haidut
Member
If anyone is interested in the possibility of sending hair other than scalp hair, I'm posting my results here using beard hair. My beard wasn't that long, and I was able to gather 1.3g of hair to send to IdeaLabs by shaving everything but the mustache. I highly recommend these to guys who don't want to mess with chunks of their scalp hair. Having a good quality precision scale is important to properly measure the amount before you send the sample to IdeaLabs.
The results are again interesting:
- My hair shows less DHT now that I have been supplementing than when I wasn't using any.
- Progesterone went up even though I cut the dosage by a lot. Barely using a couple of drops of Progest-e nowadays.
- All the other androgens went down compared to my last hair results, as expected, since I lowered usage of a lot of the stuff especially DHEA. Despite not using much, a lot of my results are way above the range still.
- Thankfully, the lowered androgens appear to have stopped the aromatization and stress response. No more high estrone. No more corticosterone.
- I was wowed to see aldosterone detected since it only has a 2% detection frequency for Idealabs samples according to the results sheet. It was on the lower end of the range which was a relief. It was nice seeing this reported in hair, because I read the requirements for testing aldosterone in blood and they are tedious. According to Labcorp, ou have to be ambulatory for 30 minutes before testing, which would skew any other tests you want to do at the same time.
I remain confused and concerned about two of the ratios:
AN/Etiocholanolone: I haven't had detected results for etiocholanolone so I'm unable to see a ratio here.
Androstenedione/DHEA: if < 1.5 it may indicate 3β-HSD deficiency. Mine is close to zero. I haven't found anything about a 3β-HSD deficiency in the forum. My ratio here is really small because my DHEA is through the roof. Despite having good androstenedione, I get a bad ratio. If 3β-HSD deficiency is about Congetinal Adrenal Hyperplasia, at least I have many other results that show I don't have an issue with that.
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Interested in others' thoughts, especially those of you who have used this testing service.
Thank you!
I am not allowed to comment on the results, but I can say this. The report has a disclaimer stating that the assumption is the person is not taking exogenous hormones and/or had no endocrine tumor that produces steroids, as both of these can skew the results. Since there is supplementation in this case, the steroid ratios are not really meaningful. The same is true for blood tests. The labs doing blood tests for steroids have a disclaimer that their assumption is the person is not taking anything and if he/she is supplementing then the labs are to be interpreted by a doctor who would know if how to determine a normal/abnormal result when there is steroid supplementation.