ARE you walking around with symptoms for which doctors can’t seem to find a reason? Maybe you are unusually irritable, exhausted, experiencing insomnia, constipation, hot flashes, or you just don’t want to have sex. You know something is wrong, but your blood tests show nothing abnormal. Maybe your doctor prescribes an anti-depressant to help you get through the phase.

According to Dr Simone Van-Horne, CEO of Metamorphosis Medispa & Wellness Centre Inc in Hollywood, Florida, many people are underdiagnosed.

She shared though that saliva testing, which is a non-invasive way of assessing a patient’s hormone balancing needs, can pick up on subtle changes in hormone levels that may be contributing to how that person is feeling.

“There are a lot of people who are kind of falling through the cracks, who are exceedingly exhausted. They are overworked, they are stressed out,” said Dr Van-Horne. “…We are finding in medicine that a lot of people whose blood tests are turning up normal, they feel awful but they are being told there is nothing on their blood tests.”

She disclosed that some doctors are frustrated, but insisted that, with saliva testing “you can actually see hormonally that there are shifts that are happening to us with the stressors”.

She explained that the shifts are happening at the level of the cortisol, thyroid and at the level of DHEA, which is a kind of testosterone-like hormone.

“They are very subtle so blood tests can’t pick them up, but saliva testing will,” she said. “There are natural therapies that can alleviate some of the changes that we are seeing, there are medical therapies as well, but we won’t know unless we do the saliva testing.”

Because hormones fluctuate as the day progresses, Dr Van-Horne explained that saliva testing is ideal for gauging subtle changes.

“So when you wake up in the morning, what your hormones are doing first thing in the morning it may not be doing at lunchtime, it may not be doing when you get to the doctor’s office and then when you leave the doctor’s office, it changes again,” she said.

Dr Van-Horne explained that spit is collected over a 24-hour period then it is sent to the lab to be tested. This is not done in Jamaica, however, samples can be taken and sent to the United States for testing.

“Saliva is taken when you wake up in the morning, just before you eat lunch, after your dinner, and just before you go to your bed,” she explained. “So what this does is show us what is the variation throughout the day. That is all the information that we need.”

The CEO shared that often, the assumption is that people are depressed or it is just a part of the ageing process when the symptoms arise. Some of the symptoms men experience are: they feel burnt out, they are not mentally sharp, they are not as flexible, they are craving sugar, they are hearing a ringing in their ears, they don’t sweat as much, their behaviour is more aggressive and they are forgetful, they feel a little numbness in the hands and feet, among others.

While, for women, they start to gain weight, they have acne, their breasts are more tender, skin gets thinner, they bruise easily, they have memory loss, they are also hoarse, they lose their scalp hair more than normal, and have more allergies than usual, among others.

She said these things are happening because people are stressed and this causes the hormones to be out of balance.

She said from there, patients can be treated so they can eventually start feeling better.