Re: differing doctor opinions on salivary cortisol

Saliva cortisol results and their validity has been a subject that comes up over and over.

I asked on this forum a long while back which tests to take for realistic values and no-one seemed to really know.

In other health arenas you have practitioners citing saliva as being more accurate and doctors saying blood testing is more accurate.
Such a divide of opinion is frustrating.

So i spent weeks researching the validity of saliva testing for hormones verses blood testing like an autistic kid on speed!

The conclusion i drew from all the MANY studies that have been done on this subject is that SALIVA TESTING IS AN EXTREMELY VALID AND ACCURATE METHOD TO TEST HORMONE LEVELS.
Studies show this over and over.

Cortisol levels are particularly more accurate via saliva than blood, as studies show.

Also Estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, DHEAS drew margins of accuracy deeming saliva testing to be a valid method of determining levels of hormones that are NOT protein bound and thus are able to be used by the body.

Blood testing measure levels which are both free and protein-bound. A formula is then used to determine the value of 'free' hormone that is not protein bound. Studies showed that this formula does not provide the accuracy that saliva testing can. (which makes sense as not ALL people produce the same amount of 'free' hormone to comply with this 'set medical practice' formula)

Due to such studies showing this accuracy of saliva testing it is used widely in the medical field of further studies, it's a method used by the military to screen all members, it's widely used everywhere except where it needs to be used:- in the doctors office!

Awareness needs to be raised on the validity of saliva testing.

I was going to do a post linking to the studies i found and information exploring why saliva testing is more useful but lacked time to get the post out there.

Tweet