[SERIES] Which Labs Best Serve Your Goal | Ep. 5 of 8

Hello, hello, and welcome back to episode five of the series. Right now we are talking about what lab work will actually be helpful for you because unfortunately not all testing is created equal. You may have done some testing in the past with your primary care provider and that can be a great base on when I'm working with new clients. We'll take a look at the testing that they've already done. We'll look at things like insulin, glucose, thyroid hormones and inflammation markers. Those might be familiar from the tests that you possibly do with your primary care provider provider. If you have an upcoming appointment with your provider, keep in mind that you can ask them for specific tests like fasting insulin, like sex hormone binding globulin. You probably already thought of these ones, but estrogen and progesterone and other sex hormones that can help to give you a really good baseline. One important note, if you are testing your sex hormones, you need to do it on the right day of your cycle to get the best results. So generally that will be about a week after ovulation. If you have about a 28 day menstrual cycle, then that'll be around cycle day 21 plus or minus a few. Make sure that you have that conversation with your doctor about what timing is best. It could fluctuate depending on what he or she is ordering for you more specifically. So that's my note there. Let's talk a little bit about where standard testing falls a little bit short though, because this information can be a great baseline, but it can only get you so far. Most conventional providers don't offer really comprehensive lab testing. A lot of them will refer you out to like an allergy specialist, but that's different from what you might need to look at, which is food sensitivities. So why does this matter? This matters because if you are eating foods that are irritating your gut lining that are causing an immune reaction, that's what happens when you have food sensitivities, that can make your hormone journey, or I suppose your journey back to hormone balance much slower. So let me tell you about the testing that I use in my practice and why, because this could be critical for you to be able to speed up your timeline as well. First gut health testing. I use a gut health panel with the majority of my clients. So this panel details what's going on in your digestive system. It will clue us into what's going on as it relates to bacteria or potential viruses or parasites, yeast or fungus. It gives us information about inflammation and your immune system status. It also can suggest whether or not gluten is an issue for you. All of those things, all of those individual components can be very helpful. But the overall takeaway of this is that it gives us a broad picture, broad context so that we can create a plan specific to you, specific to your biology to restore balance. So we're talking about saying goodbye to bloating or burping or stomach aches, running to the bathroom or avoiding your favorite foods. I did this test on myself actually after seven years of gut issues. This was the thing that finally gave me clear direction on how to fix my gut. It showed me exactly what was going on and what I needed to do about it. So gut health testing, the stool test, can't talk about it enough. Next, let's talk about food sensitivity testing. I like to pair a food sensitivity test with the gut panel because it reinforces the protocol that we will customize and personalize for you to restore your gut health. And I'll give you an example from myself because when I did my test, I was off the charts high, reactive to basal shrimp scallop and soy. And I've never noticed a reaction in real time to eating any of those foods. Honestly, I was eating them all the time. But because I had the data from that food sensitivity test, I knew that my body was low key upset with me for consuming them. I knew that my immune system, my gut would need a break from those specific foods in order to be able to recover. And so once you eliminate those things, it's not indefinite. It's just for a specific, you know, three or maybe six month period that will help to catalyze your recovery and catalyze the change that you see in your hormone health as a result. Third, of course, we have to talk about hormone testing. And for hormone testing, specifically what I'll use with clients are urine samples collected at home. It's really easy because your kit will be sent to your home. This is actually the same with the gut test. The kit is sent to your home. You'll collect the samples, send it into the lab. But why do we go this route? Because when you use these dry urine samples, it will give you a crystal clear picture of not only what your hormone levels are at, but how are they breaking down? What is happening with estrogen and progesterone as they break down and metabolize or as they convert into other hormones? Because for example, testosterone is kind of the building block for estrogen and it will then convert into estrogen. So it makes it really easy to see where is the deficiency and again, coming back to the root cause, being able to identify what is the root cause. Where is this all starting? That can be so key because again, we're seeing how your hormones metabolize through this type of test. It gives you a much deeper level of information than what you can get through just a blood test alone. A shout out really quick too because the hormone panels that we use will also reveal how your cortisol, your stress hormone changes throughout the day. A lot of your hormones change on a pretty regular basis. That's normal. So getting a single snapshot in time, when you go to the lab, for example, it's just not as helpful as collecting multiple samples throughout different times of the day. It gives you a much more complete picture. I hope that this was helpful information for you and depending on where you're at now, you might want to ask your primary care provider for some of the labs that I mentioned. But now you have the context on what to ask for. You can also understand how you can get like a level deeper from where you're at now. And again, if you're listening to this and you feel like you've tried everything, this level deeper could be the thing that catalyzes your transformation and gets you where you want to be. So what is next? In the next episode, we're talking about mindset shifts for lasting change. This is the piece that almost no one talks about in the hormone health space, but it could be really sabotaging your progress and you will not want to miss that one on mindset. Real quick, I just want to invite you to book your 45 minute discovery call because that's the first, the next best way for you to get really clear on the easiest path to balance, the easiest path for you personalized one-on-one guidance for you. And so you can just stop wasting time guessing, right? On this discovery call, you'll learn more about my coaching packages as well so you can decide if an I'm hormonal coaching package is the right fit for you. This discovery call is for women who are done guessing, you are ready to work with someone who can help you identify and address the root cause of your hormone and got imbalance. So you can go to I'm hormonal.com/goals or click on the link in the show notes to get started. All right, we'll see you in the next one talking about mindset. (upbeat music)