It is a shame that the vast majority of people who take Finasteride or Dutasteride to combat their hair loss never get blood tests to measure their hormone levels pre-medication and post-medication. I am one of those people and wish that I had kept an annual log of my various hormone levels while I have been taking Finasteride 1.25 mg once every two days for a majority of the past ten or so years. There is no guarantee that these medications are always working, and there have been some recent rumors that certain generic versions of Finasteride reduce DHT levels less then non-generic versions.
The main reasons that people do not bother to measure their hormone levels regularly are 1) laziness/inconvenience and 2) the expensive nature of these tests. For example, some years ago I asked my doctor how much a blood test to measure my DHT, estrogen and testosterone levels would cost, and the answer was a combined $500 for the three tests. In addition, you have to pay another $100-200 just to see a doctor so that he/she can then refer you to some expensive affiliated lab for a blood test. Total ripoff.
For people taking finasteride or dutasteride, the hormones to focus on when getting blood tests are (top 3 = the most pertinent):
- Dihydrotestosterone (DHT)
- Estrogen — various ways of measuring
- Testosterone — various ways of measuring
- Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH)
- Luteinizing Hormone (LH)
In most cases, your testosterone and estrogen levels should not change drastically from taking finasteride or dutasteride. But some people do get unlucky with major swings in the numbers.
Cheap Blood Tests
Luckily, blood test prices are no longer that high if you decide to avoid the doctor and the hospital lab and instead go to private walk-in facilities or purchase kits that you mail back with your blood drawn at home. Some of the below listed places might not have locations in your city, and some might not be reviewed online as frequently as you desire, but it is still worth checking them out.
If you have any kind of esoteric medical problem, your 1,000 plus hours of internet research and internet forum participation oftentimes makes you far more of an expert in that particular condition than a family doctor.
LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics: A Duopoly
In the US, by far the two largest companies offering diagnostic lab services are LabCorp (LH) and Quest Diagnostics (DGX). Typically, when your doctor sends you to get a blood test at a local facility, your drawn blood is then sent to one of the above two companies for analysis.
However, there are now much cheaper options if you avoid the doctor from the get go. Moreover, Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos will change the whole game entirely if things go as planned (see second section below).
Walk-In Clinics Where You Can Get Low-Cost Blood Tests
Below are some examples of clinics in the US that offer blood tests that are significantly cheaper than at regular labs. Unfortunately, most of the below places still end up using the services of LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics. However, at least its a lot cheaper this way than going via your doctor’s referral. Some of the below have special offers every month.
LifeExtension –> DHT test = $50
Walkinlab –> DHT test = $97
Directlabs –> DHT test = $97
Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos: A Revolution in Blood Testing
A few months before I wrote about BioViva’s Elizabeth (Liz) Parrrish, I had been contemplating writing about Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame, but never got to it till today (although I did cover Theranos as part of several monthly “Brief Items of Interest” posts). Ms. Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19. The company has developed a way to extract just a few drops of your blood from your finger via pinpricks and then conduct over 240 blood tests (and counting) on those few blood drops.
Moreover, via a partnership Theranos has now started offering these tests at Walgreens’ Wellness Centers in select parts of the US, and will expand nationwide and then internationally in the near future. These tests will generally costs a fraction of what they cost at the labs I discussed earlier. Moreover, since Walgreens is omnipresent in the US, we are not far from a time when every single one of us can get a blood test for cheap with just some pin pricks right at our next door Walgreens. This will represent a medical revolution.
The Battle of the Liz’s
Ms. Holmes has garnered 1,000s of times more publicity and media coverage in the US compared to Ms. Parrish, although the former has been in the news for a significantly longer time than the latter. Ms. Holmes has managed to get numerous ex-politicians on her company (Theranos)’s board of directors, giving her influence that Ms. Parrish can only dream about. The most famous of these ex-politicians is Henry Kissinger. Interestingly, while Ms. Parrish is a vegetarian, Ms. Holmes is a vegan.
While Ms. Parrish has a bachelor’s degree related to Biology (and she has been criticized for not having any further advanced degree), Ms. Holmes is a Stanford University dropout from the Chemical Engineering program. Ms. Holmes has become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire (current net worth estimated at $4.6 billion), while Ms. Parrish is probably not even a millionaire yet. Both are female CEOs, a rarity. Both are very well spoken and photogenic, the latter of which is unfortunately often a bit too important for success in the western world.
In the long run, what Ms. Parrish is doing is far more important than what Ms. Holmes is doing, but the only problem is that there is a decent chance that Ms. Parrish’s gene therapy procedures might not work, or even worse, could be banned if someone dies during the initial human experiments. Especially if other semi-medically knowledgeable qualified professionals start recklessly following Ms. Parrish’s example with dangerous untested therapies.
Nevertheless, it is absolutely wonderful that Ms. Parrish could likely accelerate the start of an era in which humans taking their healthcare and their bodies into their own hands and ignore the government (or find ways to bypass the government — e.g., get things done in Colombia or Congo or preferably Japan in the near future).
On the other hand, what Ms. Holmes is doing is far more likely to work and has in fact already been proven to pass government requirements in several cases. Due to the company’s stealth mode operations, things are not entirely clear as yet, but my intuition tells me that the company’s proprietary technology works.
Theranos: A Week of Bad Publicity
The biggest problem with Theranos has been that it is extremely secretive as to how its technology works. Since the company is currently privately held, it has been able to largely get away with this — until this week when the Wall Street Journal published a critical article on Theranos, accusing the company of not using its technology for many of the tests, as well as implying a number of other issues with the company. Elizabeth Holmes was not pleased with this, and strongly defended her company yesterday. Virtually all major media has been covering this story, including the New York Times.
My feeling is that Theranos will get through these difficulties. It already has one blood test (Herpes Simplex) cleared by the FDA, and is hoping to get 120 others approved in the near future.
Unfortunately, while Theranos currently offers Estrogen and Testosterone blood tests, it offers no DHT blood tests.