What is it?

 

Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) is a non-invasive test that can be done at home. It measures the mineral composition of hair to identify mineral imbalances and formulate a nutritional balancing protocol.​

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How does it work?

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Minerals are essential for growth, healing, vitality, and well-being, providing structural support in bones and teeth, and maintain the body’s pH, water balance, nerve activity, muscle contractions, energy production and enzyme reactions. They conduct and transfer energy across cell membranes making them the basic ‘spark plugs’ in the chemistry of life (literally where your energy comes from!).

Hair is body tissue that passes through lymph, blood, and extracellular fluids before reaching the skins surface. As the outer layers of hair harden, metabolic products amassed during their formation get locked in. This ultimately, when properly interpreted, provides us with a blueprint for your unique body’s biochemistry.

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What's the benefit?

 

Knowing your mineral levels can help reveal what is really going on in your body and why you’re feeling the way you are physically and mentally. Here are some things we can look into…

 

how effectively your body is making energy (your metabolic or oxidation rate) – it’s not healthy for this to be slow or fast, it’s important for it to be balanced

 

• how well you’re managing stress

• energy levels and fatigue

• thyroid and adrenal health

• your mental health

• liver and kidney stress

• why you keep getting sick

• how well you are digesting food

• nutritional deficiencies

• your blood sugar and glucose metabolism

• how well your body is detoxing things

• your heavy metal toxicity status

• it can even discover things about your personality

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Can't I just eat healthy?

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In an ideal world yes, but unfortunately our world is far from ideal. Modern farming techniques, fertilizers and depleted soil has reduced the mineral content of our food. Environmental pollutants, chemical food additives, pharmaceutical medicines, and stressful lifestyles also have major long term effects on our nutritional status. 

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Can't I just get a blood test?

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HTMA provides clinical data missed by standard blood, urine or stool testing. Blood provide us with a snapshot in time, however it doesn't give the full picture of what’s going on at a deeper tissue level.

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Hair, on the other hand, is cellular tissue, so with the HTMA you can see what’s actually getting into the cells. 

 

For example:

Only 1% of magnesium is in the blood, 99% is in the cells…so a blood test to look at your mineral levels isn’t going to give you a whole lot of the story.  Plus, with magnesium, your recorded level is dependent on how long they leave the tourniquet on for, amongst other things.

 

Bloods tests don’t even test for half of the minerals on the HTMA panel. 

Even if they do test for zinc, they often don’t test for its’ ratio with other minerals, which in many cases can be just as important as the isolated mineral itself.

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