Hormone testing in perimenopause

Last week we talked about the importance of lab testing! It’s so hard to know what is causing what without understanding deficiencies and other building blocks we can get from testing. 

Hormone testing is a bit more complicated.

Some of the hormones (Vitamin D, Thyroid, Insulin, Cortisol, Testosterone), I test quite frequently in perimenopause, but the sex hormones are a nuanced story.   

If you’re a menstruating person, your estrogen is changing literally every day of the month…there might be some days in your cycle where your estrogen is 100pmol/L and other days where it’s 1000pmol/L. If you had an ovulatory cycle - you’ll produce progesterone, but if you don't you will not.

In perimenopause we expect you to have some cycles where you ovulate and some where you don’t. Some moments in the month where you estrogen sky-rockets and some moments when it tanks. 

Testing tells us what’s happening in that moment but doesn’t tell us what’s happening the next week or the next month.

What we get MORE insight from, is tracking how and when the symptoms change throughout the month.

There are some circumstances where it might still be valuable to test, in that case we want to test on Day 3 of bleeding - we have a good reference range at this point in the month to understand the results as estrogen is typically at its lowest here.

Just because we might not test the sex hormones doesn’t mean we won’t test other very important things; iron deficiency and insulin resistance are very common in perimenopause and often contribute to the ‘hormonal symptoms’.  

There are lots of things to consider, and while hormone testing may not be the number 1 strategy, we can certainly treat them! There are many safe and effective solutions to support you through this time of transition.  

We can’t stop the process of perimenopause. 

We can’t necessarily regulate your cycles as that can be part of the natural change that occurs.

But we CAN make the experience much smoother.

We CAN make sure you have the foundations to feel your best self and manage your symptoms. 

We can make sure you know your options in terms of treatment.  

If you’re between 38-50 and experiencing menstrual cycle changes along with the symptoms described above, it very well could be perimenopause.  

We don’t want to blame everything on that transition, so it’s still important to do our due diligence to understand what’s going on. But I do want you to know you’re not crazy, hormones DO impact your mood, and there ARE safe and effective solutions.

Interested to explore this for yourself? Book a visit with me to get started.