A lot of people know that minerals are good for them but fewer people recognize that some minerals can be toxic. Even the so-called good minerals like the zinc and copper can mess you up if they are present in your body in the wrong ratio or if you have a hard time excreting. I learned this first hand in my mid 20s when I discovered that my body was storing too much mercury. My experience is that this is a very easy to perform hair mineral analysis testing that can provide great value if you know how to interpret it. So you can see whether you are low on some minerals or high on others – you will definitely feel a difference in your performance in life.

A hair mineral analysis test reveals your mineral deficiencies and heavy metal toxicity. Many people don’t realize that it also provides a blueprint to increase your performance, banish brain fog, improve energy and so much more! Hair mineral analysis reveals and explains the causes of many health symptoms and disease, whose underlying causes are largely related to nutritional deficiencies, mineral imbalances and heavy metal and chemical toxicity.

Your hair can be tested because it is one of many places the body eliminates minerals and heavy metals. The individual mineral levels, ratios of minerals to each other and patterns of minerals deposited in the hair reveal all kinds of things about your body chemistry and health conditions.

Unlocking Human Performance your physical and cognitive abilities can be optimized using hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA). Nutrient mineral levels and their comparative relationships (ratios) determine how well your cells function and impact physical and cognitive performance. The goal is to correct body chemistry and improve cell functioning using HTMA as a guide for targeted supplementation. The problem is that when you are tired, you might use a stimulant like an energy drink. If we are too wired we might use a sedative, alcohol, or another drug to relax. We are smart enough to realize that these substances affect our biochemistry, but they instead create biochemical chaos. Misguided biochemistry balancing leads to all types of undesirable health consequences.
This is why it’s so much better to balance biochemistry intelligently using hair mineral analysis. Intelligent biochemical balancing using Mineral Power, which utilizes HTMA, is simply about eating a nutrient-rich diet, targeted nutrient supplement therapy, detoxification and learning to avoid things that cause you harm. Benefits include improved cognitive function, more energy, correcting the metabolic rate (weight loss), emotional stability and greater stress resilience.

Individuals at the leading edge of intellectual and physical performance, including CEO’s, professional athletes, high-level entertainers, elite military, top scientists, and intellectuals, know the value of excellent nutrition and its positive effect on performance. By improving your nutritional status and balancing biochemistry with HTMA, you will experience a higher state of performance and move closer to becoming Bulletproof!

Why Test for Minerals?

Minerals are the “spark plugs” of life. They are involved in almost all enzyme reactions in the body.
Without enzyme activity, life does not exist. The foundation of health lies in adequate mineral intake and ideal mineral ratios. Anything else you do for your health is great, but minerals must be the foundation and priority. Once those are balanced and replenished, it solves the majority of health issues people attempt in vain to correct by other means. The hair analysis graph shows the following nutrient minerals: calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, chromium, selenium and more. These minerals are necessary for proper functioning of the organs and tissues of the body, but can also metastasize (store in organs where they’re not supposed to be) and prevent proper function. Many minerals need to be replenished, while some forms of minerals need to be detoxed if they are forms the body cannot utilize.

Balancing minerals with a hair mineral analysis is imperative to achieve proper mineral ratios. All the minerals have a complex interaction and affect each other. Excess intake of a single mineral can decrease the intestinal absorption of another mineral. For example, a high intake of calcium depresses intestinal zinc absorption, while an excess intake of zinc can depress copper absorption. 

Many factors contribute to mineral deficiencies and imbalances. Here are only a few:

    •    Stress depletes minerals from the body, most notably magnesium and zinc.
    •    Toxic Metals and Chemicals. They can replace minerals in enzyme binding sites and interfere with mineral absorption.
    •    Chronic viral and bacterial infections are subtle stressors on the body, depleting minerals. Many suffer from gut dysbiosis, Lyme and many other low-grade chronic infections.
    •    Toxic Food Supply. Our food and soils are depleted of minerals, which is why everyone needs nutritional supplements. Hybrid crops, superphosphate fertilizers (i.e. Miracle Grow), refined foods, pesticides, food additives and more, all contribute to a nutritionally depleted and toxic food supply.
    •    Drinking Water. Tap water is not safe due to added chlorine, aluminum, fluoride and sometimes copper, which cause toxicity or displace other minerals.
    •    Unhealthy lifestyles. Many individuals do not get enough sleep, don’t exercise enough (or too much) or have other unhealthy lifestyle habits.

