Is Hair Mineral Testing Useful?

Question: How useful is hair trace mineral analysis (HTMA) for nutritional testing?

Short Answer: Hair trace mineral analysis is included as an optional add-on in the comprehensive nutritional screening from Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet, because it can capture data for some ultra-trace minerals for which there are no better-validated tests, and it might capture a pattern that might not be picked up as quickly with blood work, such as a mineral transport issue. However, its utility is limited by the fact that hair mineral content is not well validated as a test for any specific mineral, is generally anti-validated when there is enough science on a mineral (such as zinc, where hair zinc does not go down in deficiency), and should not be used as a central piece of data without corroboration from other more well-validated tests, which exist for most of the nutrients.

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What's the Deal With Seed Oils?
Is Whole Food Vitamin C Really Different?

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This snippet is from the June 16, 2023 AMA. The full recording and transcript is reserved for Masterpass members. Here is a preview of what’s included:

*Butyrate for Hashimoto’s? What else?
*What in the comprehensive nutritional screening is helping to interpret lactate/pyruvate and ketone ratios?
*Is the solution to a respiratory chain disorder to take Niagen?
*If I have high manganese on an HTMA, do I need to detox?
*Should CFS patients target reducing their serum BH4?
*What to do about low alkaline phosphatase?
*If my glucose spikes above 140, should I eat fiber and take ACV before the meal, eat cinnamon with the meal, chew slowly, and move for ten minutes after my meals?
*Difficulty getting Quest to do the lactate/pyruvate ratio correctly.
*Is 38 milligrams of niacinamide enough to rule out niacin deficiency as a cause of low NAD+?
*How does optimizing body composition help optimize energy metabolism? Can impaired energy metabolism make someone fatter?
*Is monounsaturated fat the best fat?
*Manganese followup.
*Do you need to stop taking biotin before a biotin test?
*What in "a bunch of supplements" flip the lactate/pyruvate ratio from high to low?
*NAD infusions, yay or nay?
*Why do I feel better after a warm shower, even better than after sunshine?
*Should I cut back on vitamin A if I have toxicity symptoms but cutting back makes me get sick?
*Do home blood drop tests have to be pricked at the finger?
Is it true that my boyfriend was just born a night owl?
*How much eating out is too much?
*When measuring ketones, lactate, and glucose at home to optimize energy metabolism, what time of day should we take the measurements?

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