Home Hormone Testing -Roger Mason

Our hormone levels are central to our health, how we feel, our immunity to disease, our quality of life, and how long we live. Read the other article Balance Your Hormones. Have you noticed medical doctors almost never check any of your hormone levels? Do you know anyone who even knows just one of their hormone levels? Doctors, unfortunately, know almost nothing about how to test your hormones, or natural hormone balance. Yes, this includes endocrinologists and gynecologists, as well as naturopaths, holistic, and life extension specialists. Doctors charge extortionate prices for office visits and blood tests. You can saliva test most of them. You can also get blood tests without doctors on the Internet like www.walkinlab.com and www.healthcheckusa.com Saliva tests cost less than $30 per hormone. You are looking for the youthful levels you had at about the age of 30. Let’s quickly review our basic hormones and see how to test them.

DHEA can be tested with a saliva kit. If you are low normal or worse, simply take oral DHEA tablets. Men can take 25 mg, and women half that (12.5 mg) generally. Be sure to retest after about 90 days so you’ll know you’re taking the right dose. If you are too high, only diet and lifestyle will lower your DHEA levels. Men want about 6 on the ZRT scale and women about 3. Men should read the article Androgen Resistance to understand this phenomenon where androgens turn into estrogens.

Testosterone can also be tested with a saliva kit. This gives your FREE level, and not your bound or total. Women need to test their testosterone just as much as men do. If low normal, or worse, you can use a 3%  transdermal cream, which generally delivers about 20% into the blood. Men need about 3 mg (15 mg cream) and women about 150 mcg (about 750 mg cream- 3/4 g). You can use sublingual testosterone enanthate in vegetable oil. This is 99% absorbed. Men can use 4 mg (3 mg actual testostererone), and women 200 mcg (150 mcg actual testosterone). Never use oral or injected testosterone. You can make your own transdermal DMSO solutions, which are 99% absorbed, with testosterone enanthate if you want, as they are not FDA approved. Please read my book Testosterone Is Your Friend. Read the articleNew Ways to Use Testosterone. You can get testosterone legally and inexpensively on the Internet for your personal use. Read You Don't Need an Rx. If a woman has hyper levels, only diet and lifestyle will lower them. Men cannot naturally have hyper levels, as high levels convert to estrogens. Men should ideally be about 100 on the ZRT scale and women about 40.

Even endocrinologists rarely test pregnenolone. This is a vital hormone. People over 40 should take pregnenolone generally. Men can use 50 mg, and women 25 mg. We’ll have good saliva tests soon, but none seem available in 2014. You can see a doctor for a blood test, but this gets very expensive. You can go to Internet clinics for a real, inexpensive blood test without a doctor like www.walkinlab.com

People over 40 generally need melatonin as well. This can only be tested at 3:00 AM with a saliva kit. Take melatonin only at night. Men can use 3 mg and women can use 1.5 mg (half tabs). Reliable saliva tests are available if you look hard on the Internet. Doctors just can’t help you here. You would need to go to an overnight sleep clinic and get a blood draw. If you are over 40 you can safely take it without testing.

Your free T3 and free T4 thyroid hormones cannot be tested with saliva currently. The blood spot tests are overpriced. See the article Thyroid Balance in our library, and get this done without a doctor (you’ll also get your TSH with this.) Go to www.healthcheckusa.com. Do not bother with your T3 uptake. Your TSH means nothing without the free T3 and free T4 values. Do not accept low normal values here- you must be midrange. (Add high and low range and divide by 2.) If low normal, you can start with 12.5 mg of T3 (Cytomel), or 50 mcg of T4 (Synthroid). These are bioidentical to your own hormones, and have no side effects when used properly. You can get them legally and inexpensively from Mexican Internet pharmacies. Please read You Don’t Need a Prescription in our library. Google “Cynomel” and “Levoxyl” to find them.

You can test your cortisol with saliva. Get a four sample kit and do this at 9/1/5/9 for a comprehensive profile. Search the Internet for these. High cortisol indicates stress, and only diet and lifestyle will lower this. Low cortisol may call for Cortef® cortisol tablets (hydrocortisone). Little research is available on low cortisol levels. You really do not need to bother testing cortisol, as it is what it is. Diet and lifestyle will normalize your levels.

Men over 40 can use transdermal progesterone without testing, as can post-menopausal women. Premenopausal women cannot use a saliva kit as it is fat soluble. You can use an Internet clinic, or just it two weeks of your period. Use a good brand of natural USP progesterone cream with 1,000 mg per two ounce jar. Men need a mere 1/8^th tsp five days a week. Women according to their menstrual status. Read my book Natural Health for Women to learn more.

Insulin, per se, should not be tested, but rather your fasting blood sugar should be 85 or less. Please remember that figure- 85 or less. Buy a $10 Tru® blood sugar meter at the chain drug store. Your HbA1c should be 4.7 or less, and not the 5.6 figure the doctor recommends. If your blood sugar is over 85, get a one hour/one draw glucose tolerance test (GTT). You drink a 75 g cup of glucose, and have your blood sugar measured an hour later to see the response. You want a level 20 points below what the doctor will tell you. Insulin resistance is epidemic. Diet and lifestyle lowers fasting blood glucose levels. Stop eating simple sugars of all kinds. This includes honey, fruit juice, dried fruits, sucralose, stevia, etc. Read the article Sugar is Sugar. The GTT is the gold standard.

Women should saliva test all three estrogens- estradiol, estrone, and estriol. Doctors don’t even know what estriol is, or care. Estradiol is never low, estrone is rarely low, but estriol is commonly low in Western women. If low in any of these, use a natural transdermal cream or gel (never oral pills), or get a compounding pharmacist to make sublingual drops of natural estrogens. Men over 50 can test their estradiol and estrone with saliva. Rising estrogen is a problem for aging males. (Estriol in men is almost never problematic.) Men and women want LOW normal estradiol and estrone. Women want HIGH normal estriol, not just normal.

Growth hormone cannot be tested with saliva, and you need a 4 blood draw test in 12 hours (every three hours) at a lab to get accurate results. It is better to go by RESULTS here after you take it. If you are over 50 you can probably get modest benefits from injecting 1 IU a day. You can use it sublingually in DMSO, but this is not approved by the FDA. NONE of the over-the-counter products have any value at all. Please read You Don’t Need a Prescription. Don’t even think of using GH unless you have balanced all your other basic hormones. Totally overrated.

Cholesterol is the precursor to all our sex hormones. Make sure yours is about 150, and your triglycerides under 100. Most American adults run levels of about 240 total cholesterol! These two are the most important indictors of heart and artery health. You can also get your CRP, uric acid, and homocysteine tested inexpensively. Look for low normal levels. CHD is the biggest killer of all, and these are the five most important diagnostic factors. Read my books Lower Cholesterol Without Drugs andLower Blood Pressure Without Drugs.

You will never enjoy full health unless all your basic hormones are at youthful levels. Remember that our hormones work harmoniously together in concert as a team, so balance as many as you can. Hormones are discussed at length in my books.

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