Optimize your Wellness
By identifying specific mineral patterns through HTMA, individuals can proactively work towards holistic wellness optimization, enhancing energy levels, immune function, and stress resilience through informed choices tailored to your unique physiological needs.
Personalized Insights
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis offers personalized insights into your body's mineral composition, enabling targeted adjustments to your diet and lifestyle that may address deficiencies or imbalances, ultimately supporting overall health and vitality.
Preventive Health Understanding
HTMA provides a valuable tool for preventive health understanding, allowing youf to detect and address mineral imbalances before they manifest as health issues, supporting a proactive approach to well-being and long-term health maintenance.
What is Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis?
It is my belief personally that the root cause of all dis-ease is a combination of deficiencies and toxicities – everything from grey hair to cancer. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) is an affordable and simple test that involves analyzing a small sample of hair to gather information about an individual’s mineral and nutrient status. The hair is an excellent story teller of the patterns that our body has been living in, sort of like rings on a tree.
This type of testing can be used on babies, children, adults, or event pets. Here’s a brief overview of HTMA and the type of information it can provide:
- Sample Collection: A small hair sample, typically taken from the nape of the neck or back of head, is collected.
⇢ Learn More about how to collect a sample - Mineral Analysis: The hair sample is sent to a specialized laboratory where it is analyzed to determine the levels of various minerals, including essential minerals (e.g., calcium, magnesium, zinc) and toxic elements (e.g., lead, mercury, arsenic).
⇢ Learn More about Minerals - Toxic Metals: We track and trend the level of toxic metals, as you being to replace and replenish your minerals, you will begin to expel more metals over time. This does not happen over night, it takes 6-24 months depending on your condition. To understand these delicate shifts, you need an experienced practitioner to walk you through. There is a lot of nuance to sort through.
⇢ Learn More about Metal Toxicity - Mineral Ratios: HTMA assesses the ratios between different minerals which offers insights into an individual’s overall health and imbalances as each mineral correlates with a hormone.
Test at Home
Using our at-home hair collection kit, you can start from anywhere in the United States, Mexico, or Canada.
Proper Lab Procedure
For accuracy and reliability, hair samples must be processed at a laboratory that does not wash the hair sample.
Experienced Practitioner
HTMA is a complex test to interpret. I've reviewed hundreds of hair tests and can help guide you to better health.
“”Hair mineral analysis offers a non-invasive and cost-effective means of assessing an individual’s nutritional status and toxic metal burden. It serves as a valuable adjunct to conventional diagnostic methods, helping to identify underlying imbalances that may contribute to various health conditions.””
— Dr. David L. Watts
When correctly interpreted, hair analysis offers insights into various health questions:
Do you lack essential minerals crucial for energy production?
Minerals like magnesium, selenium, manganese, copper, and zinc play vital roles in the body’s energy processes. Hair analysis can detect low mineral levels well before they manifest in other tests.
Could toxic metals be contributing to fatigue and other health issues?
Heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, and aluminum disrupt numerous enzyme reactions, many of which are involved in energy generation. Traditional blood tests often miss these toxins, yet they pervade our environment through food, air, and water contamination. Hair analysis stands out as a reliable method for detecting toxic metal poisoning.
What underlies your low hormone levels?
While hormone imbalances often result in symptoms like fatigue and weight gain, hair analysis can uncover root causes such as copper and mercury toxicity, as well as deficiencies in selenium, zinc, and chromium.
How does your thyroid function impact your health?
Even with normal hormone levels, individuals may experience hypothyroid symptoms due to factors hindering hormone utilization within cells. Hair analysis can assess whether hormones effectively reach cells and exert their intended effects.
Are adrenal issues contributing to your fatigue?
Adrenal insufficiency, characterized by inadequate adrenal hormone production, commonly leads to chronic fatigue. Since adrenal hormones profoundly influence mineral levels, hair analysis offers valuable insights into adrenal health, making it a reliable tool for diagnosing adrenal insufficiency.
Why doesn’t fatigue improve with iron supplementation?
Anemia isn’t always solely due to iron deficiency; factors like copper imbalance and toxicity from lead or cadmium can also contribute. Hair analysis can uncover these imbalances, guiding appropriate interventions and preventing worsening health.
How does stress impact your well-being?
Excessive stress triggers the sympathetic nervous system, hindering the body’s regeneration processes and eventually leading to burnout. Hair analysis can reveal if you’re stuck in a state of chronic stress and its detrimental effects on your health.
Hair Analysis can also address:
Nutritional needs based on metabolic type and mineral balance.
Determination of whether you’re a Fast or Slow Oxidizer, crucial for tailoring nutritional interventions.
Guidance on dietary fat intake, especially pertinent for Fast Oxidizers.
