The Price of Spit

Who knew spit could be so valuable? What’s the price of spit you ask? Well let me just tell you that my spit is priceless.
Several weeks ago I woke up one morning on Day 21 of my cycle and spent half an hour in bed spitting into a test tube. I know test tubes may appear small but geez do they take a long time to fill up with spit! If you’ve taken a saliva hormone test before you what I’m talking about. You only learn how valuable each and every drop of your spit is when you actually have to produce a test tube full of it!
But that’s not the only thing that makes my spit priceless – the truth is my spit tells me things; amazing, important and insightful things. Well not me actually but the lab tech and the doctor and then eventually I get the news too. In fact, one of the ways that my doctor and I check on what my body is doing with the hormones I take and the ones my body produces is through occasional saliva hormone tests.
Yesterday I went to see my doctor to discuss my test results. As we expected, my precious saliva revealed that my estrogen level is low and my progesterone is high. My beautiful, blissful hormonal balance has been thrown off-kilter and in the craziest most unexpected way! Well, ok, maybe it’s not that unexpected – I’m very likely feeling the effects of peri-menopause. And while it’s a bit disheartening that after all my years of dealing with devastating hormone problems I only got a few short years with harmonious hormones – I feel like I am armed with all the resources I need to figure this out.
The discussion with my doctor revolved around how to deal with this new information. I admitted that I did NOT want to take estrogen – bioidentical or not. The reasons being:
- my fear that being estrogen dominant my entire life already puts me at increased risk for breast cancer and endometrial cancer (read my post on estrogen dominance)
- my blood test for breast cancer markers revealed that I am at the very top end of the “normal” range
- there hasn’t been much long-term research about bio-identical estrogen
- there are ways to nutritionally support my body and my liver to help with hormones – food is always the best first medicine