There are three different test forms to assess hormonal levels, serum (blood), urine and saliva. There is no one best way to measure hormones. Each method has its advantages and pitfalls. When people are making their own hormones, any of the popular testing modalities (serum, saliva, urine) are used to identify a significant hormone deficiency or excess. Here at custom made medicine, we deal with saliva and urine testing. Saliva testing is convenient and reflects the free bio-available hormone levels. It is the free hormones that best reflect a patients hormonally related symptoms rather than total or bound hormone levels as measured in serum.
Saliva testing is safe, simple, painless, non-invasive, convenient, economical and can be collected at home. It is an accurate method for assessing bio-available hormone levels. Multiple collections can be taken over a day such as when assessing cortisol, the stress hormone or melatonin levels at midnight. In addition, it is ideal for assessing female hormonal levels over a menstrual cycle to more accurately pinpoint peaks and troughs in hormonal levels.
The limitations in saliva testing which may affect the results would be if there is sinus congestion, allergies, oral infection, or blood in saliva (from bleeding gums etc.).
The category of saliva hormones that we can be tested are the adrenocortex (stress profile),a sleep profile with cortisol and melatonin or the female cycle 28 days profile over 11 days (progesterone, estridiol and testosterone) and the male hormonal profile with DHEA, Estrogens, Testosterone, DHT and androsterone ratios.