Why a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis?
Twelve Reasons to Use a Hair Tissue Analysis to Heal and Find Optimal Wellness
A Window into The Cells
Nutritional physiology takes place at the cellular level, not within blood or any other location. What you eat is not as important as what is reaching your body cells. You also must assimilate what you eat! A HTMA gives me an inside look at your nutritional metabolism.
Detecting Toxic Metals
Toxic metals are a serious problem today, contributing to many metabolic disorders and distressing symptoms including fatigue, infections, glandular activity, glucose intolerance and many others. While routine blood tests cannot detect chronic heavy metal poisoning, tissue mineral analysis is one of the few methods approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for detecting toxic metals in the body.
Other methods of testing for toxic metals, such as blood and urine tests, are not accurate. They can often show high levels of metals as you are “detoxing” which can alarm physicians who then think you are “toxic”. However, if you had the same test a week later, the so-called toxic metal would be gone since your body was removing it! Toxicity needs to be identified at the cellular level through a hair mineral analysis which gives you an accurate toxic metal reading.
Understanding Emotions
Biochemical imbalances can contribute to many mental and emotional conditions. I know of no other tool that even comes close to tissue mineral testing to predict, explain, and suggest nutritional solutions for such common complaints as anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, phobias, insomnia, etc.
Rebuilding The Body’s Energy Mechanism
Adequate energy level is essential for health. All body activities, including healing, depend upon adequate energy synthesis. Tissue mineral analysis can be used to assess the efficiency of the energy system of the body and then accurately recommend supplements and foods that will assist in rebuilding the energy system.
Determining Oxidation Types
Dr. George Watson discovered that some people burn food at a more rapid rate than normal, and some at a slower rate. Knowing a person’s oxidation rate, as he called it, can help decide which foods are most needed, and which nutrients would be most helpful to restore balance. Taking the wrong supplements can make your health problems worse. Tissue mineral analysis can be utilized to determine an individual’s oxidation rate with mathematical precision.
Identifying Trends
One of the most useful concepts in health care is to be able to identify trends before they occur, so that action can be taken to avoid them. Over twenty trends can be identified from a properly interpreted tissue mineral analysis. The ability to identify trends alone makes tissue mineral analysis an invaluable test.
Precise Amounts of Supplements and a Proper Diet
One problem in designing nutrition programs is determining how much and which supplements and foods to recommend. Because of its mathematical nature, a hair mineral analysis offers an accurate method to determine supplement dosage and help one learn what types of food to consume to heal and support good health.
Assessing Organ, Gland and Tissue Function
Levels and ratios of tissue minerals relate to the activity of specific organs and glands. By calculating ratios on a tissue mineral test, the function of major glands and organs can be assessed, often long before abnormalities appear on x-rays and blood tests.
Constructing A Picture of One’s Unique Body Chemistry
Though not done by many who claim to understand hair analysis, the correct interpretation of the hair test displays a metabolic picture of the way your body is functioning and the how it is responding to stress. No other simple test allows a deep view of one’s metabolic blueprint.
Monitoring Progress
A common problem in nutritional therapy is determining if a person is improving especially as some symptoms persist or new symptoms arise. Repeat tissue mineral tests that accurately compare results with previous tests can often provide answers as to whether improvement is occurring, why some symptoms persist, and what to expect in the future.
Superiority Over Blood Tests
Blood tests will always be valuable to determine cholesterol, hemoglobin levels, and a few other parameters. However, blood tests are incapable of providing the information provided by the hair analysis. There are several reasons why.
Mineral levels in blood are ten times less than they are in the tissues, making measurement difficult. Also, blood levels are kept within very narrow limits by the body for various reasons, so that readings vary but little and less information can be gleaned.
Blood tests are subject to daily fluctuation due to foods eaten the previous day, emotional states, etc. Hair analysis will not vary from day to day and provides a long-term metabolic blueprint. Understanding this difference avoids much confusion and the long-term reading can be used to definite advantage.
Accuracy And Reliability
While some criticism of the accuracy of tissue mineral testing has been made, procedures exist to make the test as accurate, or more accurate than blood tests. No test is 100% accurate.
Tissue mineral analysis is not new. It has been around for about 60 years and is used in every industrial and university chemistry lab. New computer-controlled instruments make excellent reliability possible.
Results of tissue tests can vary because instrumentation and handling procedures differ from lab to lab. This is a problem with some laboratories, however, not with the test.
Check with your practitioner to assure he or she uses a reliable lab that does not wash the hair as this process strips away many vital minerals and toxins, so the results are not accurate.
The entire contents of this website/article are based upon the opinions of Doreen McCafferty NLC, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Doreen McCafferty, NLC and her community. Doreen McCafferty encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content. All information in this article is for educational purposes only and not designed to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice.