Short clinician explanation (YouTube) about when to check reproductive hormones: fertility and PCOS-focused labs should be drawn early in the cycle (cycle days 2–5), while evaluation for perimenopause/menopause or assessment of luteal progesterone/estrogen should be done in the mid-luteal week (approximately days 19–23 of a 28-day cycle).
When should you check your hormones? Where should you be in your cycle to check for your hormones? And patients get very confused by this because their fertility doctor tells them to test it between day three and five and then we tell them to test it on day 19 to 23 of a 28 day cycle. So I just want to talk about why some clinicians would say test early and some recommend testing later. It's really about what you're trying to find out, if it's more fertility labs or if you're trying to diagnose pcos. You want to do those labs early like day two to five and that's two to five of your cycle and that's the time to test. But if you're looking at if you're perimenopausal or menopausal and are thinking about if your hormones need to be balanced, you do want to check your labs on your mid luteal phase. So it's the week before your cycle ideally. So for a 28 day cycle you want to test on day 19 to 23 and measure what your progesterone and estrogen levels are because that's going to give you an idea if you need them to be improved. We hope that helps.
