Comprehensive Hormone and Metabolic Testing

You were told your labs were normal. You went home with the same symptoms you arrived with and no plan. That happens constantly, and it is usually not because the test was wrong. It is because too little was measured, and because a number sitting inside a population range was treated as an answer.

What your labs are actually for

Everyone who starts therapy here has lab work done. The question was never whether you need labs. It is what they are being asked to answer, and your panel is asked three different questions that work in three different ways.

First, whether hormone therapy makes sense for you. That is a clinical decision, not a laboratory one. We reach it through your symptoms, your history, and the pattern of how you actually feel. A lab result describes what was in your bloodstream on one morning. It does not describe your sleep, your energy, your mood, your libido, or your capacity to get through the day. If your hormone levels read normal and you still feel unwell, that does not mean you would not benefit from treatment. It means the number did not capture what is happening to you.

This matters most in perimenopause. Progesterone is usually the first hormone to drop, because ovulation becomes irregular and progesterone is only produced after you ovulate. Estradiol does not fall in a straight line at all. It swings, sometimes higher than it has ever been, sometimes low, from week to week and even day to day. That is why a single draw during this window can be misleading, and why a woman with real symptoms is so often told nothing is wrong. Your symptoms are the better guide, and we treat them as evidence.

Second, how to dose you precisely. This one is not optional. Precision medicine is not possible without measurement. Your starting levels determine where treatment begins, and your levels on therapy determine every adjustment after that. A physician who does not measure is guessing, and a guessed dose is either doing too little or carrying risk it did not need to carry. This is the honest reason your panel exists, and it is rarely the reason patients are given.

Third, whether something else is going on. Here the labs lead and the conversation follows. Part of what we measure has nothing to do with hormones at all. Anemia, prostate risk in men, and the cardiometabolic changes that track quietly alongside hormonal shifts are found in blood rather than in symptoms, and they need to be known before you begin therapy rather than after.

Established screening is not the same as an exotic panel

These two get blurred constantly in this field, and the difference matters.

PSA, mammography, colonoscopy, and bone density testing are established population screening. They rest on decades of evidence, they are recommended by the major bodies that issue recommendations, and they find disease early enough to change what happens next. They are not controversial and they are not exotic. Dr. Massihi is a Board-Certified Family Medicine physician, so when someone in her care is overdue for one of them, she notices, she says so, and she helps arrange it.

That is a different category from the long panels of unvalidated markers that some practices run because a long panel looks thorough. We do not order tests so that a report looks impressive. Every marker on your panel is there because it changes a decision, either about your dose or about your health, and we earn nothing from any of them.

AllureMD is not a primary care practice and does not manage acute illness. We expect you to keep your primary care physician, and we work alongside that relationship rather than in place of it.

We measure the whole system, not one hormone

Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid, adrenal function, and metabolism are inseparable parts of the same biology. Testing one of them in isolation produces a fragment, and a fragment is what most people are handed.

Your baseline panel is built around the full picture:

Sex hormones. Estradiol, progesterone, total and free testosterone, LH, and FSH, ordered according to where you are in your cycle or your transition.

Thyroid. Not TSH alone. We run TSH, free T3, and free T4, because a TSH inside range tells you very little on its own about how much active thyroid hormone is reaching your tissues.

Cardiometabolic markers. This is where hormonal change shows up years before anyone names it, and it is routinely left out of a hormone workup. Your panel includes fasting glucose, insulin, a full lipid panel, nuclear magnetic resonance lipoprotein particle analysis, apolipoprotein A, apolipoprotein B, and fibrinogen. Particle analysis matters because two people with identical cholesterol numbers can be carrying very different numbers of the particles that actually drive risk.

Screening and safety markers. Hemoglobin and hematocrit, and PSA for men. These are not hormone tests. They identify conditions that need to be known before therapy begins, anemia among them, and PSA is the established screening marker for prostate cancer, which we check before a man starts testosterone therapy. Finding something here changes the plan, and that is exactly what they are for.

