Dried Urine Hormone Testing is A Total Game Changer with Dr. Carrie Jones – #12
In today’s episode I talk with Dr. Carrie Jones about the DUTCH test. Lauded as a game changer in the Hormone testing arena. Dr. Carrie talks about why the DUTCH test was created.
There has always been the two standard approaches to testing hormones: saliva and serum. Where these tests fell short is that they could not show hormonal pathways. Dr. Carrie discusses the role of hormonal pathways and how they have shown to be the most accurate markers for hormone availability and giving practitioners detailed information for accurate assessment and treatment.
Before the DUTCH test, a woman (with fertility issues) could have a hormone panel that showed her hormones where in normal range. The problem is that hormones fluctuate and so what appears as normal hormone ranges could be out of range after a serum or saliva sample was taken. With Cycle Mapping a woman’s hormone levels are assessed throughout her entire cycle. This gives a true picture of a woman’s hormonal levels. We discuss the importance of testing not guessing and how proper testing can resolve much heartache and confusion.
The DUTCH test is offered direct to consumer and Precision Analytics (the inventors of the test) are offering our listener’s $50 off their tests.
About Episode Guest

Dr. Carrie Jones is a functional medicine women’s health and hormone doctor who believes in the importance of both men and women understanding their hormones in a simplified manner so they can feel more empowered to take control of their own health especially when they are told everything is “normal” but they don’t feel “normal.”
She is a Naturopathic Physician with a Master’s in Public Health having over 12 years in the field of functional and integrative medicine. As Adjunct Faculty for the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM), she has taught courses in both Gynecology and Advanced Endocrinology. She has have been the Medical Director for two large integrative clinics in Portland, Oregon and currently the Medical Director for Precision Analytical, Inc, creators of the most cutting edge hormone test on the market, the DUTCH Test. As a result, she consults with the most amazing health care practitioners all over the world on the hormone status of their patients and lecture/teach/write frequently on the same topic. Understanding adrenal, thyroid, and sex hormones is complicated. Her job is not to judge. Her job is to educate and empower.
You can find out more about Dr. Carrie at her website and by following her on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
Interview with Carrie Jones - Episode Highlights
0:22 Intro
1:33 What is the DUTCH test and what can it show us that other hormone tests can not?
5:51 Pathways-why are these biomarkers important in treatment of hormonal imbalances?
8:49 What is Cycle mapping and how can it unlock the answers to unexplained infertility and habitual miscarriages?
15:41 Dr. Carrie preaches, “get a full thyroid workup”. What to test for and why.
19:33 What biomarkers are assessed with a DUTCH test?
22:04 How does the DUTCH test assess for serotonin levels? And what hormone is needed (in adequate amounts) to make serotonin?
24:23 What is a commonly mis-assessed cause of depression?
26:03 Dr. Carrie gives our listeners $50 off promo code on the DUTCH test!
27:35 “Test don’t guess.” Dr. Carrie emphasizes how proper testing can prevent a lot of heartbreak and confusion.
30:35 Armed with information. Doctors can miss or overlook a lot during health appointments. As a patient be your own educated advocate.
Selected Links from the Episode
National University of Natural Medicine
DUTCH Test ($50 Off Promo Code: fertilityhour )
People Mentioned
0:22 Charlene Lincoln: Welcome back. I am excited for today’s podcast. We have a very special guest, Dr. Carrie Jones. Dr. Carrie graduated from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon and then went on to complete her residency in women’s health, endocrinology and hormones. Later she graduated from Grand Canyon University’s Master of Public Health Program with a goal of doing more international work and health empowerment. Dr. Carrie was a long-time adjunct professor at NUNM teaching advanced endocrinology and fertility and regularly consults, lectures and writes on the topic of hormones, adrenals and more both nationally and internationally. She is the Medical Director at Precision Analytical Inc., creators of the DUTCH test. Welcome, Dr. Carrie.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Thanks. This is one of my most favorite topics, so I’m really excited.
1:29 CL: Oh, good. It’s our favorite topic too.
CJ: I bet.
