Blood, Urine, and Saliva testing available in different situations/cases
Best option: Peak/trough timed hormone blood panel testing combined with urine hormone metabolite testing. The urine metabolites will confirm adequate tissue levels, but are not needed in all cases.
Examples of some of the hormones tested:
Saliva Hormone analysis is limited in its utility
Understanding Saliva Hormone limitations:
Medical studies confirm that if people stop taking their bio-identical hormones, a saliva test will still incorrectly show that they are still taking the hormone even though the person stopped taking it 3 months prior. This error in saliva testing is why saliva testing should not be used by a doctor to make most treatment decisions with regard to bio-identical hormone replacement. This limitation occurs in saliva testing only because the hormone is stored in the lymphatic ducts of a person especially when the hormone is absorbed transdermally (under the tongue or through the skin). The lymphatic system feeds the saliva glands with stored/excess hormones that do NOT reflect what hormones that are in a person’s tissues and thus, this process makes the saliva test result often unreliable.