Far 2 Fabulous

Pee on This: The Test That Reveals Your Hormone Symphony. Guest Episode with Joanna Majithia

• Julie Clark & Catherine Chapman • Episode 68

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Episode 68

We explore comprehensive hormone testing with Jo Majithia, Head of Clinical Education at Regenerus Labs, examining how the Dutch Test provides detailed insights beyond standard blood tests for women navigating perimenopause and hormone-related symptoms.

• The Dutch Test measures dried urine samples to analyse hormone metabolism, showing not just levels but how effectively the body processes hormones
• Conventional approaches often default to HRT without considering diet, lifestyle, stress management, and nutrient deficiencies
• Different forms of hormone therapy (transdermal estrogen, oral progesterone, synthetic progestins) work differently in the body and affect symptoms in unique ways
• The Mirena coil provides localised progestin effects but doesn't offer the systemic benefits of oral progesterone that many women need for mood and sleep
• Low testosterone in women can cause weakness, reduced energy, and poor sleep, which is often overlooked in conventional hormone assessment
• Testing provides empowering information to help women make informed decisions about their hormone health journey
• Comprehensive hormone analysis examines cortisol patterns, melatonin production, and nutritional markers alongside sex hormones

If you want to find out more about the Dutch Test, visit Regenerous Labs' website, which has a practitioner directory to help you find qualified support.


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For more information about Julie Clark Nutrition, click HERE
For more information about Catherine Chapman, click HERE

We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous hosted by Julie and.

Speaker 2:

Catherine, join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some feistiness, inspiration, candy chats and humour as we journey together towards empowered wellbeing. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Far Too Fabulous podcast. I've got Catherine next to me who is recovering from having run the marathon, so we see how normally you're like super hyper excitable, but I don't know if you're going to be that today.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm, yeah, I'm definitely in recovery mode at the moment, but I still did chuckle because that was the most behaved introduction I think we've done for a long time, but we are behaving for a reason, aren't we? Julie?

Speaker 1:

We are. So we've got a really fantastic guest today. I'm really excited that she was able to allow the time to come on because she's very busy, very experienced head of clinical education at Regenerous Labs. Now that may not mean a lot to many of you, because it's a lab that we, as practitioners, use because they run a lot of different tests, so we're really, really happy to have Jo Maginthia. Did I get?

Speaker 3:

that right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, with us today. Just a couple of little things to tell you about Jo. Jo, aside from the nutrition side of things, is that she's big into sea swimming and is quite a supporter of the surfers against sewage, which is the same as you.

Speaker 2:

Catherine, absolutely, yeah, big into sea swimming, and I'm a member of SOS Whitstable, whose organization we've created in Whitstable to fight against the sewage pollution, particularly in our sea here locally.

Speaker 3:

Fantastic. Yeah, I mean I do lots of sea swimming, mostly in the summer. I've actually gone, you know what? It's quite cold in the sea in the winter, but I'm loving the fact it's beautiful weather right at the moment because, yeah, I'm getting back in the sea now. It's lovely.

Speaker 2:

It's why I'm glad it's a podcast. It's why I look a little bit like swampy, because I've just been in the sea already today and it was just glorious, my, it's exactly what my legs needed today well.

Speaker 3:

I'm very impressed you've run the marathon. That really is fantastic effort, so well done thank you it was.

Speaker 2:

It was a bonkers experience, but it was. Yeah, it was well worth the leg pain and never again.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much you've done it now, that's it absolutely.

Speaker 1:

We did say that last time, though, so we watched this space, that's true. So we've asked joe on because she deals a lot with the dutch test, and we spoke about the dutch test on a previous episode. It takes a urine sample and looks at it in a lot of detail with your hormones, and when we look at that, compared to blood testing, it really is I almost want to call it a gold standard test. I think it's absolutely fantastic. I did the test on myself as well, because I'm experiencing changes in my hormones, but we also want to discuss things like HRT, and is the test suitable for that, what other types of HRT and how our hormones work in that whole orchestra of hormones that we spoke about on previous episodes. So there's quite a lot to go through with Jo. No pressure, jo, but yeah, do you just want to give us a bit more information about yourself?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely Well. Firstly, thank you so much for inviting me on. It's a real pleasure to be talking to you. Yeah, I'm a nutritional therapist by trade. I trained back in 2003 when my children were very young at the time, and I've been in continual practice since. So I've got a lot of experience working with a range of different clients, but predominantly in that hormonal support space, and then also been involved in nutrition education.

