Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Video: The Role of Lab Testing In Relieving Your Menopausal Symptoms

Lab testing plays a vital role throughout the various stages of menopause. Everyone is different and there's a lot more to the human body than just estrogen and progesterone - especially in women! In this video, Dr. Mark Stengler discusses the importance of lab testing throughout the various stages of menopause in helping you maintain optimal health!

Hi this is Dr. Mark Stengler from the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine in Encinitas California and today I want to talk about lab testing and menopause. I talk to a lot of women who come into the clinic and they saw their general practitioner and they've asked about what lab tests would be helpful for them to identify why they're getting premenopausal or menopausal symptoms, and often their doctors downplay the role of testing. And I find this troubling because everyone is different. So, at our clinic, we test women again in the stages of premenopausal menopause and for many different hormones. You know, there's a lot more to the human body than just estrogen and progesterone especially in women. And, while there are certainly main hormones involved in premenopausal menopause, they're not the only hormones. And so, if you want to get the best results, you should test all the major hormones and balance them out for the best results. So, with our patients, we test hormones such as estrogen. Now estrogen is a plural term. There's more than one type of estrogen. The strongest one is known as the estradiol. Like I said there's many other ones that can be tested. We test progesterone levels, we check testosterone levels, we check the stress hormones like DHEA, Cortisol and Pregnenolone. They all have effects on hormone balance and things like hot flashes and energy level, and mood and other symptoms such as fatigue and so we want to test those as well. Also, for anti aging purposes, we test growth hormone levels. And we certainly do very thorough testing on thyroid. We do six markers of thyroid function. Because the thyroid function often becomes suboptimal or low during the premenopausal and menopausal transition. So we take a close look at that as well. We don't want women to suffer from weight gain, fatigue, poor memory, low libido as a result of low thyroid. So we look at all these hormones and depending on a woman's balance we may use dietary approaches, supplement approaches, bioidentical or natural hormone approaches, but by addressing all the hormones and looking at all of them you'll get much better results. For a complete list of treatments offered and conditions addressed at this Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine, please visit our website. Call or e-mail the clinic with any questions you may have.

MAKE AN APPOINTMENT