What Does Your Saliva Reveal About Your Health

Counting your hormones: Easy as 1, 2, 3

Your trusted mirror has confirmed the fact that you’re aging. This can only mean you’re missing hormones, but which hormones? The next and most important step of bioidentical hormone treatment is testing for a hormone count.

As if you don’t have enough decisions to make, deciding which test to take to measure your hormones can be tough. I’ve tried alleviating extra stressors by offering you the best way to check your hormones, which is through your saliva. Through extensive research and laboratory trials, I’ve come to realize that saliva
hormone testing is by far the simplest and most accurate way to determine metabolic factors and biological age. With the help of a trained physician or expert health worker, you’ll learn how to achieve and maintain a biohormone balance. Needless to say, no one should be careless and use supplements without understanding how to balance them. Your physician will customize a life-long natural supplement plan
tailored to you and only you.

Step 1: Acknowledging you have a problem not sure where this fits in?
Step 2: Knowing how hormones work
Step 3: Seeking expert advice to evaluate your available hormone count

Hormonal Testing and Monitoring
“If you can spit, we can test”

The saliva panel is my favorite screening tool for determining an accurate hormone count. Like a saliva panel, the urine and blood tests can also determine your hormone count. However, unlike hormones found in blood and urine, hormones found in saliva are free and unbound by protein. This means saliva analysis would reflect the exact markers of your own working hormonal activity.

Saliva hormone testing is the only easy test through which you can directly and accurately measure Free Unbound Active hormones.

Hormones, by nature, are the very life force of our existence. They circulate within our bloodstream in the form of bound and unbound hormones. The bound hormone fraction is a biologically inactive hormone that is connected to cortisol-bound globulins (CBG) and sex hormone binding globulins (SHBG). Both are glycoproteins that bind to sex hormones DHEA, testosterone and estradiol. These bound hormones make up more than 95 percent of the total hormones that circulate throughout our bloodstream. Therefore, any measurement of essential hormones in our blood is a reflection of an immensely large number of inactive hormones, meaning that in order to achieve an accurate hormone report, multiple blood drawing attempts are required.

Unbound by any other protein or globulin, free hormones make up a rather small fraction of hormones that circulate throughout a person’s body. Free hormones are completely available for immediate use by organ and tissue receptors for the maintenance of the body’s activity. These small yet essential portions of free hormones represent only 1 to 5 percent of the total concentration of hormones in our blood, whereas in the saliva hormones exhibit quite a presence. Free and unbound hormones show through saliva testing, making it the most accurate and painless way to obtain a correct hormonal status report. Affordable and convenient, saliva samples are collected by one’s spitting into capsule sized tubes. They’re then sent to laboratories for
evaluation. Within days, the patient’s physician is contacted with the results on the free hormone (active and useable) count.

Slimy and sure: It’s in your saliva.

There’s a balanced agreement between blood and saliva. By this, I mean the ratio between saliva and hormones is always constant. For example, in a blood test, testosterone shows up as 100 to 1 (100:1). This means blood shows 100 times more testosterone than saliva would ever show. Sensitivity and accuracy issues arise when such a large number appears in testing; “100” represents the total number of hormone, both unbound and bound in saliva hormone testing.

It is important to refrain from eating or drinking two hours before each sample as it can cause inaccuracy in your test results.  It is also important to be aware of blood contamination.  This may be prevented by avoiding brushing and flossing your teeth two hours before samples are collected.   If you see ANY blood in your sample, it should be discarded and retaken.

Saliva hormone testing pros and cons

Studies on saliva testing are finally becoming more abundant as it becomes a more widely accepted practice. From the pharmacokinetic perspective, there is a lack of published information involving the medical phenomena involving various types and ranges of salivary delivery systems (i.e., transdermal hormone delivery shows an enhanced salivary presence). The saliva sample collection poses minimal disturbance to the patient’s lifestyle. These collections can be taken under any circumstance and are suggested to be taken during various concurrent symptoms, e.g. during stress attack episodes,
weakness, dizzy spells, and before and after intense physical activities like playing sports. Saliva hormone testing is much more appealing as it is non-evasive, painless and convenient because it can be done any time of the day or night. It doesn’t require a professional to draw blood because if you can spit, we can test.

If you wish to order the Saliva Hormone Test Kit through BARM, please call the office at 313-561-6800 or email us at [email protected].

If you have any more questions about saliva testing, CLICK HERE to schedule a Free Telehealth Consultation with Dr. Paul Ling Tai to discover what your saliva will reveal about your health.