Hair Mineral Analysis
Check for Deficiencies and Toxicities
A Hair Mineral Analysis (HMA) is a powerful tool that gives an insight into your body at the cellular level and assesses nutritional and metabolic (oxidative) status.
The test costs £75 and it measures:
- The mineral content in your hair, which reflects the mineral content of your body’s tissues. Minerals are involved in almost all enzyme reactions in the body and so appropriate levels are essential to life. The report tells you if you have deficiencies or excesses.
- Levels of toxic heavy metals, thereby enabling identification of toxic metal overload.
- Your oxidative rate, which is the rate at which your body ‘burns’ the food you eat and converts it to energy. There are three types; slow, fast or mixed.
Both mineral nutrient and toxic metal levels have been proven to have a significant impact on health.
Taking a hair mineral test is easy. You order a test kit from us and then send back a small hair sample along with a completed short symptom questionnaire. We arrange for it to be analysed by a specialist laboratory in the US and a full report is sent back to you in about 15 days. Please note: you should not take the test for six weeks after having your hair dyed, bleached or permed.
Part of the report includes recommendations on specific dietary adjustments, including foods to eat more of or avoid, plus supplement recommendations that may help re-balance your biochemistry.
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NB Tests are available in UK only.
More Information:
For more information on the following areas, see below:
1. Main Benefits of taking a Hair Mineral Analysis
2. Related Health Problems
3. Why you might have Mineral Imbalances and Toxic Metal Excesses
4. The Benefit in Determining your Oxidative Types
5. Who Needs a Hair Mineral Analysis?
6. Why HMA’s are Accurate and Reliable
7. What you will receive
8. How to take a Hair Mineral Test
1. Main Benefits of taking a Hair Mineral Analysis
- Tells you about the activity and levels of minerals within the cells. The cells are the main site where nutrients from supplements and foods eaten are metabolised and used.
- Reveals levels of toxic metals. Many, such as mercury and aluminium are a serious issue today, contributing to many health problems.
- Helps ensure you take appropriate supplements. Your body is unique. Eating foods and taking supplements appropriate to your personal needs may help ensure these unique personal needs are met – without wasting money on supplements that could be unnecessary or even harmful.
- Shows levels of essential minerals, such as zinc and calcium. Minerals are essential in many metabolic processes. Excesses and deficiencies of these can also contribute to wide ranging symptoms and poor health.
- Indicates your oxidative rate. You may be fast, mixed or slow. People with different rates may benefit from different dietary regimes and the report includes guideline recommendations
- Know foods to eat or avoid. You are provided with a list of foods to avoid or eat more of depending on your mineral profile.
- Reliability and accuracy. The HMA is believed to be the most reliable and accurate test for mineral and toxic metals – more details on this are below.
2. Related Health Problems
Health problems which may result or be aggravated by mineral imbalances and toxic metal excesses, include:
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Minerals are essential for many bodily functions. For example:
- Zinc is necessary for hormone production and regulation. A deficiency may contribute to infertility and PMT.
- Chromium deficiency can cause blood sugar imbalances.
- Magnesium is essential for muscle function. A deficiency has been linked to increased incidence of heart attacks. Additionally, adequate levels of magnesium are essential to get calcium into our bones.
- Potassium is vital to help get nutrients into cells and low levels could cause muscle weakness, depression and lethargy.
- Low energy may be linked to low levels of iron.
Conversely too much can have a negative effect on health:
- Excess iron can contribute to symptoms such as: Hypertension (high blood pressure), headaches and dizziness.
- Too much copper has been associated with hormonal problems, depression, infertility and learning difficulties.
- Too much calcium can even contribute to osteoporosis, weight gain and tiredness.
- High lead can contribute to behavioural and learning problems.
3. Reasons for Mineral Imbalances and Toxic Metal Excesses
There are many reasons and some of the more common include:
Pollution exposure - Toxic metals are widely present in such things as: hair dyes, tin cans, cosmetics, antiperspirants, medications, cigarette smoke and amalgam fillings. Even the metals in your cooking pans can raise some toxic metals and some foods such as fish can contribute to raised mercury and cadmium levels.
Workplace exposure - Toxic metals can also accumulate through exposure in the workplace during the course of your job, or even at home when doing a hobby.