Micronutrients. Vitamin D, because deficiency is common here and it interacts with everything above.

What a typical workup measures, and what we measure

Your panel is not longer for the sake of being longer. Each line below changes a decision that the shorter version cannot reach.

Serum testing only

We use blood testing exclusively. We do not use saliva testing, which has proven unreliable for adjusting and monitoring hormone doses. If you have been given a saliva panel elsewhere and a plan built on it, that is worth a conversation.

Timing changes the result, so we tell you exactly when to go

Most people are never told this, and it quietly ruins a great deal of lab work. If you are already taking hormones, blood drawn at the wrong hour produces a number that leads to the wrong dose adjustment. If you skip a dose before a draw, your level reads falsely low.

Every AllureMD patient gets written timing instructions before every draw, specific to what they take and how they take it. It is a small thing that determines whether the result means anything at all.

What testing costs

Laboratory testing is separate from your membership and is billed as a disclosed pass-through cost at the laboratory’s actual charge, with no markup. AllureMD derives no revenue from laboratory testing, and no revenue from the pharmacy that fills your prescriptions. We have negotiated preferred pricing with a trusted, accredited national laboratory, so your out-of-pocket cost sits below standard market rates.

Baseline panels typically run $150 to $190 depending on clinical scope. Follow-up panels typically run less than $100, because what gets rechecked depends on what we are tracking for you specifically.

The reason that structure exists is simple. When a practice profits from the labs it orders, the incentive to order more of them is built into the model. Ours is built the other way.

Patients often ask whether any of this is covered by their plan. Whether hormone therapy is covered by insurance depends on more than the therapy, and we answer it in full, including the cases where a covered plan is the better choice for you.

What happens with your results

Dr. Massihi reviews your panel against your history and your symptoms, and builds your plan from both. Results are explained to you in plain language, not handed over as a page of numbers with a range beside each one. If something on the panel points outside hormone optimization and toward care you need elsewhere, we tell you that too, and help you get there.

Common questions about hormone testing

Where do I go to have my hormones tested?

We order your panel and send you to a nearby draw site, so you are not hunting for a lab on your own. AllureMD is telehealth-first and serves patients across Mississippi, so the visit is virtual and the blood draw happens close to home.

If you treat symptoms, do I really need lab work?

Yes. Your symptoms tell us whether treatment makes sense. Your labs tell us how to give it accurately and confirm that nothing else needs attention first. Those are separate questions, and skipping the second one is how people end up on a dose that was guessed.

What hormone tests do you run for women?

Estradiol, progesterone, total and free testosterone, LH, and FSH, alongside thyroid and cardiometabolic markers. Which ones we draw, and when, depends on whether you are cycling, perimenopausal, or postmenopausal. Timing is not a detail here. It changes the result.

Do you test thyroid beyond TSH?

Yes. A thyroid test that stops at TSH is the most common gap we see. We add free T3 and free T4, because TSH alone says little about how much active thyroid hormone is actually reaching your tissues.

Can I get my testosterone levels checked?

Yes, for men and for women. We check both total and free testosterone, because the free fraction is the part actually available to your tissues and a total on its own can look reassuring while the usable amount is low. Testosterone is also one of the most commonly skipped tests in women.

Do you screen for anything besides hormones?

Yes. Part of the panel exists to find conditions that are not hormonal at all, and to find them before therapy starts. Anemia and prostate risk are the clearest examples, and the metabolic markers often surface changes nobody has named yet. Dr. Massihi also tracks whether your routine screening is current, including mammography, colonoscopy, and bone density, and helps you arrange what is overdue.

My hormonal labs came back normal. Does that mean nothing is wrong?

No. Reference ranges are built from population averages, and hormonal conditions are diagnosed from how you feel rather than from a single value. In perimenopause especially, progesterone falls as ovulation becomes irregular while estradiol swings week to week, so one draw can easily miss what is happening. If you feel unwell, that is information, and it is where our evaluation starts rather than where it ends.

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