Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy

What Is Saliva Hormone Testing?

Saliva Hormone Testing seems to be popping up more and more these days in the news. With hormone replacement therapy and other hormone health issues to worry about, it’s hard to know where to turn. I have been doing research on testing hormones using the hormone saliva test kit. Anyone ever tested in this way? If so, what were the results and were they accurate? Thanks.

Saliva Testing is an accurate and simple way for the ordinary man or women to assess the current levels of steroid hormones (e.g. estradiol, progesterone, testosterone) – in their body without having to make an expensive visit a doctors office.

Scientific literature for almost 30 years has documented saliva testing of steroid hormones. Saliva testing is routinely used in scientific research settings and as standard textbook material for students of endocrinology and internal medicine (Williams Textbook of Endocrinology). The World Health Organization (WHO) approved this method of testing in the 1990′s when it was found to be an accurate, convenient and noninvasive measurement of free hormone levels.

Steroid hormones in saliva reflect the portion of circulating hormones in the bloodstream that are unbound by serum binding proteins (free or bioavailable) and therefore are able to enter tissues throughout the body. The salivary hormone values, therefore, reflect the biologically active (the unbound) portion available to target cells. Blood hormone assays reflect both bound and free forms of hormones and do not provide information about the bioavailable fraction of hormone, which can vary depending on the level of blood hormone binding proteins.

Simply put, hormone saliva testing tells us the amount of hormones in our body that are actually usable by our cells; where as blood testing evaluates all circulating hormones regardless of their availability to our cells – and most importantly anyone can do this easy test.

New research on hormone replacement therapy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.