An inadequate or inappropriate diet – Such as an excessive intake of some junk food, packaged food, fast food, also diets high in sugar or refined carbohydrates, strict vegetarian or exclusion diets.
Stress – this can deplete nutrients as well as reducing the body’s ability to absorb and utilise the ones needed.
Nutritional supplements – Inappropriate supplementation that is not compatible with your body chemistry, whether taking too much or too little of various minerals, or taking ones with poor bioavailability.
Your genetic pre-disposition – Inheritance of mineral patterns from parents.
4. The Benefit in Determining your Oxidative (Metabolic) Type
Many eminent doctors and nutritionists in the United States have 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 may help ascertain which foods are beneficial to help restore balance.
Eating the wrong foods for your oxidative type may impair health and deplete energy in the cells. Eating the right foods, on the other hand, may help you optimise your vitality and health.
5. Who needs a hair mineral analysis?
- Anyone who wants to find out more about their individual bio-chemical make-up.
- Anyone who is ill and no explanation for the illness can be found.
- Anyone for whom the cause of an illness seems to be found but the therapy is not fully effective.
- Anyone who does not have an obvious severe health problem, but who has indicators for possible changes in body chemistry or nutritional deficiencies, such as:
o White spots on fingernails - may be linked to zinc deficiency
o Longitudinal ridging on fingernails – may be linked to iron deficiency
o Brittle hair and bones – may be linked to calcium or copper imbalance
o Mood swings – may be linked to toxic metal accumulation
o PMT – may be due to excess copper - Anyone planning a family. It is advisable for both partners to take a hair mineral test to help optimise your fertility and prepare for a healthy pregnancy and baby.
6. Why HMA’s are Accurate and Reliable
There are many ways to assess nutritional status including testing machines, blood tests, kinesiology (muscle testing) and questionnaire based analysis. Whilst no test is 100% accurate, whether it is blood, urine or any other, it is my belief that hair analysis is the most reliable method to measure mineral and trace element levels in the body and to test for the widest range of toxic materials. This is because:
- Mineral levels in blood are ten times less than in the cells and this, makes mineral measurement difficult.
- Blood composition is subject to daily fluctuation depending on foods eaten the previous day, stress levels and emotional states.
- 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 blueprint of what is going on at a cellular level.
- Hair grows in a follicle in the skin and as it reaches the surface it locks up a recent history of your metabolic profile in a unique fingerprint, in its outer layers. Hair grows fast and so a sample can give a very good indication of your recent metabolic history.
- Routine blood tests do not detect chronic heavy metal poisoning or excess minerals.
- Hair tissue mineral analysis is one of the few methods approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for detecting toxic metals in the body.
The technique used in the laboratories I use has been around for more than 30 years and is widely used in industrial and university chemistry laboratories. 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.
7. What you will receive
- A report on the levels of minerals such as: calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, manganese and chromium. Whether you have deficiencies or excesses and their potential impact on your health.
- A report on the levels of toxic metals present, such as mercury, aluminium, lead, cadmium and arsenic.
- Details of your oxidative type
- Dietary guidelines, including foods to increase or decrease.
- Supplement recommendations based on your results that may help re-balance your mineral levels and improve your nutritional status.
- Indications of levels of stress and its effect on health.
- Indications on your metabolic status, e.g. of your digestion, carbohydrate and protein synthesis processes and other metabolic processes.
- Tips on eating habits, sleep and exercise.
- A personal letter from the laboratory summarizing the impact of how deficiencies or excesses may be contributing to your individual health status.
- Detailed fact sheets for any significant imbalances or toxicities identified.
8. How to take a Hair Mineral Test
Taking the test is easy, it simply involves cutting a small amount of hair from around the nape of the neck, completing a short symptom questionnaire and mailing it (in the pre-paid envelope) to the laboratory for analysis. The cost of the test is £75.
NB: 1. You should not take the test for six weeks after having your hair dyed, bleached or permed.
2. This test is to identify mineral imbalances not to diagnose or treat health disorders.
2. You will be asked if you are taking any medications as these need to be taken into consideration in case of contra-indications or depletions before a guideline supplement programme is devised.
