Can a home-testing kit tell me if I’m menopausal? | Zoe Williams
It turns out that numbers don’t necessarily tell the whole story
• Fitness tips: what you need to know about perimenopause
“Are you sure you want to do a home hormone test?” my editor asked. “Are you sure it’s not too personal?” Why would that be personal, I think. This is stuff I make without trying. It’s not even as revealing as keeping a food diary. Then two tests arrived from medical test-by-post company Thriva; one female baseline hormone test and one menopause test, so I realised that actually, yeah, that is pretty personal.
There are a couple of reasons why someone might want to test. If you’re trying to figure out why you’re not getting pregnant, you can wait a long time for investigations on the NHS. If you’re having menopausal symptoms, you might want to confirm the hunch so you can make a decision about hormone replacement therapy (HRT). If you’re just curious… well, this is what happened with me.