Speaker 3:

So I worked for the Institute for Optimum Nutrition for a number of years and have helped trained quite a few practitioners in clinical practice and also worked on the functional testing modules. And I got into testing quite early on in my nutrition career, working for a wonderful German naturopath who worked with a German microbiome testing laboratory. So that was where I kind of started in the testing field. And then for the last four years I've been at Regeneris Labs in their clinical education team and more recently managing that team, which is fantastic. We've got a great, great group that support our practitioners. So as, as you mentioned, regenerous labs does directly support the practitioner with different testing needs from lots of different labs but, we do have a great find a practitioner feature on the website.

Speaker 3:

So anyone listening that that isn't a practitioner if they are interested in any of the tests and need to get in touch with a practitioner in order to order them, that is that feature available I was thinking to myself that we've definitely crossed paths through your previous work with the company that you mentioned, the german.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I find it fascinating that I qualified in 2000 and you qualified in 2003, so we've been around a long time doing this work, haven't we?

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

How much it's changed and how testing has come on. I mean, we didn't even cover testing when I did my original qualification, because it was so you know you couldn't just access things like you can now With someone like Regenerous Labs. The range that we've got is so good, but we specifically wanted to look at hormones in the Dutch test. So for the people that maybe missed that previous episode or wonder what the hell we're talking about when we talk about a, Dutch test. It's not anything to do with the country.

Speaker 3:

No, we're not testing your ability to speak quite a complicated language. For English speakers it's Dutch, it stands for dried urine test, for comprehensive hormones and, as you mentioned, it's a urine test. So it is something that you can take in the privacy of your own home and avoids the need for blood testing, which is not a favourite for most people. The standard test, the Dutch complete, which is the flagship test, if you like. That comprises of taking four urine tests over a 24 hour period and the collection device is like a filter paper which you can urinate directly on, or you can just urinate into a cup and dip the test filter papers in and then you air dry them and once they're fully air dried, they get sent back and then analysed at the lab. And dried urine is nice and stable, so that's great. We can ship them to sent back and then analysed at the lab. And dried urine is nice and stable, so that's great. We can ship them to the lab, which is based in the US.

Speaker 3:

There are a few caveats. If you are still having your periods, if you're regularly cycling, you take that test in the latter part of your cycle, the luteal phase. So let's say your cycle's 28 days long, then you would be testing around days 19, 20 or 21, and if your cycle is regularly longer, you can just add on the appropriate number of days. If it's regularly shorter, you can reduce that and if it's irregular, we've got advice around what to do, which you would go through with your healthcare practitioner. If you're not cycling, if you're post-menopausal, you can test on any typical day and then we'll probably go on to talk about, you know, whether you're on hormone replacement and things like that.

Speaker 1:

I think at the moment, what tends to happen when we speak to you know, our audience or our clients, is that they get to a certain age and they start to experience symptoms, yeah, and then they go to the gp and the answer seems to be just hrt. There's no look at that person's diet, their lifestyle, anything else that can have an impact on those hormones, and then a lot of people then experience the fact that their symptoms aren't necessarily getting better. Some are getting worse. So I think there's a really good place for a test like this because it's going to give you a bit more information. But I think the doctors don't even really run that blood test because we know that that's not great for oestrogen and progesterone anyway it's. I think it's as a person having symptoms and knowing what to do, this this can be really, really beneficial.

Speaker 3:

Definitely, and I think I mean there's so much to talk about around that whole perimenopausal journey and exactly what is happening to your hormones at that time. And I think there's no doubt that the hormonal shifts that take place can have a huge impact on how women feel. That we know and, as you've said, we want to look at foundational support before we do anything, which would be optimizing diet with easy, practical solutions and trying to manage stress, which of course is not necessarily easy in this particular life phase. Is it Women? They're maybe quite high up in their careers life phase. Is it Women? They're maybe quite high up in their careers or having demands with their jobs. They might be looking after children or looking after parents or, you know, there's all kinds of extra stresses around that time.

