Why take a Hair Mineral Test?
There are many ways to assess nutritional status including testing machines, blood tests, kinesiology (muscle testing) and computer analysis. Hair is perhaps the best specimen for screening mineral imbalances and toxicity such as mercury, lead and aluminium.
Insufficiencies or excesses of minerals have been proven to have significant impact on health.
Additionally, hair tissue mineral analysis is unique in that it provides information directly about activity of minerals within the cells – the main site where nutrients from supplements and foods eaten are metabolised and used.
Blood tests can be very valuable in determining problems such as high homocysteine, high glucose, cholesterol, or food intolerance, but are incapable of providing information on the mineral levels in cells, which can be discovered by hair tissue analysis for several reasons:
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Mineral levels in blood are ten times less than in the cells, making measurement difficult. |
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Blood levels are subject to daily fluctuation depending on foods eaten the previous day, stress levels and emotional states. |
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Hair analysis will not vary from day to day. Hair acts as a storage depot for minerals and toxic metals, and provides a long-term oxidative blueprint or what is going on, on a cellular level. |
Detecting toxic metals
Toxic metals such as mercury and aluminium are a serious issue today, contributing to many health problems. Additionally, essential minerals, such as copper and calcium, when in excess within the tissue can also contribute to wide ranging symptoms and poor health. Routine blood tests do not detect chronic heavy metal poisoning or excess minerals, but hair tissue mineral analysis is one of the few methods approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for detecting toxic metals in the body.
Determining Oxidative Types
Many eminent doctors and nutritionists in the United States discovered that some people burn food at a more rapid rate than normal to release energy from food, and others at a slower rate. Knowing a person’s oxidation rate (also called metabolic rate), can help decide which foods are most needed to help restore balance. Eating the wrong foods for your oxidative type can impair health and deplete energy in the cells. Eating the right foods, on the other hand, can help you optimise your vitality and health.
Accuracy and reliability
No test is 100% accurate, whether it is blood, urine or any other. Much depends on the accuracy of the laboratory equipment used, but hair tissue mineral analysis carried out by atomic absorption techniques have been around for more than 30 years and is used in every industrial and university chemistry laboratory. The companies I use, which are based in the USA are state-of-the art laboratories, using computer-controlled instruments making excellent reliability a real possibility.
Additionally, their quality control procedures and handling of samples have been proven excellent over the years.
How to take a Hair Mineral Test
The test simply involves cutting a small sample of hair from the nape of the neck and mailing it to my laboratory for analysis. Please note that you should not take the test for six weeks after having your hair dyed, bleached or permed.
This test is offered as a stand alone test for £55 and also as part of my Supplement and Food Programme .
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