1:33 CL: So I have to admit I only became recently familiar with the DUTCH test through my partner, Dr. Iva Keene of the Natural Fertility Prescription. She sings its praises. Chris Kresser who’s a big functional medicine guy. Dr. Mercola. Dr. Christiane Northrup. Dr. Sara Gottfried… I mean, they’re pretty much a huge forefront on the field of functional integrative medicine hormones, adrenals, and they’re saying it’s a game changer. So I want to know more because I’ve been using saliva testing and different types of tests, so I’m fascinated by it.
First question is, talk to us about the DUTCH test.
CJ: What is the DUTCH test.
2:27 CL: Yeah, exactly. What is it? How’s it different from testing that has been done to date? Why did you need to create the DUTCH test? Wasn’t what we had proficient enough?
CJ: Great question, absolutely. So the first thing is I always say DUTCH is an acronym. We are not testing for Dutch heritage, which we get asked a lot. But it stands for Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones. So what it does is it takes the best of saliva testing and it takes the best of 24-hour urine testing where you collect it in a jug all 24 hours and then take it to the lab and puts it together. It’s basically what you do is you pee on pieces of filter paper 4 times in the day, 5 if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night, let them all dry and mail them in. So you get all of your standard hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, like the things you’re familiar with maybe in saliva testing or blood testing. But because it’s urine, you get all the pathways. So you may have a woman that’s making estrogen and it looks normal but she’s going down the wrong pathway. Maybe she’s going down the pathway that causes PMS or tender breasts. Maybe she’s going down the pathway that can increase her risk for cancer.
Testosterone is the same way. Maybe she’s making normal levels of testosterone but she’s like, “I have acne and I have hair here and I don’t want hair there. My hair is falling out and I’m angry all the time.” Or, “I have PCOS.” I’m like, “Yeah, testosterone can go down this pathway.” It’s the more aggressive pathway, the alpha pathway. And if you know that, if you catch it on the DUTCH test, there’s things we can do about it. So it gives you a lot of information in one test. So you’re not having to like order a serum, order a saliva, pee in a jug for 24 hours. It’s just one test.
4:17 CL: Now I recognize why the need was there because like you were saying, the pathways. Because that’s always the argument with the blood serum test, right?
CJ: Right. You miss cortisol on the blood serum. You can do a spot cortisol on blood serum. But unless you’re willing to get your blood drawn four times in a day to get your pattern, it’s tough and that was kind of why saliva came about. Saliva came about to give you that circadian rhythm pattern of cortisol. But with saliva, you still miss out on the pathways. It’s only in urine that you can pick up the pathways.
4:55 CL: Isn’t it with blood serum, the argument is that I cannot show what hormones are active in the tissue?
CJ: It’s what’s in circulation. So the nice thing, like the one hormone, the one caveat to that is testosterone. In men you can get a total testosterone and a free testosterone. Now the free is calculated. It’s not an actual free. They calculate it based on sex hormone-binding globulin and total testosterone. But yeah, the other hormones in serum are what’s free and then what’s bound up. Because hormones are like children, right? They can’t be unattended at any time. So your body makes a hormone, puts it on a bus. The bus drives through your bloodstream and only a very few amount of hormone can get off the bus and do the things. So when you draw your blood, you don’t know if you’re getting all buses, all hormone that have gotten off the bus. You know, the ratio which is the combination of the two.
5:51 CL: Say that someone recently they did a saliva hormone panel and then they did a DUTCH test, would they potentially look very different from one another?
CJ: If they did them on the same day, they should not. There’s good correlation between saliva and urine done on the same day which we require with sort of CLIA which is our overseeing lab body. We have to do these proficiency tests. So if I want to do my urine test and my saliva test today, it should look the exact… and the free hormones. Now, unfortunately, what saliva won’t give me also are these pathways so I will understand. I’ll get my estrogen, I’ll see what my estrogen is. I’ll get my progesterone and I can see if I’m ovulating from a progesterone standpoint. But then I get to see all the pathways. There’s even with progesterone, people don’t realize we have an alpha and a beta pathway there too and it’s the alpha pathway that helps women sleep at night and feel less anxious.
So some women will say like if they’re not ovulating or they have amenorrhea, they’re not getting their period, or they’re heading into perimenopause and they go, “I suddenly can’t sleep” or “I’m getting more anxious lately.” I can look at the progesterone and see, ooh, you’re missing out on the alpha, that’s one of the problems. So it’s cool to get all this extra information but it is just like a one-dimensional field.