Speaker 3:

But I think the first thing to think about hormonal wise is that it is a shift. So at the beginning of that perimenopausal journey we're going to have predominantly or typically more oestrogen dominance, because we start to have cycles where we don't ovulate and therefore we don't naturally produce progesterone in the same way. So to put someone immediately on oestrogen HRT could actually exacerbate the situation. And the joy of the Dutch test is it's going to look at not only our parent estrogen and progesterone levels but how we metabolize those hormones, and by that I mean how we break them down once we've used the hormones ready to eliminate them, and just supporting how someone clears those hormones can be really important. But it also tests our androgens. By that I mean testosterone and other testosterone metabolites, and a lack or a dominance of androgens relative to estrogen can cause or contribute to lots of symptoms. And then the other um. One of the other benefits is it's also looking at the daily rhythm of cortisol, one of our key stress hormones. So that looking both at the daily rhythm and how we are clearing our cortisol once we've used it can give real insights into adrenal function, various different metabolic conditions.

Speaker 3:

Metabolic conditions so, for example, you know if you're having problems managing your blood sugar levels that might influence how you're clearing your cortisol and how you know whether you phase a sort of more active form or a more deactivated form, and also can give us insights that might lead to further testing, perhaps on your thyroid function, which can have huge impacts on how we feel.

Speaker 3:

And then, as well as all the information on the sex and adrenal hormones that we're going to get, they test some key nutrients that are really important for hormone health and for energy. They look at a really important detoxification marker that's going to influence how well we can clear all the daily onslaught from the environment that we are exposed to, as well as our hormones, and it also looks at our overall use of, and production of, melatonin. There's an oxidative stress marker in there, which really helpful to help understand how we might be exposed to toxicants or potentially even at risk for, you know, cancer and things. So there there's a a nice broad range of markers that support the hormone testing, and doing using urine to test hormones gives us a lot more information, particularly, as I said, around how we're breaking those hormones down and really what exposure the body has had at the tissue level, in comparison when you're doing a blood test, which gives us different information.

Speaker 1:

I always think of the blood test as like a before and then the urine test being an after. So it's all very well having levels of things in your blood, even if we're talking about something like the thyroid hormone, but unless it can get in the cell and do what it's supposed to, it's pointless knowing what's in the blood to some degree, yes, so you've definitely got advantages of each method of testing.

Speaker 3:

Serum is great.

Speaker 3:

It's going to look at the total hormone and on occasions you can also look at the free hormone, because hormones have to be carried around in order to be delivered to the tissues and, as you said, it's great as a perhaps as a baseline.

Speaker 3:

But then if you're wanting to think about, for example, using hormone replacement, particularly depending on the form, so let's take the transdermal oestrogen. So that's when you rub it on the skin in a gel or you use it as a patch. If you're testing in serum, you're not going to see the full representation of of the dose, because you're absorbing it through the skin and it's going to be delivered around in that peripheral circulation and not be seen as a free hormone in such high levels. But particularly, the other important thing to know is this being able to look at how you're actually clearing that hormone once you've used it. Because we want to ensure that we're clearing the hormone in the safest way possible and, as nutritionists or functional medicine practitioners, we've got lots of tools in our kit box that we can advise if that hormone clearance isn't as optimal as it could be. So having that information is really, really helpful and making sure that, if you do go on to HRT, you're doing so in as safe a way as possible.

Speaker 2:

I mean that's incredible. So from my point of view, I don't know as in depth as both of you about the hormone levels and that test, but even if you were not having it for for your hormone levels, the fact that you are talking about cortisol and I know that we talk about stress and things all the time and the massive impact that that has on on our lives and mimics all of those symptoms that that go along with perimenopause so to know all about that, to know about. You're talking about melatonin and the effects that that has to know about. You're talking about melatonin and the effects that that has on your body. You were talking about like free radicals and things and the links with like vitality and just even if you took the hormones out of that test.

