Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign what's worthwhile healing Mind, body, and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:30] Hey there. It's Ramsay here. My guest this week mentioned something about a Dutch test, but I didn't stop and ask her to explain it. So looked it up later, and it's actually pretty cool.
[00:00:42] There's a pretty deep rabbit hole now of comprehensive testing. Apparently, there's a test for just about every output the human body can produce.
[00:00:50] Blood, hair, urine, stool, saliva. And if it comes out of you, someone wants to test it. So we collect it at home and mail it in. Just imagine all the little boxes and baggies filled with dried urine strips, stool samples, hair clippings, vials filled with spit, and the infamous blood sample. I'm just waiting for a breath test that analyzes the moisture in your size.
[00:01:18] Well, looks like your cortisol is high, but your existential dread is steady. So that's good news.
[00:01:26] Yeah, it's good, though, because all of this testing gives us a deep understanding of what's going on inside. So what is a Dutch test? And what secrets can we learn from all of our bodily secretions? Let's find out.
[00:01:43] You know, many of my guests have talked about their frustration with the conventional allopathic approach to testing.
[00:01:50] They went to their doctors to described symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, trouble sleeping, or inflammation. And their labs came back normal, as if that meant they were fine, but they didn't feel fine.
[00:02:05] And that disconnect, that sense of being dismissed, is what sent a lot of them down the path toward functional and nutritional therapy in the first place.
[00:02:13] Allopathic medicine looks for disease.
[00:02:17] In other words, evidence that something has already crossed the line into abnormal and actively problematic.
[00:02:24] Functional practice looks for imbalance, more like the space between fine and falling apart. You could say that conventional labs catch the fire once the house is burning. Functional labs look for the smoldering pile of papers or the electrical short that is getting ready to combust. I think this is a better approach. It uses labs to look for things that are headed in the wrong direction before they're fully blown out of control, breaking stuff.
[00:02:51] And that brings us to the Dutch test, one of the main tools that advanced nutritional therapy practitioners use to look for signs.
[00:03:00] Dutch stands for dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. It measures sex hormones, adrenal hormones, and their metabolites over a full day. Instead of going to A lab. For a single blood draw, you collect several small urine samples on special paper strips morning, afternoon, evening and before bed, then mail them in for analysis. The dried part just means that once the samples are dry, they're stable. And that allows the lab to measure not only how much hormone is there, but how it's being processed and cleared by the body.
[00:03:36] Plus the fact that if you put the strips into the envelope when they're still wet, it's pretty messy and they kind of stick together, I imagine.
[00:03:46] Here's the key difference. Traditional tests show a single snapshot, a number frozen in time. The Dutch test shows a pattern. It reveals how cortisol rises and falls throughout the day, how your body metabolizes estrogen or testosterone, and whether your liver and detox pathways are handling those processes efficiently. If you think of hormones as messengers carrying signals throughout the body, the Dutch test is like tracking the entire route, not just confirming that they left the shop. It looks at cortisol and cortisone to show you how your adrenal glands are responding to stress. It measures estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA and their downstream metabolites, showing not just if levels are high or low, but why.
[00:04:37] Maybe estrogen is being produced just fine, but not cleared properly.
[00:04:43] Maybe cortisol is peaking too early, or not at all. Maybe your body is routing hormones through less efficient pathways.
[00:04:51] All of these things affect how you feel. Your energy, your mood, your focus, and your resilience. In my nutritional therapy training, the focus was on what we can observe and what clients can feel.
[00:05:02] Energy, mood, digestion, sleep, skin, stress. Those are all feedback from the body.
[00:05:08] Testing comes later so that you can translate that feedback into something you can adjust with precision. Inexperienced nutritional therapy practitioner can look at test results the way a musician reads sheet music.
[00:05:21] They see patterns, harmonies, dissonance, and determine which notes to play next.
[00:05:26] I'm not at that level yet, but maybe someday.
[00:05:30] Because the idea of being able to look inside the body to see not just what it's producing, but how it's performing feels like a remarkable next step. It's a way to move from guessing to knowing, from hoping to understanding. But let's not get carried away. Testing doesn't replace implementing the basics. It's a way to understand what needs extra attention. The Dutch test, or hair tissue mineral analysis, which I've spoken on before, or any of the other functional tests out there. There are all ways to comb through the house looking for fire dangers. They're more detailed versions of what the body has already been telling us. Through how we feel, sleep, eat and live. When we zoom out, this connects directly to the three pillars I always talk about. Peace of mind comes from understanding. When you can see your body's patterns clearly, you don't have to live in confusion or frustration.
[00:06:22] Vitality of body grows from the precision that testing enables. When you know what's actually off, you can make targeted changes that work in nutrition, rest or stress management. And joy of spirit flows from awe. The more you learn about how beautifully complex your body is, the more grateful and inspired you become.
[00:06:41] So yes, I want to get to that next level someday to interpret tests with clarity and insight. But even now I'm digging what this world of testing represents curiosity, humility, and the willingness to look deeper.
[00:06:54] So if you hear something about a test you've never heard of, maybe look into it. The body has a lot going on, and when we dig through all the lovely waste products it produces, we can really learn a lot.
[00:07:05] Yeah, that didn't really come out right. Ah, well. And for today, that is enough.
[00:07:13] Looking for more? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes, learn from books and articles, and live better by choosing healthy products and practices. I'm now offering services through worthwhile advisors for personal coaching, professional advising, speaking, and group facilitation. If you or your team are ready to reduce stress and anxiety, build vitality and momentum, and accomplish your goals without burning out, then please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman, through the website or on social media like Instagram X or LinkedIn. Thanks, Ra.
