Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis
Nutrient and Toxic Element Testing
To learn how to cut a sample to be sent to the lab, please visit the page “How to cut a hair sample”.
What is a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis?
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA), an informative and non-invasive biopsy used for biological monitoring of trace elements and toxic metals in human and animal species.
HTMA is a standard test used worldwide in the agriculture industry to measure mineral levels in rock and soil. However, for the past 80 years, it has also proven invaluable in the preventative healthcare field as a screening test.
During an HTMA, a hair tissue sample is analyzed to measure the levels and ratios of essential nutrient minerals and toxic elements, commonly known as "heavy metals," with scientific precision and accuracy. It is one of the most cost-effective tests available when considering the amount of information that can be obtained from the results.
When performed properly at the lab without washing the sample, HTMA provides essential information about mineral imbalances, excesses, and deficiencies of both essential and toxic elements. When used in combination with other tests, HTMA can provide a more comprehensive understanding of an individual's nutritional status, leading to a more effective nutritional approach.
HTMA is a valuable tool in understanding your body's nutritional needs and can help you make informed decisions about your health.
“Hair may provide a continuous record of nutritional status.”
What Does Hair Reflect?
The formation of hair follicles begins in the dermis from a cluster of matrix cells. As hair enters its growth phase, it is exposed to an internal metabolic environment that includes circulating blood, extracellular fluids, and lymph, leading to increased metabolic activity. The outer layers of hair harden as it reaches the skin's surface, preserving the metabolic products accumulated during its formation.
Due to its high metabolic activity, hair can serve as a permanent record of metabolic activity during its growth. The first inch to inch and a half of hair closest to the scalp can indicate nutritional and toxic element exposure over the previous six to eight weeks, since hair grows an average of 1 cm per month. Hair analysis can reveal mineral deficiencies or excesses, indicating possible biounavailability or imbalances of minerals within the body.
Hair is an effective tissue for monitoring exposure to toxic metals, and is preferred over blood or urine by the E.P.A. for studying community exposure to some trace metals. Concentrations of elements in hair provide an accurate and permanent record of exposure, and research has shown a close correlation between trace element levels in hair and internal organs.
“Data have been compiled from the available world literature on the accumulation and bioconcentration of selected toxic trace metals in human hair and nails and other mammalian hair, fur, nails, claws, and hoofs. The toxic trace metals and metalloids include antimony, arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium, tin, and vanadium. These have been tabulated by toxic metal, geographic area, subjects, sex, age, exposure gradient, analyses in ppm, and authority, from over 400 references. . . The various uses of hair for biological monitoring are reviewed for correlating with environmental exposure gradients, diseases associated with excesses and deficiencies, geographic distribution, and historic trends . . . . It appears to be that if hair and nail samples are collected, cleaned, and analyzed properly with the best analytical methods under controlled conditions by experienced personnel, the data are valid. Human hair and nails have been found to be meaningful and representative tissues for biological monitoring for most of these toxic metals.”
Why Test for Minerals?
“Micronutrients are needed only in minuscule amounts, these substances are the “magic wands” that enable the body to produce enzymes, hormones and other substances essential for proper growth and development. As tiny as the amounts are, however, the consequences of their absence are severe. Iodine, vitamin A and iron are most important in global public health terms; their lack represents a major threat to the health and development of populations the world over, particularly children and pregnant women in low-income countries.”
Minerals play a crucial role in almost every metabolic process in the body, making them indispensable for growth and development. While the body can produce vitamins, it cannot produce minerals and thus, they must be obtained from the environment through nutrition. Minerals are essential for the proper utilisation of vitamins and enzymes in the body.
In living organisms, minerals act as catalysts and co-enzymes, which enable the body to perform its natural functions such as energy production, growth, regeneration, and development.
Maintaining the proper chemical balance in the human body, like all other expressions of nature, is vital. This balance relies on adequate mineral levels and ratios. The levels of each mineral in the body influence every other mineral, and imbalances or deficiencies in these minerals can trigger a chain reaction of imbalances and deficiencies that result in illness, undernourishment, and toxic element accumulation if left unaddressed.
Benefits of Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA)
HTMA indicates potential health and nutritional imbalances by pinpointing mineral levels and ratios at the cellular level. These nutritional elements are the "raw materials" that cells require to function. Cells are the fundamental living units of our body. The nourishment of cells is essential to support and promote the optimal function, structure and development of our body’s as a complex whole and living cellular organism.