Speaker 2:

It's just absolutely incredible, very exciting. I'm where's. Where's the strip? Let me pee on it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean it's a really nice test to do, you know regularly, if possible once a year, if you're able to, if you're working with a practitioner and they're putting in an intervention and you know wanting to see how that's supporting you, then you might even do that perhaps every six months.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I guess in an ideal world somebody would take this test. So if they're feeling like they're in perimenopause and they ideally they take it before they started any kind of hormone therapy or hormone what do we call it Support therapy?

Speaker 1:

We liked it as a support Rather than a replacement. Yeah, it's not replaced.

Speaker 2:

So would they. So, once they got the results back from that and they worked through, for instance, julie, would that give them an idea of where they needed extra support?

Speaker 3:

One thing I talk to my clients and practitioners quite a lot about is the fact that perimenopause is like a whole phase. So in the same way that you're not necessarily going to run a test to see where someone is in puberty, really going to run a test to see where someone is in puberty, we're not running the test to sort of see where they're at in perimenopause. You know we get the question I want to know if I'm perimenopausal. So what we can do to determine that is think about how old you are and how old your any female siblings, your mom, you know, aunts, etc. When did they sort of start their journey?

Speaker 3:

And then think about perimenopause is a phase. Initially we're going to have much higher oestrogen levels. As we start to sort of have cycles without ovulation. Then oestrogen will drop alongside progesterone and then slowly the periods will start to get, you know, further and further apart. And once you haven't had a period for a whole year, then we're now considered postmenopausal.

Speaker 3:

But let's say you're starting to experience, perhaps changes to your cycle and you're starting to feel different in ways. And that can be, as we know, have loads of different effects for different women. You know it can have changes to mood, to memory, we might experiencing changes to how we regulate temperature and hot flushes, or problems sleeping and night sweats. But all these symptoms, along with being part of a perimenopausal journey for some women, could also be down to other things. So I think that's where the beauty of the testing comes in, is that we can then see, at the point of testing, what are those hormone levels like in relation to each other, how are your adrenals functioning, what nutrients, what detoxification support you might need, and the practitioner that you work with can put all that information into the context of the case history that they've taken from you, because you say they go and see Julie.

Speaker 3:

Julie, you would be asking them you know a lot of questions lots of questions, which in itself I think is really empowering for people because they can start to put pieces together for themselves. I've always found that that initial consultation usually there's a few light bulb moments going on for that client as they start to tell that story and start to be heard. Then they can start to go ah okay, so actually my symptoms are worse after, you know I've been out late and had a bit more wine than normal, unfortunately. Or you know, yeah, my symptoms are worse when I'm not able to access you know, the foods that I know really suit me or you know whatever it is. So we can start to build that picture and then, with the testing we can, we can put that in in as a kind of crucial piece of the puzzle to help really inform a personalised protocol, whether that be specific dietary lifestyle or even supplement support, before we even start thinking about whether we need any hormone support from the HRT preparations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's really empowering for the client to see test results, especially when you explain them, if they're in that journey where, in an ideal situation, they do come to us before going down that route of going on to hormone therapy. A lot of the times it's not the case. They've already gone down that route and they're not necessarily getting the answers that they want. So I wonder if we could just go through some of the options that people have for for hormone replacement or we don't know that word, do we? What do we call it support? Support, because there are different. You've got your, you know your natural ones. You've got different forms and we know that people just don't understand them. They don't understand that putting in a progesterone which is in a synthetic synthetic form, is not going to get to the part that their brain needs for that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

It's those sort of understandings. I think if you could elaborate on that side of thing um.

