Why We Test Hormones in Urine

You may have heard of blood testing for hormones, but you may be less familiar with the benefits of urine hormone testing.

At FUTURE WOMAN we see many women who are suffering from signs of hormone imbalance, burnout and exhaustion, poor sleep, mood changes and low energy. Testing helps us gets to the root cause of your symptoms, allowing your FUTURE WOMAN practitioner to recommend more specific supplements and diet or lifestyle changes to feel better.

We believe testing in urine, rather than blood, provides the most accurate and comprehensive picture of your hormone health and here’s why.

Our top 3 reasons we prefer urine testing to blood testing for your hormones

1. It’s pain-free and easy to test at home

We know this is important for many of you. Our hormone tests can easily be done from home by simply urinating on the test strips provided. No need for phlebotomy or finger pricking. Simple and pain-free!

2. Urine testing is more accurate for hormones

Did you know that our hormones pulse? This means that the glands that produce and release hormones actually secrete them in short bursts instead of in a steady stream throughout the day.

With a single blood test you might be capturing your hormone levels at a peak, a trough or somewhere in between. But with urine testing, we can capture a more accurate reading of your hormone levels.

Firstly, this is because a single urine result covers a longer span of time. Urine reflects an average of the hours prior to the test rather than a single moment because the bladder takes around a couple of hours or longer to fill up. Secondly, we use 4 urine samples over the day to allow for the fact that our hormones pulse. This allows us to average out the highs and lows of the day. Compare this to a single blood test and we get a much more accurate picture.

As an example, in the luteal or second phase of the menstrual cycle, progesterone concentrations in blood have been shown to fluctuate dramatically. So a blood test during this time could show low progesterone when in fact progesterone is at a healthy level, or the other way around.

3. Urine testing gives a more comprehensive view of your hormones

While blood testing can reveal overall sex hormone levels, with urine testing we can look at sex hormones AND their metabolites. And metabolites provide so much valuable information.

What exactly are hormone metabolites?

In their active form, hormones act as chemical messengers to control, facilitate, or trigger various processes in the body. As active hormones complete their work and new hormones are produced, active hormones need to be cleared from the body via the urine. These used hormones are metabolites; they have been metabolised by the body ready for excretion.

Why is it so important to test hormone metabolites?

Hormone metabolites can give us so much more information than just hormone levels alone.

In addition to knowing the amount of hormones your body is producing, you also need to know how those hormones are being used, processed and eliminated. This is where hormone metabolite testing comes in.

Hormone metabolite testing can show whether our hormones are being eliminated safely from the body or building up. We can also see which pathway the hormone is being metabolised down, and some pathways are more beneficial while others can be more harmful. If we struggle to effectively process or metabolise our hormones, then we can get a lot of unwanted symptoms and it can even put us at greater risk for things like breast cancer.

Take our founder Eloise as an example, she was struggling with symptoms we’d typically associate with high estrogen – PMS, sore breasts and heavy, painful periods. But testing revealed her estrogen was actually very low. Her symptoms were instead being caused by poor metabolism of her estrogen. Knowing that meant she could target her symptoms more effectively with supplements that actually worked.

Women struggling with PCOS symptoms are another great example. 5a DHT is a potent metabolite of testosterone – in fact it’s THREE times more potent. You could have normal testosterone levels in a blood test, but elevated 5a DHT levels (detectable only in urine) could be causing classic PCOS symptoms such as facial hair, head hair loss, weight gain and fertility issues.

And finally, if you’re using or considering HRT, testing hormone metabolism is vitally important to ensure that you’re able to metabolise oestrogen safely from the body.

Testing metabolites gives us a much more comprehensive picture and therefore we can suggest much more targeted strategies to help with symptoms – and they’re much more likely to work!