Many women suffer through years of menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings. The good news is two-fold: Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) helps alleviate problematic menopause symptoms, and dried urine testing helps you optimize your treatment plan.
Dr. Inga Zilberstein offers dried urine testing via the DUTCH® test as part of her personalized medicine protocol. At her office in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, Dr. Zilberstein specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, including the transition into menopause and hormone replacement therapy.
Dried urine testing is an at-home test that analyzes your body’s hormones and their metabolites, particles that are the end products of metabolism in your body. The DUTCH test — Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones — is simple and convenient.
You do the testing yourself at home and mail it to the laboratory. The test requires you to saturate specialized filter paper with urine several times within 24 hours.
The DUTCH test goes beyond basic lab tests like blood work and saliva swabs. This test screens for sex hormones, cortisol patterns, and adrenal hormones, as well as their metabolites, for a comprehensive evaluation of your health.
The main advantage of dried urine testing is the ability to identify hormone imbalances, track the effectiveness of your treatment with BHRT, and understand how your body metabolizes specific hormones, providing a better picture of your health and informing Dr. Zilberstein of the best treatment path.
Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy helps many women who are struggling with menopausal symptoms or those who have a hormone imbalance that requires HRT.
Bioidentical hormones are synthetic but closely resemble those that your body makes. BHRT is effective at relieving menopause symptoms and maintaining hormone levels in the body. However, if you want a full view of how it’s working, dried urine testing provides extensive data that reveal what’s causing symptoms so Dr. Zilberstein can treat them most effectively.
There are several advantages to dried urine testing when taking BHRT.
Getting BHRT into a therapeutic range is essential for symptom relief and bone health. The DUTCH test helps ensure serum estradiol levels are in the postmenopausal luteal range for optimal health.
The DUTCH test also provides insight into breast cancer and fibroid risks. If your dried urine test shows that your body is metabolizing estrogen into carcinogenic 4 OH- catechols or other dangerous metabolites, we know that your risk of these conditions is higher. If you need monitoring or treatment, you get it promptly. If your ranges are good, you get peace of mind.
Unlike blood or saliva tests, dried urine testing examines your metabolic pathways in greater detail — not just a one-time snapshot but an analysis of hormone levels and their patterns over 24 hours, including how the body is metabolizing those hormones. These hormone metabolites provide information about risk markers and detoxification pathways.
If you’re taking BHRT through the transdermal route, dried urine testing helps Dr. Zilberstein understand how your body fluctuates daily to get you to a therapeutic range. The test provides the most stable picture of hormones to ensure your body is getting what it needs.
Find out more about the DUTCH test and how it helps with BHRT. To schedule a consultation with Inga Zilberstein, MD, call or text 830-254-5941 or send a message through this website.