Speaker 3:

So I think if we think about oestrogen first, you know transdermal oestrogen, so something like oestrogel or your Everol patches. They contain body identical oestrogen. So you're actually getting the same o scare stories that we've had around. Certain research that was done a few years ago you know that was looking at a different form of estrogen. The transdermal estrogens usually are the safer route and we can use different doses. Women can start at a nice low dose, see how they get on and build that up For progesterone. So you can take oral progesterone which is the same as the progesterone that the body makes. Now we just have to consider when we're testing that if you take a hormone orally you have something called the first pass metabolism. So you're going to get a lot of spillover into the urine before it's even got into the body. But that's fine because the Dutch test does account for that and it has different reference ranges. So if you're whatever hormone replacement you're on, you would write that on your test form and the lab would know and adjust the reference range.

Speaker 3:

You can have synthetic progestins. Now these aren't tested or picked up by the machinery that the Dutch uses. Typically women might have something like the Mirena coil, which provides local progestin just to the womb lining, so that can help with avoiding a buildup of the womb lining that you would get if you're on oestrogen without any progesterone. But it's not necessarily going to give you the more systemic effects such as for many women not all, but mostly women will find that oral progesterone can have quite a calming effect, even make people feel a bit sleepy. So it's recommended women take it in the evening and that might even help with sleep. But but of course we're all different. We've all got different genetic makeup, we've all got different environmental exposures and different health conditions. So you know it's important that you work with someone who is skilled at prescribing HRT so they can really help you with how you're responding to whatever HRT preparation you're put on.

Speaker 1:

It's trying to find the right skilled person, isn't it? I think there is such a massive misunderstanding of that that progestin in something like a Mirena coil because a lot of my clients had gone to the doctor and have been told well, you need oestrogen but you don't need progesterone because you've got a Mireina coil. But their symptoms were on the anxiety side. And then when you explain to them, like you've just said, it's a localized effect, it's not going to give you that calming aspect. You need something else for that. If your levels of your body's natural production of progesterone is low, I think there's a huge misunderstanding. I mean, you didn't have an understanding of that, did you, Until we were talking about it on one of the other episodes, because you've got a marina coil haven't you?

Speaker 2:

No, I've been that person. I have a marina coil and through training for the marathon the last time and having problems with my bladder, as many women do at this point I sought help and I have the progesterone pessaries. But again, it was certainly portrayed to me that that was that I was getting a balance effect then because I had the marina and I have the estrogen pessaries that I was able to kind of keep. We caught you talk about the seesaw quite a lot. I was be able to balance that seesaw when potentially that's not the case.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and of course we can you know the the seesaw quite a lot. I would be able to balance that seesaw when potentially that's not the case. Yeah, and of course we can. You know the oestrogen pessaries or creams are another way that oestrogen can be delivered, which might be more appropriate in some cases, particularly if there's a family history of breast cancer or you know, you can potentially have just more localised oestrogen replacement to help with things like vaginal dryness or, as you say, incontinent symptoms.

Speaker 3:

But yes so I think it's really important to go with those questions to your HRT prescriber and, you know, ensure that you have those answers. But of course, medically they're seeing that as long as the womb is protected with the progestins, that that is. I mean, that is nice guidelines currently. So you know if, if you're not, all gps would be able to prescribe an additional progesterone. If you're, if you have a marina coil, for an example, it might be a conversation around do you want to switch entirely and have the coil taken out? But we're kind of going into the depths of these important conversations that you would have with your prescriber and decisions not to be taken lightly.

Speaker 2:

Basically, but it really highlights how personal it is and unfortunately, I think, unless somebody goes to you guys, I don't feel like it's as personal as in depth. I don't feel like it's as personal as in depth. It's almost a one size fits all kind of like a blanket prescription, initially perhaps, and if you're like, yay, that solves it, then that's great if you're kind of within that bracket of person. But, like we've seen, we're all very, very complex.

Speaker 3:

And it doesn't.

Speaker 3:

One size does not fit all and it's a shame that that kind of is just thrown at people, seeing if it sticks and then if than they were.

