Dr. Tabatha Barber explains why standard lab ranges detect disease, not optimal health. A patient's hormones can fall within normal limits yet create problems: high estradiol with low progesterone throws off the ratio enough to cause real symptoms, but most gynecologists won't catch it.
An important piece here is to understand that the ranges on the lab reports are not optimal. They are very wide, and they are to determine outright disease. So if your levels are outside of those ranges, you definitely have a diagnosable disease. But you could be inside of that range and still not be optimal and therefore have a hormone imbalance. Especially, say, your estradiol or estrone are a little bit high and your progesterone's a little bit low. That little bit on both ends makes a big ratio difference and feels like a major hormone imbalance. So it's really important that the practitioner that's ordering these hormones understands how to interpret the results. That's where a lot of conventional gynecologists fail women, because they don't understand the nuances of optimization and all the details that go along with hormone balance. That's just one caveat that I want you to understand.