Assessment of food choices aligned with your metabolic type.
Evaluation of safety for pregnancy and exposure to toxic substances like aluminum in personal care products.
Identification of occupational hazards related to heavy metal exposure.
Determination of stress stage and whether carbohydrate intake is excessive.
Test Kits
Bio-energetics uses your hair samples cut at the root near the scalp. When you purchase this test, your kit will delivered to your doorstep with instructions. Collecting your sample is the first step in mineral balancing and helping yourself achieve wellness.
Reports & Consults
A detailed report is provided on the complete mineral findings, including oxidation (metabolic) rate, and details of toxic heavy metals. Overall stress patterns of the body are also detailed in the report.
Regimens & Remedies
Knowledge is key, but action is equally important. You will receive a custom regimen of supplements and nutrition that is specifically tested for you. It will likely be a combination of supplements between a few brands which I give you access to discounts on.
Simple HTMA Offerings
Single Test Kit
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Pay Per Session - for those who want to test the waters with some initial insights
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Includes 1 hour consult via Zoom
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Paid test kit sent directly to your home
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1 follow up Question Email
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Custom Report of Mineral Imbalances and Heavy Metal levels
Three Test Kits
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Prepaid three pack - for those wanting a tune up while saving a little
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Three 1 hour consults via Zoom
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Pre-paid test kit sent directly to your home
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4 follow-up Question Emails
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Custom Report of Mineral Imbalances and Heavy Metal levels
Six Test Kits
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Yearly pre-pay - for those healing chronic illness & want to save the most
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Six 1 hours of consult
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Session Through Zoom
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Unlimited access to me via chat for questions
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Custom Report of Mineral Imbalances and Heavy Metal levels
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Nutritional Recomendations based on Metabolic Type
“Hair tissue mineral analysis provides a unique screening test because it reflects the metabolic activity of the body over a long period of time, rather than the instantaneous results of blood tests or the shortcomings of body fluid analysis.”
— Dr. Paul Eck
Hair Mineral Tissue Analysis - FAQ:
The minerals assessed include calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, chromium, selenium, phosphorus, cobalt, molybdenum, and lithium for their nutritional value. Additionally, toxic metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, and nickel are also analyzed. ⇢ Learn More on Minerals
No, hair analysis is not a diagnostic test for any disease and I am not a doctor who treats diseases. I believe in root cause approach to health and that begins with mineral balancing which can reverse many types of symptoms. Most doctors will not be familiar with this type of testing as it’s not part of their standardized training.
Hair testing equipment, specifically ICP Mass Spectrometers, gauges hair mineral levels with an accuracy typically within a range of plus or minus about 3%. This level of precision is comparable to that of many blood tests. Notably, this technology finds application not only in hair analysis but also in soil testing and examining mineral levels in rock samples. Widely regarded as the gold standard for assessing minerals in biological samples, ICP Mass Spectrometers ensure reliable and precise measurements across various contexts.
On average I receive your results 10 days after you mail to the lab in Arizona. Once I receive I will reach out to schedule your consult and deliver your custom report including nutrition and supplement recommendations.
Costs vary depending on what you need, anywhere from $150-250. There are a few places I direct you to order supplements:
- Valence Nutraceuticals (5% off 12h0h)
- Fullscript (20% off)
- Endo-Met (order through me for discount)
*If you purchased a package you will receive extra discounts on supplements.
My recommendation is to re-test every 2-3 months to ensure you are on the right supplement regimen and optimizing your supportive daily practices.
For women especially, it will be easier to have someone do it for you. You need about a pinky width size of hair and you need to cut at the root right up against the scalp. You can use the same site each time. I recommend you choose the very middle back of head to ensure it won’t be visible in any hair style.
- 1st sample – can use 1.5 inches
- 2nd sample and beyond – use 1 inch (to ensure it’s new hair)
- Hair should be clean and dry, cut with scissors only, at the scalp
You will need to wash your hair at least 3 times in distilled or filtered bottle water before sending in your sample.
Anyone – Babies, Children, Adults, and Pets!
If you have colored your hair, you want to wait 10 days / shampoo’s before you collect your sample.
If you bleach your hair, it is best to wait for 1-1.5 inches of grow out before collection.
The ideal sampling location is the back of your head (nape area). This is where hair grows most consistently. Beard hair or pubic hair should only be used as a last resort, or if sufficient head hair is not available.
I use Analytical Research Laboratories (ARL) in Phoenix, Arizona for hair analysis. ARL is CLIA-certified and is one of only two labs that uses proper testing techniques. This means that they do not wash the hair sample at the laboratory—a practice that has been shown to produce erratic results. They are also the oldest lab with 3rd party proven accuracy.