Speaker 3:

But absolutely, on the other hand, it's almost become the solution or considered a solution in too many situations when you know have you had your thyroid checked? You know what, if you're deficient in nutrients such as iron or folate or B12, they they would be having a huge impact to energy levels, for example. So I think it's important to, if you can get support from a nutritional therapist or a functional medicine practitioner as well, who can help you look at, look at a much wider piece to your, you know, or wider aspects to your health concerns, and also remember that we're well equipped to support women going through that perimenopausal journey who don't want to go on HRT. You know it doesn't have to be the go-to answer. There are many women that go through perimenopause fairly smoothly and many women who can go through that journey much more smoothly if they get the right nutrition and lifestyle support. So I think that's that's really important to nutritional therapists do as we love to do. Yes.

Speaker 1:

So I'm coming up to 54 and I am looking to go through this transition, based on the support work that I've done on myself for many years, to see if it makes an impact compared to my sister, who is only 15 months younger than me and has a very different lifestyle, you know, completely different approach to health, and it's going to be really interesting to see. We can't use my mum as any any help in this, because she had a total hysterectomy in her 30s so we've got no, and the generation above nothing was ever mentioned about it.

Speaker 1:

So we we don't know. Yeah, though, I'm the oldest, so we're seeing how how I go through, but I definitely am somebody that does not want to have to rely on something else outside of my control. So if I can do this without any hormone replacement, then that would be my preferred choice.

Speaker 3:

That's not to say never, but my intention is not to need it yeah, and I think that's, every woman needs to have their own consideration around the options and, yeah, decide what they, which route they want to do, and quite an interesting experiment to do with their, with siblings, but, um, it'd be even better if we've got twins who wanted to try that, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it would, but unfortunately not the twins, but you know fairly close, so we'll see what happens with that. And then we've got a much younger sister, a bit of an age gap, and yeah, she's just waiting to see what we do, but it does start to show, I think, really it's, I think it's really obvious the difference in our lifestyles and the impact on our hormones and what's happening with me versus my, my two sisters.

Speaker 2:

It's really interesting yeah, I'm excited about the, the possibilities of the test. So not just perhaps. I think maybe people might initially go into it to go, oh, do I need hrt, whereas it gives you so many more answers. That will make going through this process much smoother if you can just kind of, you know, adjust. Judy talks about uh, judy talks about the orchestra, don't you? And you could, you know, you could just, perhaps you know finely tune the string section, or I don't know polish the trumpets, yeah, yeah, that's a great analogy.

Speaker 3:

You know it is the way that our bodies work. In totality it is a huge orchestra because even just thinking about hormones in isolation, you know we have they interact with our gut and our gut microbiome. So I mean that's just one, one aspect. So thinking about things as a as a big orchestra, and how we can maybe do a bit of fine tuning in in a few areas, can actually have such a big, uh positive impact. So it's important not to look in isolation at one area.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and, like you said, with the test, it's really empowering for people to be able to and then to know that they don't just need to. As you can hear, I'm not against hormone support therapy at all, but I do feel like it's become a bit of a plaster. So then, to be able to have all this information and know that you can fine tune these things and have a dramatic impact on your lifestyle, like overall, so not just in your if you're having night sweats or brain fog I mean, don't talk to me about brain fog after the marathon as well and that just as an aside. I think that this is probably the only time when men can actually experience brain fog is post marathon. Apparently, when we hit the wall, it's us starting to eat myelin in our brain for energy. Yeah, and yeah, we recover quite quickly apparently, but apparently that's the wall and it causes this brain fog for the next couple of days. So there you go, men, if you're ever wondering what we were up to what we're up to run a marathon wondering why.

Speaker 2:

Why we've walked into a room forgotten, why we've walked in there and walk back out again.

Speaker 3:

Good, run a marathon experience. What it's like?

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely well, I must just raise the profile of testosterone as well, because I think that gets ignored, especially down the GP route, and the Dutch test shows the testosterone and all the pathways for it.

Speaker 1:

So, again, using myself as an experiment, I'd noticed that I was feeling weaker than normal. That's how I would explain it. So I do certain exercises where I need to be strong and I was feeling that I was weaker. So when I did the Dutch test on myself, I actually had really low testosterone on that report. So when I had my support call because, as we know, we can't we can't treat ourselves very easily. Sometimes we need to speak to someone else she did say to me the support team at Regenerist is brilliant. She said to me I would suggest you get your testosterone checked in your blood because that one is stable, and I was relieved to see that those levels were actually good. So it's the way that I'm using it and certain things in my lifestyle when I was having a look at stress and things like that that were having impact there, I thought that was really fascinating.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean testosterone is maybe not, as considered in women, as much as it should. You know it's. It's really important for that. Get up and go for for libido, for kind of feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, if you like, so that you know those symptoms you're describing. Um, you, you could easily be thinking right, do I need to support testosterone?