7:16 CL: Absolutely. So that influences the treatment obviously.
CJ: Yeah, absolutely.
7:19 CL: Instead of just saying, “Oh, this woman just has low progesterone.”
CJ: Yeah. So like a classic example is if you have low progesterone, let’s say you have anxiety, you’re not sleeping. I look at your progesterone and your alpha is low, believe it or not, I’m going to do all the things to help get you ovulating naturally again. But I may also in the meantime put you on oral (like what you swallow) or sublingual (which is what you dissolve in your mouth) because the oral and the sublingual are what improve the alpha the sort of the best and the fastest as opposed to a cream. So a lot of women especially going through fertility will use progesterone cream. Works great for all the other stuff but if anxiety and sleep is your problem, you probably want the oral and the sublingual instead. So it will help me choose treatments as well. And again, like I said, I’m doing all the nutrients, I’m trying to get you to ovulate but sometimes with women, we just need a Band-Aid and we need some help.
8:20 CL: When we’re looking at habitual miscarriages and low progesterone, I mean, when you’re talking about the alpha and the beta pathway, what’s the correlation there?
CJ: It’s actually just total amount of progesterone. If you’re an alpha or a beta, I don’t see it matter when it comes to miscarriage. It does but it’s the actual total amount you can produce, that’s one of the risks.
8:49 CL: Which tests do you recommend for fertility assessment in a woman and in a man?
CJ: Absolutely. So when it comes to DUTCH testing, we have a couple of options. So if you’re new to fertility like you’re just starting to try, you’ve been trying for a couple of months, our flagship test is called the DUTCH Complete. It gives you all your hormones, all your adrenals, all your pathways. Super easy. If you’ve been trying for a while, if you have a history of miscarriage, if doctors or practitioners are really struggling to figure out what’s going on, then I recommend what’s called a cycle mapping which is where you basically pee on a strip of paper every morning, basically every morning of your cycle and then we graph it out for you, so I can say, “Look, let’s watch your estrogen through your whole 28 or whatever days your cycle is. Let’s watch your progesterone. Let’s see how healthy your rise should be in the second half of your cycle.” Because sometimes what will happen is women go get their blood drawn for progesterone and they’re like, “Oh, it’s normal. You’re normal. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” But it may only be normal for a very short period of time.
Progesterone, when it’s made, should have this really healthy up and down like a big hill. And some women have a mountain; they go up and they go down and when they come down too fast, then it really complicates pregnancy, implantation and increases the risk for miscarriage. So when we graph it out on that cycle map, I can say, do you have a mountain or do you have a hill? Or do you even make it at all? Some women don’t even get off the ground, unfortunately. So it’s usually one of those two tests that I recommend.
For men, obviously men don’t cycle, so I usually start with what we call the DUTCH Complete for them, just sort of our flagship all-encompassing, covers everything. And that’s just hormones. Obviously, I do thyroid workup and I do red and white blood cells and I do metabolic panel, I do vitamin D and iron. I really make sure. I say basics, but my basics and conventional basics are very different. So I’m always, like, right away, I don’t wait to do those things because I want couples to have a healthy baby and it really frustrates me when women come and say, “I’ve already had two miscarriages and my doctor won’t do anything until I have a third.” And that’s just appalling to me. Like, hello? Let’s work you up right now. Let’s be proactive.
11:14 CL: That drives me crazy too. By that third, women are in a downward spiral, I’ve found. I don’t get that. You’ve kind of covered this, it looks like your test can be performed at home.
CJ: Oh, yeah.
11:33 CL: They are performed at home, okay. Is there any part of it where you need to go and get lab work done?
CJ: No. You get the kit. It comes in a little square envelope. It’s very thin and easy and it all folds out and the instructions are right on it. There’s strips of paper, they’re about that big. I mean they’re just pieces of filter paper and most women trying to get pregnant are familiar with urinating on things like ovulation predictor kits and pregnancy tests and so I’m like, just pee on it the same way.
12:02 CL: That’s easy.
CJ: And then let it dry. You’ll do it first thing in the morning. You’ll do it two hours later and do it around dinner and before bed and then let them dry completely and mail them back to the lab, which we have an envelope included.
12:16 CL: I’m sure you talk about like different foods or supplements or things to avoid when urinating or does it affect?
CJ: It does. So especially women on hormones. Again, it depends what you want to see. So you are on a protocol. If you are on hormones like progesterone and you want to know if it’s working, stay on them. Totally fine. Just stay on them. If you’re like, “You know what, this isn’t working. I want to start over,” then talk with your healthcare practitioner but maybe you need to go off of them for a couple of weeks and get a baseline. So it really depends what you’re looking for and where you are in your journey.
12:53 CL: People are so impressed by this test that basically this has just kind of become their gold standard of testing at this point.
CJ: Obviously, I’m completely biased as the medical director. But I used saliva for years and years and I used serum for years. I never really got into 24-hour only because I wouldn’t do it and if I won’t do that test, then I couldn’t imagine recommending it to my patients. I don’t have time to collect my urine for 24 hours and it seems like a pain. So I started working with this company almost from the beginning. I knew the owner and he approached me and he was like, “Can you help? Can you consult?” and then it just grew from there. And to watch the transformation, to watch the information we get, to watch big people like you mentioned, Sara Gottfried, Chris Kresser, Dr. Mercola, they watched patients, get their feedback like “wow, this is amazing.” And then to watch just every other practitioner, everyday practitioners just working to support and further functional medicine in their hometown, it’s fantastic. It’s great the feedback that we get and the differences it makes. So I’m really proud to work for the company.
14:02 CL: It seems like a great company. We have an audience all around the world. Can you ship these tests worldwide?
CJ: Absolutely, yup. They’re just pieces of paper. They clear customs really well. We can include customs forms. So we have patients and practitioners everywhere from China to South Africa to all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Brazil. We mail all over. Not a problem.
15:41 CL: Great. That’s wonderful to hear. What other fertility-related parameters do you test for? For example, thyroid function, adrenal function.
CJ: I absolutely do both of those. Because thyroid is so critical, as you know, and I recommend a lot more than just your standard thyroid, meaning like a TSH. So that is done in the serum. I don’t recommend it in urine, I don’t recommend it in saliva. It’s gold standard in the serum. But I tell women and men too, because obviously men are the other half of the equation here, do the whole panel. Do your T4, do your T3. Those are your thyroid hormones. Get your antibodies. Find out if you’re autoimmune. Get what’s called a reverse T3. So the reverse T3 and the T3, we do a little ratio because people don’t realize that one marker, that TSH, is just a marker of how much T3 you have in your brain and your pituitary. So your pituitary may be completely happy and healthy so your TSH looks great, but what’s called cellular hypothyroidism where out in your cells and the rest of your body, your ovaries, your breasts, your fingertips, everything, your digestive tract, you’re not getting enough T3. So you have all the thyroid symptoms. Your hair is falling out, your feet and hands are cold, you have constipation, your skin is dry, you can’t get pregnant or you have miscarriages and everyone’s like, “Well, your TSH is normal.” I’m like, that just means your pituitary is happy. It has nothing to do with the rest of the cells. So I strongly recommend, hey look, ask your practitioner, spend the money and get the full workup because you could be missing some big stuff when it comes to the thyroid.
Then the adrenals are the other part of the equation. It’s the thyroid, it’s the adrenals, and it’s the sex hormones for men and women. That’s kind of like your trilogy of your endocrine system. So, big fan of doing adrenal testing.
17:48 CL: That’s another maddening thing when women just get the TSH tested. Anyway, that could be a whole other… anyways, you know of course, if you’re listening, get the full thyroid panel done. So that brings up the question: do people need to go through a practitioner to order a DUTCH test? I don’t even know that part of it.
CJ: They do not.
18:17 CL: Oh, it’s direct to consumer.
CJ: It’s both. We have practitioners. If you were listening to this and you’re like, “You know what, I want to work with somebody who does DUTCH testing. We have a whole Rolodex essentially of practitioners that we can say here’s in your city, here’s in your state and here’s in your country. Or if you are just wanting to get the test and get the ball rolling, you can go right to our website and order it yourself. So you can go right away. Now when you order it direct from us, unfortunately, we as a lab cannot give patients medical advice, which is why we strongly suggest working with a practitioner. But you can order it off the website and get going on it.
