Which hormones are worth testing

Hormones are best understood in context, so a hormone test tells you the most when there is a clear question behind it. Read alongside your symptoms, your age and your timing, a result means something; on its own it can be harder to place, because hormone levels move with the time of day, the point in a cycle, and ordinary day-to-day variation. It works best, then, to test what your situation points to and read the results together.

Thyroid is worth checking widely, because an under- or over-active thyroid is common, treatable, and can sit behind tiredness, weight change, low mood and much else.

Around the menopause, the diagnosis is often clear from your symptoms and timing alone. Many women still want a blood test to confirm what is happening and to have it on record, which is an entirely reasonable thing to want and a simple test that does no harm, so we are glad to do it. The NHS diagnoses menopause from symptoms and does not usually run confirmatory bloods, so this is something women often choose to have done privately. There is also growing interest in checking testosterone as part of the picture, for energy, libido and mood, or when considering testosterone treatment, and we can include that in the panel. In younger women, where the picture is less clear-cut, the bloods add more still.

For a man with symptoms of low testosterone, the test is a morning blood sample, taken before 11am when levels are highest, repeated on a second morning to confirm, and read alongside the hormones that set it in context, such as SHBG, LH and FSH. A sample taken later in the day, or after a poor night's sleep, can read low when nothing is wrong.

Cortisol and the adrenal picture are worth testing when your symptoms point that way. The popular idea of "adrenal fatigue" is that long-term stress slowly wears the adrenal glands out until they make too little cortisol, leaving you tired, foggy, slow to get going in the morning, craving salt or sugar, and leaning on caffeine to get through the day. It is not a formal medical diagnosis, because studies have not found that ordinary chronic stress exhausts the adrenals in this way, the salivary cortisol profiles used to claim it do not reliably identify anything, and the endocrine specialty does not recognise it. The tiredness itself is real and common, and it has causes worth finding. There is also a separate condition, adrenal insufficiency, where the adrenals do not make enough cortisol; that one is real, testable and important not to miss. So if this is what you want to explore, we test cortisol and the adrenal axis, rule out the conditions that matter, and work out what is behind how you feel.

The thread through all of it is that a hormone result means the most set next to your symptoms, your timing and your history. So we start from your question, help you get the most from whatever you choose to check, and add to the panel whenever you want a fuller picture. If your bloods are recent, we use them rather than repeat them, and either way you get results you can make sense of.

Ready to start? Choose the check that fits your question and tell us a little about yourself. A doctor reviews it, arranges what you need, and explains what it means. Most of it is done online, with the clinic there if you would rather be seen.