Hair Analysis: Metals and Minerals
Your hair tells a story of your interaction with your environment. What you inhale, eat, drink and even apply to your skin, becomes a part of your body. As you grow new hair, what is in you is used as building blocks for the hair. Analysing a sample of hair can give you an idea of the minerals, trace elements and toxic metals in your body.
How the analysis is done is important. I only work with reputed laboratories where they use the best technology and are constantly evaluating what they do and furthering research.
The hair is cleaned and then dissolved to break it down into its smallest parts. The analysis results then show relevant minerals, trace elements and metals.
The metals and minerals evaluated and reported on, are those well researched and relevant to functional health. Metals include aluminium, cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury and more. The minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium are reported on together with trace elements such as zinc, copper, chromium, selenium, boron, manganese and even lithium.
Interactions and ratios between elements are highly significant and can be seen in the results. If mercury is high, it is important to check if selenium is sufficient, because selenium is involved in mercury detoxification. High aluminium or lead can result in calcium metabolism disruption with calcium, phosphorus, strontium, boron and zinc possibly being impacted. This is just to name a few.
Zinc supplementation has become extremely popular since it appeared on so many COVID-protocols. However, zinc metabolism and needs can vary greatly from person to person. It is true, most people on a standard western diet are probably zinc deficient, but not everyone needs exactly the same amount of high dose zinc long term. Zinc interacts with copper and in a small percentage of people, this results in low copper levels, which again can be problematic even for your immune system. I am not suggesting that you should go and throw away your zinc supplements, they are still valuable, and most people do need them. But if you supplement long term, it is wise to evaluate if you are doing the right thing for you. A hair analysis will show your zinc and copper levels and give an indication of your individual needs.
Minerals and trace elements are important for every aspect of health. Toxic metals can interfere with health and cause nervous system health problems, sleeping disturbances, skin symptoms, immune system dysfunction, hormonal problems and a host of other health problems. Getting rid of metal toxicity always involves three things:
- You need to find out where you might get excess exposure to the particular metal and reduce exposure.
- General detoxification systems in the body must be supported.
- Specific substances can help to detoxify specific metals. Calcium, for instance, helps to push lead out of your body. Zinc can help to lower copper toxicity. Selenium supports detoxification of many metals, such as mercury. These are just a few examples of many.
The minerals and trace element profiles can help you to include more of the foods you need in your diet and take supplements that might help you as an individual. It can help you prioritise with supplement choices.
You can re-evaluate the hair analysis after 6-12 months if you need to do so at all. If there were significant imbalances or toxicities, you get an opportunity to make changes in your lifestyle and see the results.
Please make contact with me if you would like to find out more about doing a hair analysis. The test is available worldwide.