19:00 CL: When you said that you test the thyroid through the serum, are you doing like a blood spot test?
CJ: We don’t test the thyroid. It’s the one thing we don’t really look at. So I do tell people like go talk to your practitioner or order off a walk-in lab. There’s several consumer-based labs that you can find and you do it that way. Or run it through your insurance. But with DUTCH, it doesn’t do it. We don’t do thyroid. We’re cool but not that cool.
19:30 CL: Get on that, please.
CJ: I know, right?
19:33 CL: Do you offer any tests which are currently not being offered by other labs and if so, what’s the advantage of those tests?
CJ: Absolutely. Like I was saying earlier, the DUTCH test, you can get the markers we run on other labs. The difference is we put them all together in one test so don’t have to spend $300 to get this test and $200 to get this test and $400 to get this test. So it’s all right there. Like I said, we give all the sex hormones, we give all the adrenal markers like cortisol, we give melatonin for those women and men who can’t sleep. We give what’s called an oxidative stress marker which is a marker of DNA damage; the fancy word is 8-OHdG. And now we’ve just thrown in at no extra cost. We’re doing some organic acid markers so we’re doing a B12 marker, a B6 marker. We’re doing a marker for serotonin, so for those men and women who are experiencing maybe depression. We’re doing a dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine or adrenaline marker. So people with anxiety, people with fatigue, people with lack of motivation. So we’re adding some more markers to the tests. We’re just adding them because we want you to have the fullest workup and they all relate to your hormones. B12 is important for lots of things but it’s important for things like estrogen detox. Who knew? Vitamin B6 – it’s critical to over 100 enzymatic reactions. If you’re missing B6, it could be a reason you are so tired. It could be a reason you’re having fertility issues. It could be a reason your thyroid is off. So we’d add these extra things. And again, it’s the same test. It’s just the four urine strips. That’s it.
21:19 CL: When you were talking about serotonin testing and I think you were saying dopamine and different neurotransmitters, there is some that educate that with hormonal imbalances, you first look at neurotransmitter levels and then it cascades down to the hormone. How much do you emphasize that?
CJ: The good thing is it’s just automatically a part of our test. If you do a DUTCH Complete then you just get them. So we don’t actually test actual serotonin itself. There’s a lot of debate on that. What we do is we test what’s called the organic acid or its metabolite. So when serotonin gets broken down, then it makes this marker called 5-HIAA. I don’t know who names these things.
22:04 CL: Some nerdy scientist.
CJ: It’s some nerdy scientist, I know. It’s like nail polish. In my next job I’m going to name things, that would be awesome. But it does give you an indication if it’s high or low, what’s going on, perhaps with your serotonin. But it also takes genetics for this to happen and it takes some coenzymes, some nutrients for it to happen. So we can just point in certain directions like “hey, your 5-HIAA is low. It could be serotonin. Do you have depression?” It could be certain nutrients. It could be certain genetics, the big gene is called MAO. Maybe you have an MAO SNP issue, you should look at some genetic workup. So it just sort of points you and it’s like hey, go over here as opposed to over here.
When it comes to hormones though, I think people forget that hormones actually have a direct impact on how your brain hormones are made. For example, if you have too much estrogen, if you’re estrogen dominant, like actually estrogen dominant, or if you have too little estrogen, you don’t make enough estrogen, you actually will have a really tough time making serotonin. Estrogen is a huge key player in getting your body to make 5-HTP which everyone knows 5-HTP from the supplement but you make it in your brain and then the next step after that is serotonin. So if you don’t have enough estrogen, you’re not really going to make 5-HTP and therefore you won’t really make serotonin. And I see this a lot with women who don’t get a period. Maybe they have PCOS or menopausal women, like they’re losing their period so they’re losing their estrogen and their mood goes down. I’m like, “I know. You need estrogen to make serotonin.”
Then the opposite, estrogen dominant women usually report mood swings. So one of the key factors is all that excess estrogen diverts the body away from making serotonin. It pushes it at a different pathway. So it’s a critical balance with estrogen for sure. So while you could work in the brain, like you were saying, like some educators say start with the brain hormones and then go to the actual hormones. Which comes first: the chicken or the egg? Some women, I actually literally have to focus on their estrogen first and their brain will magically fix itself.
