Monitor Your Basic Hormone Levels

- Roger Mason

     

How many of you dear readers over 40 have decided to take one or more natural hormones to make you younger, stronger, healthier, give you stronger immunity and a longer life? If you are taking any natural hormone you must monitor your levels at least once a year to make sure you are maintaining the youthful level you want. Everyone is biologically unique, so everyone has a different hormone profile. If you have been taking any hormone for a year or more please be sure to test your levels with an inexpensive saliva test kit. Do not take any hormones, drugs or liquor, or vigorous exercise for 24 hours before testing or you may "spike" your level and get a misleading result. Test all your levels at the same time of the morning every time for consistency. Are you taking melatonin? Your doctor can't very well test your level at 3:00. The current saliva test kits don't seem to be reliable. In 2007 or 2008 we should have dependable ones. Our melatonin levels fall from the time we're 18. Men can try 3 mg every night and women 3 mg about four nights a week. Melatonin has proven anti-cancer properties among many other benefits. You'll hear a lot more about this in the future. If you test low for DHEA men can try 25 mg and women half tablets of 12.5 mg. If your level is too high only diet and lifestyle will lower it. Test your DHEA with saliva at, say, 9:00 in the morning. Remember that excessive DHEA levels are dangerous and just as bad as deficient ones. This is a major hormone for life extension. Did you test low for testosterone - men and women? Men can use a 3% natural transdermal cream (never salts or injections). Women can use a very weak 0.3% cream. Men using too much raise levels of estradiol and estrone more than testosterone due to “spillover”. Women can use very weak creams of 0.1 to 0.3%. Women can be too high or too low and must be very careful to maintain an ideal youthful balance. You can also use salts (such as enanthate) sublingually in Ethanol. Men would use about 3 mg and women only 150 mcg. Are you taking pregnenolone? You can get your doctor to give you a blood test for this. The pregnenolone saliva test kits don't seem to be reliable, but we should have dependable ones in 2007 or 2008. Test your level at, say, 9:00 in the morning for consistency. 50 mg is usually good for men and 25 mg for women, but this can and will vary. We just do not know if excess pregnenolone will raise levels of other hormones. Pregnenolone is the "forgotten" hormone and is THE most important brain and cognition hormone. Women should test their estriol level. This is the safe, beneficial or "good" estrogen, and low levels in women are all too common. Medical doctors have no idea what estriol is, never test for it, don't care anyway, and no regular pharmacy can even special order it!You must get a transdermal cream or gel from a compounding pharmacist. This proves the entire medical profession is in the Dark Ages. We don't know how estriol affects men unfortunately. American women are usually not low in estrone or estradiol. You may be if you have had a hysterectomy (one third of American women have). You use transdermal soy-derived bioidentical estrone or estradiol if you are low, but this is not common. Doctors routinely prescribe this without even first testing to see if your levels are low! And you wonder why this column rails against the medical profession? Have you tested your free T3 and T4 thyroid levels? Go to www.healthcheckusa.com and send them $75 for panel 2 thyroid. Take T3 and/or T4 only if you test low. As usual, do this at, say, 9:00 AM for consistency. You must be midrange here and not merely low normal. Low normal ranges are called, “subclinical thyroid deficiency”. Because progesterone is safe and non-toxic in both men and women, progesterone testing is just not as critical. If a woman is using a half gram with her period, a postmenopausal woman is using a quarter gram 3 weeks of the year, and a man is using a mere eighth teaspoon five days a week you don't need to be too concerned about this. You can test your GH Level with blood but not with saliva. IGF- 1 does NOT parallel for GH and people who tell you it does are uninformed quacks. You must get four draws three or four hours apart to get an accurate GH diagnosis since is varies so much during the day. Can you afford $1,200 a year anyway? ALL the over-the-counter GH supplements are useless garbage- ALL of them. You can measure AM and PM cortisol at, say, 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM. A four sample Cortisol kit is best here for a better diagnosis. If too high only diet, lifestyle, and exercise will bring it down. If too low you can consider hydrocortisone (cortisol) supplements. Monitor your hormones and use them safely for maximum effectiveness. Natural hormone balance is discussed in detail in Zen Macrobiotics for Americans, No More Horse Estrogen!, and The Natural Prostate Cure as well as Testosterone is Your Friend.