The Rise of At-Home Hormone Testing: What You Need to Know About Eli Health’s Hormometer
If you’re health-conscious, chances are your feed for the past year has been flooded with influencers evangelizing hormone balancing as a hack for easy weight loss, lowering stress levels, and even reversing symptoms of hormonal conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). So it’s not at all surprising to see Eli Health announce Hormometer, an at-home hormone-testing system that uses your spit and your smartphone’s camera to measure hormone levels.
At the heart of this innovation is a simple yet effective concept: take a sample of saliva, insert it into a cartridge-like device, and use your phone’s camera to read the results. It sounds like science fiction, but Eli Health claims that their Hormometer can accurately measure cortisol and progesterone levels with surprising precision.
What is Hormometer?
Hormometer consists of a thin cartridge that you stick in your mouth for 60 seconds. It looks similar to a pregnancy test, with a window where you can view results. Once collected, the Eli app uses your phone’s camera to assess the test’s results based on criteria like color intensity and sample patterns.
- Cortisol is commonly known as the stress hormone and plays a critical role in regulating fight or flight response, blood pressure, blood sugar, metabolism, and sleep cycles. Long-term imbalances, both high and low, are often linked with negative health outcomes including Cushing’s syndrome, unintentional weight gain / loss, fatigue, Type 2 diabetes, and abnormal blood pressure.
- Progesterone is a reproductive hormone. Abnormal levels can lead to conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), irregular periods, and infertility.
The advantage of this type of test is it doesn’t require another party and can turn around results more quickly. As far as cost, Eli Health says Hormometer will come with a subscription plan, starting at $8 monthly with a 12-month commitment.
Is Hormometer Accurate?
A lot of that will depend on accuracy. According to Eli Health, the Hormometer is FDA registered, but not cleared or approved. To be clear, this means the FDA has not reviewed or cosigned Eli Health’s claims. However, the company claims that its cortisol and progesterone tests had a 97 percent and 94 percent agreement with gold-standard, FDA-approved lab tests in third-party testing, respectively.
The accuracy of Hormometer will depend on how well it can replicate the results of traditional hormone tests. While some experts have decried hormone balancing as both misleading and potentially harmful — hormones can’t truly be balanced, as they’re dynamic and naturally ebb and flow throughout the day — others believe that these tests could help people with official diagnoses of chronic hormonal or reproductive health issues monitor their conditions.
What’s Next for Eli Health?
Eli Health says Hormometer will begin beta access this month in the US and Canada. A full release is expected later this year. And while Hormometer is currently limited to cortisol and progesterone, the company says it’s already developing testosterone and estradiol tests for the future.
The implications of Hormometer are significant. If accurate, it could revolutionize how we diagnose and monitor hormonal imbalances. However, if not accurate enough, it could perpetuate misinformation about hormone balancing and potentially harm individuals who rely on these tests for diagnosis.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Conclusion
Hormometer is a game-changer in the world of at-home testing. With its simple, non-invasive design and potential accuracy, it could democratize access to hormone testing and provide valuable insights for individuals with hormonal imbalances. However, only time will tell if Hormometer lives up to its promises.
Leave a Reply