24:19 CL: I see.
CJ: Others, I do both.
24:23 CL: Isn’t there a link between the thyroid and serotonin production as well?
CJ: Yes. What I say with like the thyroid, which you know, when the thyroid slows down, when you’re hypothyroid, everything slows down. Your hair growth slows down, your metabolism slows down. Your digestion slows down. You’re constipated. You’ve got dry skin. Your healthy skin production, your oil production slows down. And so brain hormone production goes down as well.
24:51 CL: That’s what I think has been frustrating as women get misdiagnosed even though they have all the signs and symptoms of hypothyroid because they’re only being tested for one marker and it’s not an accurate marker. They’re often offered antidepressants, right?
CJ: All the time.
25:07 CL: Instead of root cause being looked at, unfortunately.
CJ: Yeah. And now they go on an SSRI or they’re told to go on Prozac, go on Zoloft, and they’re like, “I don’t feel any better.” Or maybe they feel a little better for a little but the thyroid is never addressed and so you still kind of have the main problem.
25:26 CL: Right. And so that’s why we’re here educating women.
CJ: Yup. Do a full panel. Work yourself up.
25:36 CL: So the people that I partner with, the Natural Fertility Prescription team, are providers of the DUTCH test and so of course they make it available to their coaching clients. We had mentioned about offering a discount link.
CJ: Yeah, absolutely. “fertilityhour”.
26:03 CL: That’s the promo code.
CJ: Yes. It’s the promo code “fertilityhour”. It’s $50 off a DUTCH Complete. Or we have another test called the DUTCH Plus and so if you are working with your group, you would enter in the coupon code on the DUTCH website at checkout and you’ll get $50 off.
26:20 CL: Okay. And that’s available to anyone who’s listening to the podcast.
CJ: Anyone who’s listening, yes. And it’s all lower cap, it is case sensitive. So “fertilityhour” all lower cap.
26:29 CL: Okay. So we’ll put that in the podcast notes and we’ll put the link in there. So that kind of leads to the next question. Are the DUTCH tests covered by health insurance?
CJ: They’re not directly covered as in we don’t bill. We do provide what’s called a CPT code with the Superbill. So if you’re working with a practitioner and you know your diagnosis codes called ICD-9’s, then we give you the Superbill and you can bill yourself. The great thing is, a lot of insurances are covering the DUTCH test, they are reimbursing. The reimbursement is about somewhere between 40 and 70 percent, which is fantastic for a lot of people if they can get at least 50% back of what they spent on it, like that’s a big thing for sure. And we’re out-of-network, so it does depend on your out-of-network so it does depend on your out-of-network deductibles and what your actual plan is. But oh, absolutely, we provide a Superbill.
27:21 CL: Insurance is so fun.
CJ: It’s so ridiculous, I know. But you can also use your health savings account. I know a lot of couples have FSAs or HSAs and so they can use that as well and we’ll provide a receipt.
27:35 CL: Yeah. And in times when it wasn’t covered, you just come out of pocket because it’s worth it to know. Your health is so vital. But try to get it covered, if possible. Now, we’re kind of coming to a close but is there anything else you like our listeners to know regarding fertility and testing?
CJ: Yeah, absolutely. Like I was saying earlier, I know I’m biased and I know I work for this company, but test! Test, don’t guess. Because I don’t want women to go through the struggle. I don’t want them to have multiple miscarriages. I don’t want their babies to have issues or health issues when if they could have tested ahead of time and known things like their B12 status, their folate status, their progesterone status. I mean, just it’s really easy to find these things out even if your practitioner won’t order it for you. You can order our test direct online. There are a number of what’s called consumer-driven labs. You can go get your blood drawn and be your own advocate and test these things out.
Then the other thing is men are the other 50%, right? It takes two to make a baby, you know. If he cannot not get worked up. He needs to be a part of the equation just as much as she does.
28:58 CL: A hundred percent, absolutely. That can’t be emphasized enough and we try to educate people every day about that because all eyes are on women and men are often ignored but the more and more research shows that sperm quality, it has been declining rapidly and so you really need to test for that. And all the cases of unexplained infertility, a lot of it can kind of be brought back to those issues and there’s a lot that can be done once you kind of know what’s going on with it.
