What You Need to Know About Getting Your Hormone Levels Checked

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and can't offer medical advice on whether or not you need, or should get, a blood test. This is a conversation you need to have with your doctor, and there may be reasons why they may recommend you to get your hormones checked (they know your medical history and specific case). And it may be necessary/useful to get a blood test for diagnosis of certain conditions (such as checking androgen levels for PCOS, for example).

Speaking more generally, and in relation to testing your estrogen and progesterone levels specifically, must you get these tested to know if you have a hormone imbalance, or before you can work with a health coach or other health professional on addressing a hormone imbalance? 

For most individuals, the general answer would be, 'no'; it's not obligatory to test your sex hormone levels, and sometimes it may not always be that helpful, especially if they're not tested correctly!

Here in the UK many GPs won't routinely agree to test your hormone levels - for many reasons, but one of which may be that the tests need to be performed on specific days of your cycle, and many women don't track their cycle so don't know when 'day 3' is, for example, or they don't have a regular cycle so can't always predict when day 3 will be.

And, even if you do know when day 3 is, you might not always be able to get to the doctor on that day for the test!

In addition, progesterone and estrogen need to be tested on different days of the cycle, and, again, this might not be convenient/possible for many women.

But, only testing one hormone alone may not be helpful or accurate, as it's important to see the balance between the hormones to get a true representation of what's going on.

And not testing the hormones on the right day of the cycle, or not knowing what day of the cycle it is, might not be helpful, unless you have a reference point of what that hormone should be doing (in a healthy cycle) at that point in the cycle.

What's more, some health professionals also question whether testing hormones is useful in terms of the reference values that most labs use.

When you get a blood test done, there's usually a 'normal range' that your result is compared against. But, what if this 'normal range' was actually decided based on what 'people who go for blood tests' usually present with? People who go for blood tests are often getting a test done in the first place because they suspect there's something wrong... in other words, they are not always representative of a healthy population. So, what's 'normal' is not necessarily what's 'healthy' or 'optimal'. To address this, functional medicine tends to use an 'optimal range' for blood tests, as opposed to conventional Western medicine's 'normal range'. In addition, each lab may have its own 'normal range', so your results may be deemed as 'normal' or 'abnormal' based on where you get them done. The range may also be so large that it's not sensitive to picking up people at the outer edges (again, the optimal range may be much smaller, or in the middle). You may be borderline 'normal', for example, but if the range is very large, then someone at the bottom edge of the range will feel very different to someone at the top edge of the range.

Finally, the results themselves may not be indicative of how you actually feel or the symptoms you have (or don't have). You may have very severe and obvious symptoms of excess estrogen, for example, but it's not reflected in your blood test, or the blood test may say that your hormones are not 'normal', but you may feel fine and symptom-free. In relation to tests for fertility, they can also cause unnecessary and unhelpful fear and anxiety for many individuals, especially if, for example, your AMH levels are low (indicating you don't have many eggs left). But the test doesn't tell you the quality of the eggs, only the quantity. And having lots of eggs of poor quality may not be more desirable than having fewer, high quality, eggs.

All of that to say that it's not always 100% necessary to get a hormone test done first, before starting to work with a health professional (such as a health coach) on addressing your symptoms and improving your health. The symptoms you have can often be just as helpful and instructive in piecing together your hormone story. But, if you do decide to have a blood test, make sure they are taken on the right days (for those hormones), and, even with that, remember that a test is just a snapshot of that particular month, and may not give an 100% accurate 'big picture' overview of your hormones.

Having said that, it's always better to be safe than sorry, so, generally speaking, it's important to get tested to rule out other, more serious, conditions. In particular, if your cycle changes suddenly, for no obvious reason, if you experience bleeding outwith your period, new and unexpected pain, or unusual gut symptoms, it's extremely important to tell your doctor or healthcare provider as soon as possible, so that they can investigate and perform any tests they deem necessary.

If, however, you've spoken to your doctor about your symptoms and they are reluctant to test your hormones, or tell you it's unnecessary, I hope this can help shed some light on why that might be!

If you have symptoms of a hormone imbalance and would like to work with a health coach on addressing them holistically, book in for a free consultation. If you're not sure what the symptoms of a hormone imbalance are, check out my recent instagram post or free webinar which lists some of the main symptoms.

Are you struggling to get your doctor to test your hormones? Did they explain the results to you? Did you know the hormones have to be tested on specific days? Let me know know in the comments below!