Have you ever been told this?
“Your labs came back normal. We’re not seeing anything wrong.”
This is often a BIG source of frustration for many of my patients, because they’re left without answers, feel like they’re crazy and at a dead end when it comes to getting the care they need.
If this has happened to you, you’re not crazy, and...
A normal lab result doesn’t tell your whole story.
This is especially true when it comes to testing hormone levels in the blood. Your hormone health is more than a number on a page and that number doesn’t always explain why you feel like garbage.
You can have “normal” labs and still feel awful.
Our hormones are quite complex and are interwoven with other systems in the body. It’s like a spider web: when you tug on one part of it, the whole web is affected.
When assessing hormone health, it’s important to do more than just look at standard lab tests. That’s why I use an approach that considers the whole person.
Because you ARE a whole person, right?
My approach looks at PTSD…and no, it’s not that PTSD. It has to do with the
Production, Transport, Sensitivity, and Detoxification of your hormones.
Production considers what could be affecting the gland that makes the hormone, and also asks:
Do you have enough raw material to make the hormone? For example, many of your hormones are made from cholesterol, and while a ton of emphasis is placed on the risks of having too much cholesterol, you still need enough to be able to make adequate progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, estrogen and cortisol. Some endurance athletes or individuals who are undernourished may not make enough cholesterol required to make adequate hormones, which can lead to hormone deficiencies.
Transport (+ conversion + interactions) asks: Is this hormone being properly transported to where it needs to be in the body? Your body makes special proteins whose jobs are to transport hormones throughout the body. One of these is called Sex Hormone Binding Globulin, (SHBG). I like to think of transporters like SHGB as taxis in the body, picking up and dropping off hormones at their destinations.
Having too many or not enough of these taxis can affect how a hormone acts in the body. When a hormone is being taxied around by SHBG, it’s bound to it, making it inactive until it’s “dropped off” to where its needed, where it then becomes active and does its job. Too much SHBG and the hormone’s activity is diminished, too little and you can have excess hormones hanging out in the bloodstream, allowing them to be freely active and interacting with your cells and other hormones.
The “T” in PTSD also asks, How does this hormone interact with other hormones and vice versa? Does this hormone need to be converted to a different form before the body can use it? How is that impacted? An example here is your thyroid hormones. Your thyroid gland releases a hormone known as thyroxine(T4), which needs to be converted to triiodothyronine (T3), the active thyroid hormone used by your cells. Things like stress, nutrient deficiencies, poor gut or liver health and blood sugar issues can affect this conversion.
Sensitivity asks: How are your cells responding to messages they receive from your hormones? Very often we can improve our cells’ sensitivity to the signals they receive from our hormones with nutrition and lifestyle changes. Exercise is one example. Exercise, especially cardio, can improve your cells’ response to insulin and can be one effective tool for helping balance blood sugar in people with insulin resistance.
Detoxification asks: How well is your body able to get rid of excess hormones? This primarily involves looking at the health of your gut and liver, who are the heavy hitters when it comes to eliminating excess hormones from the body.
A hormone imbalance is often a response to an imbalance somewhere else in the body, and when you address one imbalance, you can improve the other.
By looking beyond a “normal” lab result and asking these PTSD questions, I help patients get to the root cause of their symptoms, and provide them with a personalized plan so that they can get back their vitality and feel like their best self again.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do you feel like "garbage" but don't know why?
Contact me for a complimentary discovery call and start your journey to better health and well-being!
