make a much more accurate diagnosis and better treatment. Even better, every step in the hormone synthesis and breakdown pathways have substances that can speed up or slow down the process. Most of these support substances are natural products. We can prescribe specific nutritional protocols that will help bring your hormone back into line with normal physiology.
The new rest I am talking about is called the Dutch test. It is a urine test. You pee on a piece of blotter paper 4 times during the day, let it dry, and mail it into the lab. So it is super simple to do. The amount of information we get from this test is amazing. It gives us readings on 38 different hormones and metabolites. It checks how well our stress handling glands are functioning, our sleep-wake hormone cycles, all the male and female hormones, the basic youth hormones, and how well these are all being processed by the body. To do this level of testing, just a few years ago, would have cost us many thousands of dollars. Now the tech is so advanced and automated that this whole testing process only costs $399.
One immediate use we have put the test to is to check to see if the breast cancer causing forms of estrogen are building up in the system, or if the body is good at eliminating them – very important if you or a family member has been diagnosed with an estrogen sensitive cancer in the past.
I am excited about this new technology and the information it will be able to provide my patients. In particular I am excited about all the natural ways there are to moderate the hormone system. If you are interested I would recommend you check out the Dutch test website and watch some of their introductory videos. You can find them at www.dutchtest.com. Then if you want to go further, I have a few of the test kits at the office.