Nutrient & Heavy Metals Testing
HTMA Test
The next time you get a haircut, you could learn a lot about your health! HTMA testing analyzes a hair sample to provide a meaningful window into your body's biochemistry during the months that hair was growing. Results include mineral levels, as well as evidence of toxic exposure.
HTMA test results matter because minerals are like the spark plugs of the body. There are thousands of processes that can’t function at 100% if you don’t have enough of all the right minerals. Minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron play crucial roles in everything from your bone density and muscle strength to how often your heart beats or how well your body can make important hormones.
The HTMA is also an extremely effective tool for measuring exposure to heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and aluminum. These toxic metals are often the unseen source of damage to the brain, kidneys, thyroid, bones, and skin, and they can be stored in your body for decades. Heavy metals can impair everything from your memory and focus to fertility and immune function.
What is an HTMA test and how does it work?
Hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) measures the mineral content of the hair, as well as detecting exposure to dangerous metals. A hair sample is collected by snipping a small section of the hair closest to your scalp, so you get a current picture of your health. The hair used for analysis should be free of bleach and dye for the best results.
In the lab, your hair sample is dissolved in a solution to extract the minerals. That solution is examined using multiple state-of-the-art techniques to measure the concentrations of various minerals and metals.
HTMA results are ideal because they show your mineral levels over 2-3 months, rather than offering the quick snapshot a blood sample provides. Human hair has also been shown to be highly effective in monitoring toxic metal exposure. In fact, research has concluded that hair testing may be more accurate than blood or urine for studying exposure to some trace elements. The HTMA test is an easy, painless way to learn crucial details about how your body is functioning.
What can HTMA testing tell me?
Your HTMA results will show not only the amounts of minerals and metal in your hair sample, but also provide information about how they compare to each other. The minerals in your body interact with each other, and it’s important that levels are balanced.
For instance, calcium and magnesium each play vital roles. Calcium is essential for bone health, as well as ensuring the cells in your nerves and muscles can communicate with each other and with your brain. Magnesium is another mineral superstar that helps with energy production, relaxation, and a variety of enzyme reactions crucial to healthy digestion and a stable mood.
But how much calcium you have compared to the amount of magnesium also matters. Too much calcium compared to magnesium can cause blood sugar imbalance, muscle cramps, spasms, or chronic pain. The same imbalance can also lead to brittle bones (osteoporosis) and increase the risk of heart attacks. Other minerals share relationships that are just as important.
Minerals also interact with vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, so evaluating mineral status can provide great insight into your vitamin needs as well. HTMA test results can help you optimize your diet and lifestyle, as well as understand how mineral imbalance or heavy metal exposure may be contributing to unexplained symptoms and chronic health challenges.
Where can I get an HTMA test?
HTMA Test Near Me
We love HTMA testing because it’s simple, affordable, and provides you with layers of useful information. If you’re interested in an HTMA test, start by booking a free Comprehensive Consultation & Evaluation, either online or at our practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Your Ann Arbor Holistic Health practitioner will dedicate 45 minutes to learning about your health history, your symptoms, and your concerns to see if HTMA nutrient and heavy metal testing makes sense for you. If so, the test is easily ordered, and you can mail your hair sample from home.
From there, your practitioner will help you create a comprehensive wellness plan that takes into account your HTMA results, as well as your diet, lifestyle, and personal health goals.
How do mineral imbalance and toxic metal exposure happen?
Mineral imbalances and heavy metal exposure can result from a combination of environmental and lifestyle factors, and both can be difficult to detect without functional tools like the HTMA test. That’s why we believe it’s important to look for the root causes of your symptoms, so you can understand and address them rather than using band-aid solutions that cover up your health challenges.
Mineral imbalances and toxic metal exposure can be affected by a number of factors:
Diet: Consuming refined and processed foods or alcohol can lead to a mineral imbalance. And even “healthy” meals can have inadequate nutrient content or contain toxic metals, depending on the soil or water where the food was grown and the way it was prepared.
Stress: Physical and emotional stress can deplete the body of many nutrients, plus reduce your ability to absorb and utilize the minerals you do have.
Medications: Many prescription and over-the-counter medications, such as diuretics, antacids, aspirin, and oral contraceptives, can weaken the body’s nutrients or increase levels of toxic metals.
Pollution: From adolescence through adulthood, the average person is continually exposed to a variety of toxic metal sources, such as cigarette smoke (cadmium), hair dyes (lead), hydrogenated oils (nickel), anti-perspirants (aluminum), dental amalgams (mercury and cadmium), copper and aluminum cookware, and lead-based cosmetics… and those are just a few that we run into on a daily basis.
Nutritional Supplements: Taking the wrong supplements (or an improper amount of the right ones) can produce many vitamin and mineral excesses and/or deficiencies. That’s why it’s important to test, rather than guess.
Inherited Patterns: A predisposition toward certain mineral imbalances, deficiencies, and excesses can be passed down from your parents.
Contact Ann Arbor Holistic Health today to learn more about HTMA testing and whether it’s right for you.