What You Need to Know About Saliva Hormone Testing

Hormone imbalances can cause trouble for both men and women, contributing to or causing a number of ailments. Maintaining healthy, stable hormone levels can greatly improve life quality, but how do you know if you have a hormone imbalance? There are many types of hormone tests available, including saliva testing, blood testing, DUTCH testing, and more. If you feel overwhelmed by deciding what type of hormone test is right for you, never fear. This article will give you an overview of saliva testing, a non-invasive and inexpensive hormone test. Continue reading to learn more about saliva hormone testing. 

Why is it Important to Measure Hormones?

Hormone imbalances can lead to, or worsen, several conditions, including affecting your fertility, causing mood swings (PMS), impacting sleep quality, increasing feelings of anxiety or depression, leading to weight gain, and more. But what are hormones, and why are they important?

Hormones are chemicals that are secreted by glands in the body and are then transported by the blood stream throughout the body. Each hormone has a purpose, supporting and managing your organs or systems, and helping them function properly. If a hormone is present within the body at too high or too low a level, it can create an imbalance, throwing off the whole body and causing it to function improperly. Further, hormones often work together… too little of one can result in too much of another, creating an ongoing cycle of imbalance within the body. 

Understanding the hormones at work in your body, and where they may be imbalanced, can help identify the sources of malfunctions and ailments. Treatments or lifestyle changes that can bring them back into balance can greatly improve your quality of life, and hormone testing can help your healthcare provider determine the proper course of treatment to address your ailments. 

What can Cause Hormone Imbalance?

There are many possible causes of hormone imbalances. Some people suffer from hormone imbalance due to a medical issue such as ovarian cysts, PCOS, tumors, or other illnesses. Lifestyle factors can also influence hormone levels, however. Stress, lack of sleep, and poor diet can all lead to or worsen a hormone imbalance within the body. Self-care and living a healthy lifestyle are important to the production and function of hormones, and your treatment plan will likely include some form of lifestyle adjustment or change. 

Symptoms of hormone imbalance can include fatigue, weight gain or loss, anxiety, depression, insomnia, skin conditions, or mood swings. However, symptoms can vary depending on your own body, habits, and condition. If you feel that you may be suffering from a hormone imbalance, or that your body is not functioning as it should be, it is important to speak to your healthcare provider to undergo testing. 

How is Saliva Hormone Testing Performed?

Saliva hormone testing is a non-invasive, accurate, and inexpensive way to test for hormone imbalance, and as such it is gaining popularity. Hormones are often bound to carrier proteins as they circulate throughout the body, but saliva diagnostics measure the amount of free, unbound hormones available to act in the body. As such, salivary concentrations represent the hormone levels that are most likely to impact the body, and by measuring these levels it can be more easily determined where there may be an excess or deficiency of a specific hormone. 

Saliva hormone testing is non-invasive and stress free! The patient must simply spit into a sterile tube to collect their saliva sample, and then send it to the lab for testing and analysis. Patients will be required to collect samples at multiple intervals throughout the day to establish an accurate baseline, as well as to measure the changes in hormone levels as the day passes. 

Advantages of Saliva Hormone Testing

Not only is saliva hormone testing non-invasive and inexpensive, but it also has many other advantages. Due to the nature of its collection, saliva testing can be performed anywhere, at any time, with multiple specimens collected. Saliva testing samples are more easily stored than other test samples—blood samples, for example—which makes the test much more flexible. Further, blood-based testing can only detect hormones in the blood stream, where the hormones are bound to proteins and not free to affect other organs and systems in the body… this does not always provide a reliable picture of how much of a body’s hormones are ready for delivery and use by tissues and organs. Saliva testing can give a much more accurate picture of where the body is provided with excess, or insufficient, hormones. 

Advances in saliva hormone testing are continuously being made, with tests becoming more and more accurate. If you believe you are experiencing a hormone imbalance and would like to undergo saliva testing, contact Dr Cecilia Ho. Hormone testing may need to be conducted multiple times to monitor conditions or determine the effectiveness of treatment. Schedule a consultation with Dr Cecilia to discuss testing options and determine what type of hormone testing is right for you. Call Dr. Cecilia Ho at 905-492-8688 to learn more about how hormone testing and other naturopathic medicines can improve your health.