Heavy Metal Toxicity presently, humanity is exposed to the highest levels of toxic metals in recorded history, up to several thousand times higher than just a hundred years ago. Everyone has metals in their body; the question is how much do you have? Removing them from the body can vastly improve health, mental functioning, energy and performance.
Hair mineral analysis is a toxicology screen for metals including uranium, lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum and nickel. No test, including urine, stool or blood tests, can show all your heavy metals toxicities as they are buried deep in the bones, brain and organs. Thus, they will not be revealed on a hair tissue test or any other test, until they are mobilized from storage. Only continuous monitoring through any means over a period of years while doing a detox program can reveal all your heavy metal toxicities. In this regard, HTMA is a reliable indicator of toxicity and is helpful in monitoring detoxification progress.
Many health conditions are caused or exacerbated by heavy metal toxicity. Metals can contribute to any imaginable health ailment or condition including cases of diabetes (iron), cancer (cadmium), multiple sclerosis (mercury), Alzheimer’s disease (aluminum), and others. (1, 3,4,5)

The most common toxicities include:
Copper dysregulation is one of the most commonly encountered imbalances that we find on hair tests and is a contributor to many health problems including cancer, weight gain, eating disorders, fatigue, premenstrual syndrome, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, infertility, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, migraine headaches, allergies, ADHD and learning disorders. (6) Anyone who is vegetarian, has adrenal fatigue, taken birth control pills, used a copper IUD or hormone replacement therapy suffers copper dysregulation.
Mercury is found in almost everyone from consuming fish. Mercury toxicity is associated with countless health issues including adrenal dysfunction, thyroid dysfunction, depression, dizziness, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, gut dysbiosis, kidney damage, memory loss, mood swings, numbness and tingling and muscle weakness. (3,5) Aluminum is the most common element of the earth’s crust and is a very common toxicity. Aluminum has been found to be associated with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other forms of dementia, anemia and other blood disorders, colic, fatigue, and kidney and liver dysfunctions. (4) 

Is Hair Mineral Analysis Accurate?

Because most doctors and health practitioners think that a hair mineral analysis is only showing simple mineral and metal levels, the accuracy and validity of these tests are grossly underestimated and misunderstood. They are often ignorantly dismissed as not being accurate or advised against when the doctor or practitioner has a complete lack of knowledge of the 40 years of research behind HTMA. The key issue and debate surrounding hair testing and whether it’s accurate is really about whether the hair is washed or not. Detractors are not making this distinction. Hair mineral analysis is extremely accurate and valid as long as the hair is not washed by the lab, which washes away some minerals. (Assarlan, Seidel) I send all my hair tests to Trace Elements (TEI) and Analytical Research Labs (ARL), who I think are the best hair mineral testing companies in the US and do not wash the hair samples.

Dr. Paul C. Eck, founder of ARL (Analytical Research Labs) is regarded as the authority on the science of balancing minerals and body chemistry through hair tissue mineral analysis. He performed over 100,000 tests and correlated them to many different health conditions and spent years designing supplement protocols to correct the imbalances in the hair mineral analyses. This research, done in collaboration with Dr. David Watts, founder of TEI (Trace Elements, Inc) spanned their life’s work.

Dr. Eck and Dr. Watts pioneered many innovations in the study of trace mineral deficiencies and excesses and their relationship to various metabolic dysfunctions associated with illness. To correctly interpret a tissue mineral analysis, they combined a number of concepts including:
    •    The stages of stress discovered by Dr. Hans Selye
    •    Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system balance as taught by Dr. Melvin Page
    •    Oxidation types as taught by Dr. George Watson
    •    Mineral balancing as taught by Dr. William Albrecht
    •    And many other influences