DUTCH stands for Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones. It measures sex hormones (estrogens, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA) along with their downstream metabolites, plus the diurnal cortisol pattern across the day and a melatonin marker. Crucially, it captures not only how much of each hormone you produce but also how your body processes them, including which estrogen detoxification pathways you favour and whether they trend toward protective or potentially problematic forms. This metabolic detail is the reason DUTCH is preferred over single-point blood or saliva testing in functional medicine.
Hormones do not just exist as numbers on a lab report. They get produced, used, and then broken down through specific pathways, and the way you break them down can affect your health as much as how much you make. DUTCH gives us the full picture: production, daily rhythm, and disposal route. It also tracks cortisol across four points in the day, which is how we see whether stress is genuinely dysregulating your system or whether your stress response is intact and recovering well.
Hormone-metabolism results inform whether we focus on supporting estrogen detoxification (DIM, calcium-d-glucarate, cruciferous strategies), modulating cortisol with adaptogens or sleep architecture, supporting testosterone and DHEA, or working on progesterone balance. The cortisol curve also tells us whether to prioritise energy, stress, or sleep first in the protocol sequence.
We typically run this test when you recognise yourself in
Four to five dried urine strips, one day
Avoid biotin and certain herbs for several days before
Roughly three weeks
Functional testing at FunctionAlps is used to guide nutritional optimisation within ASCA and EMR scope. It is not a medical diagnostic tool. When findings warrant medical evaluation, we coordinate with a referring physician.
Tests are selected during your Discovery
Start there
A focused one-on-one with Alessandra, a personalised written protocol, and the tests that will actually sharpen it.