Speaker 3:

A few things that are helpful trying to support sleep but actually low testosterone can influence and cause problems with sleep.

Speaker 3:

But doing that good muscle, you know, resistance training is really helpful and actually we need to do much more than we think as we get older to keep that strength and to keep the testosterone levels.

Speaker 3:

And the mineral zinc is really important as well and your healthcare provider will be able to, you know, suggest sort of herbal support and other foods and things that can be helpful. But conversely, too much testosterone in women can lead to unwanted symptoms, sort of facial hair growth and acne. And actually, when estrogen and progesterone maybe takes a dive, it may be that the body is kind of seeing a more testosterone dominant situation and that can can lead to symptoms and that can can lead to symptoms. So, again being able to look at the orchestra of hormones, if you like, and how everyone's playing in in that orchestra is really important, which is another great reason why the dutch test can give us so much more insight if we are someone that's on hormone replacement therapy just to emphasize this a bit because I know a lot of people listening will be on some form of medication already can we?

Speaker 1:

we use the Dutch test to check for dosage.

Speaker 3:

So it depends on the route of delivery. It's going to give us information to help dosage, because so, let's say you're on transdermal oestrogen and you're on oral progesterone, something like eutrogestin, then you'll be able to see sort of where you're at on a reference range and the Dutch provide the healthcare practitioner with a commentary at the end of the report that will show you know, a typical level that you would expect on a low dose, moderate dose, high dose, and then we'll also see how you're clearing that hormone and the sort of metabolites in two phases that help to understand overall exposure. So it can be part of the consideration around dosing. Yes, you would also take into account symptom picture as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really really good because I think that's going to be beneficial to a lot of people Again, especially if they've just been given this medication and it's not necessarily having the effect that they're getting. Look, because it's not always. It doesn't always fix the problem, does it.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing you need the test to really know. If it's the hormones, that's the problem. If it's the stress, that's the problem. If it's the you know your clearance, that's the problem. You need that information. It's really important.

Speaker 3:

Monitor that, because your own hormone levels will be changing as you go through that journey, in response to the hormone replacement therapy, in response to what else is happening in your life and as you shift to that menopausal phase. And then you know, as you progress post-menopausally you're probably going to want to start thinking about gradually tapering down any HRT dose as well. So these are all conversations to have with your prescriber. Can't emphasize that enough. These are important conversations to have with whoever prescribes the HRT. And then you know the testing needs to be discussed with someone who's qualified to understand the test it is. You know we don't sell these tests directly to the public. You do have to order them via a healthcare practitioner because they're complicated tests.

Speaker 1:

Once they're explained to you, they're really, really super helpful, but you need someone who's trained to understand them to give you the full benefit and make sure everything's safe yeah, we do have to do a fair amount of learning to be able to use this test, I have to say, and a lot of the tests you do, you know we're always learning, but yeah, this one in particular, I think, to really understand all of the different aspects of it because it is so useful. Once you understand it, it's so, so good. Really is Love it. Do the doctors recognise this test? You know, jo.

Speaker 3:

So that that would depend. You know, at the moment in the UK the Dutch test is is predominantly being used by functional medical practitioners. By that I mean people sort of trained to look at root cause and try and address the root causes, as opposed to more traditional allopathic model. But that's changing. You know we are seeing. I mean even tomorrow I'm going to a private health care conference, private medical health care conference, so you know there's a lot more appetite. So I think that's going to really depend on your medical GP whether they are familiar with the test or not. Some work really closely with nutritional therapists and other health care providers and some don't. But you know, I think if you're working with let's say they've come to see someone like yourself, julie nutritional therapist, you know you would be looking to communicate with that person's GP and most GPs are willing to engage in that person's gp and most gps are willing to engage in that conversation. I found it's quite.

