Hormone Testing: Why Should You Choose Salivary Testing?

I treat a lot of hormone imbalance in my practice but in order to develop a specific treatment protocol tailored for each patient, it is first important to determine the cause of the imbalance.  This means ordering hormone testing.  Except thyroid hormone, for most hormone testing I recommend salivary hormone testing.  This is due to the fact that unlike serum tests, saliva testing represents only hormones actively delivered to receptors in the body. This means that the test measures bioavailable hormones which provides an accurate expression of the body’s active hormone levels. As well, saliva testing is an easy and non-invasive way of assessing hormone imbalance and can be done in the comfort of the patient’s home. Saliva testing can also be used to determine whether hormone levels are too high or too low as a result of supplementation.