IdeaLabs Service - Steroid Analysis (hair and/or (toe)nail)

[haidut]

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.

 

[tastyfood]

Noted. Felt from receiving the results the first time that indeed supplementation of certain things will skew ratios. The first one that comes to mind is cortisol to testosterone. A ratio that can be easily "gamed" I guess.

 

[haidut]

A ratio that can be easily "gamed" I guess.

Yep, and this is why the cortisol/ testosterone or testosterone/epitestosterone ratio is commonly used by sports officials to detect doping/steroid use.

 

[tastyfood]

We are testing that next. I think there are some studies on detecting prolactin and ACTH in hair, so it should be possible. One problem is that unlike the "simpler" molecules like steroids those bigger, peptide-based hormones are more unstable and degrade more easily, both while still in hair/nail and during the extraction process we do for the samples. But it is doable and has been done, so that would be the next phase, after we complete the nail ranges - i.e. the focus will be on detecting things like serotonin, prolactin, insulin, ACTH, CRH, TSH, LH/FSH, etc. Apparently, CRH is produced not only by the brain but by local cells too, and it s good biomarker of stress and inflammation (just like TSH). so it would probably be informative to detect and quantify those inflammatory peptides. On the other hand, for some of them, their end-point targets provide good information already. For example, if cortisol in hair/nail is high/low then it does not matter much if ACTH is out of range. Same for T3/T4 - they are low then whether TSH is high or not is of secondary importance. The testing of those peptides would help more with determining things like whether a hypothyroidism is of central or peripheral nature, whether a Cushing syndrome is of pituitary or ectopic origin, whether hypogonadism is primary or secondary, etc. Useful info, but only after an abnormal result has been obtained for one or more of the steroids controlled by these peptides.

Anything you can share about the progress made in testing ACTH, CRH, prolactin, serotonin? You mentioned in the October podcast with Danny that you were working on testing melatonin, dopamine, histamine, but didn't catch any updates about these other markers.

Thank you!

 

[StrongMom]

27/2022): This launch is Part I of a two-part service - steroid analysis in hair or nails. While we have confirmed our ability to analyze steroids in both types of samples, nail steroid analysis is still in its scientific infancy and there are very few publications on the topic. As such, there is very little published/public information on so-called "normal population ranges" for each steroid we are capable of detecting. In comparison, there is a lot more information on such ranges in regards to analyzing hair samples. As such, we will offer the hair analysis for now, until we collect enough nail samples from volunteers so that we can experimentally derive ranges for the various steroids in nails. Once those ranges are available, we will add the option to be able to select/order "nails" as a sample analysis in the online shopping system, and will update this thread with another note under this one confirming that we can do the nails as well and the date on which this second part of the service has been launched.

@haidut

This is an old post and I searched the thread(s) but couldn’t find an answer. Is the “normal range” Peat consistent range? For example, thyroid might be high for a conventional “normal” range but not high from Peat’s point of view. How should we interpret the results, especially higher than normal range ones? If the results indicate high thyroid but the person is showing hypothyroid symptoms, should the person ignore the range or look for something else for the cause?