Speaker 1:

It's quite mixed actually, and it depends on what you want to talk to them about. Yeah, it's very interesting how it works. I do have a bit of an issue with the. This is a very general statement so it's not applies to everybody but with the thyroid specialists that one is so hard going, they just not open a lot of the time to having the discussion about what we may have found on tests and things.

Speaker 3:

It's so fascinating, I think it's going to vary, but I think what, what you can do with a bit of knowledge and understanding is go with with really informed questions. Yeah, and you know your GP will be will hopefully be able to answer informed questions. Yeah, and then you know your GP will hopefully be able to answer those questions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2:

What I love about this conversation is that it becomes a conversation with the. We'll call them patient or client, rather than and this is what the whole point of our podcast is about empowering people is that, rather than somebody goes to your medical practitioner and they tell you what you should be doing, it's more of a conversation, and, with the results of this test or with working with nutritional therapists, it gets to be an informed conversation and they get to be in the driving seat, which is what I just I can't shout about that enough. It just drives me completely insane that somebody will just hand their power over to anybody, I mean to Julie, to the GP, to the surgeon, to anybody. They are the ones that know their bodies or what can learn to know their bodies perhaps, I'm going to say, better than anybody in the world and so they need to be in the driving seat for this, and so that's I think that's what's most excited about what we've been talking about.

Speaker 2:

Definitely oh so it's like I'm just, I'm gonna. I wanted to just just flip back to the conversation you were just having about testosterone and it felt a little bit like it's there could be a chicken and egg kind of thing there, because you were saying about testosterone levels being being lower, which makes you less likely, less willing, less able to be doing the um, like the weight sessions and things that we know are so important at this stage of life, and there is a little bit of resistance if you'll pardon the pun to doing that work, and we're also in a society that is very, very resistant to movement on the whole. Honestly, we want to try and make everything as easy as we possibly can, make everything as easy as we possibly can, but what's interesting is that potentially there's a low testosterone that's going to make you feel like that and you need to do the weight to pick your testosterone up. So is that something that, again, the test would be helpful with helping?

Speaker 1:

with Too many helpfuls. Too many helpfuls.

Speaker 3:

Be helpful. Helping you, help with, helping with too many helpful, too many helpful helpful. Helping you help with? Yes, absolutely, I mean, I think it's it's. Knowledge is power, isn't it so understanding?

Speaker 3:

Am I feeling like this because my testosterone is lower than ideal? I mean it's going to naturally decline with age, but of course you know we've got age dependent reference ranges on the test. So, yes, so, if, if, if that is the case, you know, then you might want to look at some supplements that might, you know, hurt. There's herbal support, there's nutrients that can help. So that might, might be important to understand. Yeah, I mean, of course, the lower you feel, the less likely you're going to want to be doing these activities. But I think it's important to say it doesn't necessarily mean like a huge heavy weight training session in the gym. It's just trying to get back in touch with. You know carrying your shopping bags a little bit further. You know doing the gardening, if you've got a garden. You know trying to keep every kind of movement, which is not easy, and I say it myself because I sit at my desk for too long, even though I know I need to get up and move around.

Speaker 3:

But, even just being aware of it, I think you do start to then go okay, no, I'll take that break, I'm going to get up and go and get another glass of water. You know, all that general movement is is just really super important. So knowledge is power and um, for some women, they're able to to have testosterone replacement, um, if it, if it is appropriate. So, you know, knowing that might be really important as well. Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Wow, I think we've got. We've had all our questions answered. Yeah, yeah, I'm buzzing. You want to do the test now, don't you? I want to do it right now.

Speaker 3:

William, we'll do the test and then you're not a healthcare practitioner yourself, is that right? But you can get. Julie can obviously have a chat to us about the results and then support you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Jo, for coming on and giving us your expertise today. I know you're very busy and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's been a real pleasure to chat to you both. I hope that people have found the information useful. Yeah, love talking to you, so thank you so much for having me. Yes, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 2:

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