Thus, HTMA is an invaluable analytical test because it measures the mineral content of a hair sample and allows a correct program of diet and supplementation to be designed for the individual’s specific needs. Because of this unique ability, HTMA has the potential to save thousands of dollars, in contrast to wasting time, energy and money on symptomatic, "see how you feel if…", and “shotgun supplementation” methods. These methods can be harmful, unsustainable and deceptive.
High levels of toxic heavy metals, which can and are measured by an HTMA, inhibit the body’s natural ability to process and assimilate specific nutritional elements which are essential for health and have been proven by countless researchers to be correlated with many types of diseases such as autoimmune conditions, autism, and Alzheimer's disease.
The results of a hair tissue mineral analysis when combined with a properly designed Integrative Mineral Balancing Program impacts development, weight and body composition, genetic expression (through nutrigenomics), glucose tolerance, nutrient metabolism, microorganism diversity, organ and glandular vitality, poor mineral absorption, and heavy metal exposure.
What's your hair trying to tell you?
A sample of hair, when cut close to the scalp, provides critical information about the mineral activity in the hair that took place at the cellular level over the past three to four months. This is because the root of the hair below the skin's surface contains living cells, where hair grows. These cells depend on a transportation medium, the blood supply, for the nourishment they require for adequate functioning, structure, growth and development.
As these cells grow and divide, minerals are sealed into the growing hair shaft, creating a reservoir of elements. If your health, lifestyle, diet or environment has created a mineral imbalance or toxic mineral excess, it will be recorded in the hair shaft. Hair tissue mineral analysis can indicate potential health imbalances and assist in designing nutritional programs that are unique and effective. This is because mineral levels in the hair tissue provide a reliable indicator for the mineral stores in the whole body. This is especially true when interpreted correctly, and the hair has not been washed at the lab.
Information from the hair tissue mineral analysis, along with dietary and nutritional evaluations, provides the basis for the integrative mineral balancing program to establish and maintain optimal levels of wellness. By balancing tissue mineral levels and ratios with lifestyle modifications, proper diet for your oxidation/metabolic rate, herbs, nutritional supplements and detoxification protocols, many physical and behavioural health conditions can be prevented or reversed.
“Birth defects are traced to improper dietary habits of the mother; hair weakness or poor scalp health is another birth defect that a mother passes on to a child.
If one is born with a thick shock of hair and keeps it until adulthood and then somewhere along the way loses it, it is his own doing, his own neglect of proper diet, including minerals.”
Is there a difference between blood and hair tests?
The hair is a storage organ and to some degree an excretory tissue. Measuring the mineral content of blood and serum gives a good indication of the minerals being transported around the body. However, blood cannot accurately measure minerals stored in tissues.
This is because mineral levels are kept at a relatively constant level in the blood, even when an imbalance is present due to the bodies innate buffering mechanisms (homeostasis). The balance is maintained at the expense of other tissues, such as the hair. Serum concentration can fluctuate with emotional changes, the time of day the sample is taken, and which foods were eaten prior to taking a sample.
For example, serum magnesium can fluctuate depending upon the blood drawing technique. The longer the tourniquet is applied, the higher the magnesium rises as a result of tissue hypoxia. Also, symptoms of iron deficiency can be present on a hair test long before serum levels can be detected. As iron deficiency symptoms before anaemia diagnosis is common.
What this means is that the hair will change first, sometimes years before the blood because the mineral in hair represents the reservoir of minerals in the tissues.
PLEASE NOTE: THE LABORATORY WE WORK WITH IS A FULLY ACCREDITED AND GOVERNMENT CERTIFIED CLINICAL FACILITY. THEY USE ONLY THE MOST SOPHISTICATED INSTRUMENTATION AVAILABLE TODAY - THE PERKIN ELMER ELAN 9000 ICP MASS SPECTROMETER (ICP-MS), TO ASSESS MINERAL LEVELS IN PARTS PER MILLION OR PARTS PER BILLION.
THIS LABORATORY DOES NOT WASH OR RINSE HAIR SAMPLES, PROVIDING MORE ACCURATE RESULTS AND INFORMATION.