I know there’s a lot of doctors out there that they just roll their eyes and they get so frustrated at all of us who go on the internet and start Googling and talking to one another and they’re like, “Oh, I’m so sick of that.” And I get the frustration because there’s a lot of misinformation out there, but on the consumer side, we’ve become so frustrated. We’ve hit walls and as far as like chronic illnesses and unexplained infertility, I mean, we’re not getting the answers and that’s where this whole movement of consumer driven, we’re going to go out and ask big questions and talk to one another and try to figure out what’s going on. But I think the tests are crucial in all of it because I’m all for like talking to people in forums and seeing what works, but at the end of the day, we are all very individual in what’s going on with our health. So that kind of needs to be the foundation of it.
CJ: Hear, hear. I totally agree.
30:35 CL: Exactly. I think we need to empower each other and, I mean, rely on practitioners but we’re just humans and we’re flawed and we know what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know. So yeah, you need to become educated and your own advocate. So I think the DUTCH test, they’re a crucial piece of this.
CJ: I tell patients like don’t be afraid to ask your practitioner, bring it up to your practitioner. I don’t mean the DUTCH test. I just mean what you find online or what you think might apply to you because let’s face it, most healthcare practitioners, conventionally you may get 15 minutes in front of them and that’s just not long enough to know who you are as a person and if you go more the naturopathic, holistic, functional route, you may get more like an hour which is fantastic. But even then, if I just see somebody for an hour, that doesn’t make up for their entire 20 years of living, 30 years of living, 40 years of living what-have-you. And so if they come in to me and say “This is my story, this is what I’ve been researching. What do you think?” It’s so much nicer for me to go “Let’s do it, all right.” Or for me to go like, “Okay, well, let’s reel that back. It’s probably not cancer,” despite what WebMD says, like let’s go do some thorough workup and go after horses first and zebras second. But I think, absolutely, you’re right. It can be a little bit annoying for some practitioners and I’m like, you’ve got to be your own advocate because the practitioners just don’t have time especially in the conventional model. In 15 minutes, you can’t accomplish a lot in a visit.
32:10 CL: No, you can’t, and there’s a lot that can be overlooked.
CJ: Exactly. Or blown off. And I’m like, don’t blow it off, don’t blow it off.
32:20 CL: Well, I just think that because like when you talk about functional medicine, I don’t know what percentage of the population really even knows what that is, but it’s a term that we educate people on a daily basis. Obviously, you live in that world but I think it’s crucial to have a functional practitioner in your corner.
CJ: I totally agree. Exactly. Unless it’s not an issue. And obviously, I’m not against conventional medicine at all. There’s a time and a place but if you’re struggling and you’re feeling like you’re not getting answers and you’re not getting the help you need, then just for sure be your own advocate because it comes down to your health, so go for it.
33:11 CL: Okay. So we’re coming to a close. Thank you so much, Dr. Carrie. If you liked the content of this podcast, please subscribe. We will have more wonderful guests. I would like to ask you now, can we have you on for a part 2?
CJ: Yes, of course.
33:25 CL: Thank you so much. What was the promo code again?
CJ: It’s fertilityhour, all lowercase, and the website is Dutchtest.com.
33:38 CL: Dutchtest.com. And then do you have a separate website where people can find out more about Dr. Carrie Jones?
CJ: Yes. It’s what is. It’s Drcarriejones.com
33:56 CL: All right. And is your practice in Portland, Oregon?
CJ: I actually don’t practice quite at the moment. So I practiced for about 12 years and I’m on a temporary-ish hiatus because of the amount of education and travel and work I’m doing for the lab. But I have a huge network of practitioners that I refer to and I work with and consult with, and so, either the DUTCH test website, we have a lot of free education, or my own website, there’s other links to education as well just to help empower people.
34:26 CL: Thank you so much. Keep empowering people. I love your warmth and you’re so approachable and you make kind of like a very technical subject very relatable I think for people.
CJ: Oh, thanks.
34:37 CL: Yeah, and work on those names.
CJ: Right.
34:43 CL: Okay. Thank you so much. I so appreciate it.
CJ: You’re welcome. Thank you.
34:48 CL: All right, bye-bye!