Trace Elements HTMA Hair Analysis

Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) by Trace Elements, Inc.

Hair tissue mineral analysis measures 37 elements in a small sample of new hair growth — 15 nutrient minerals, 8 toxic metals, and 14 additional elements — and reads the relationships between them. That last part is what separates HTMA from an ordinary mineral panel, and it is where the useful information lives.

The idea came out of a soil laboratory

Hair analysis descends from agricultural science. At the University of Missouri, soil scientist Dr. William Albrecht demonstrated that soil fertility depends less on how much calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium a field contains than on the proportions between them. A soil could test adequate for every cation and still grow poor crops if the balance was wrong.

Albrecht expressed those relationships as a Mineral Wheel. Dr. Paul Eck adapted that same wheel to human tissue, and the ratio-first approach was developed further by Dr. Larry Wilson and by Dr. David L. Watts at Trace Elements, Inc. Four decades of clinical refinement later, the four minerals at the centre of Albrecht's soil work — calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium — are still the four that anchor a hair analysis.

What the test actually measures

Nutrient minerals (15)

Toxic metals (8)

Additional elements (14) — the part most panels omit

Germanium, barium, bismuth, rubidium, lithium, platinum, thallium, vanadium, strontium, titanium, tungsten, zirconium, tin and nickel are reported as additional elements. Several of these have no established nutritional requirement in humans; they are measured as exposure markers, not as nutrients. Thallium and platinum in particular are rarely offered elsewhere.

Ratios: where the interpretation happens

Six ratios carry most of the interpretive weight. Each one is read against an ideal, and the distance from ideal is what gets acted on.

Ca/P is the reason the lab choice matters

Both major interpretive systems read Ca/P the same way. They differ in what they do with it. Dr. Watts weights Ca/P heavily and will move a person between a fast and a slow metabolic programme on the strength of it — which means the supplement pack can change based on a ratio that other systems record but do not act upon. When the goal is getting the programme right rather than simply getting numbers back, that difference is worth having.

Metabolic type: what the report tells you about yourself

A hair analysis does not stop at a list of minerals. The pattern of those minerals sorts into a metabolic type, and the type determines the dietary and supplement direction.

• Fast metabolic type — sympathetic dominance. Higher sodium and potassium relative to calcium and magnesium; a raised metabolic rate, often with anxiety, warmth and weight carried centrally.
• Slow metabolic type — parasympathetic dominance. Higher calcium and magnesium relative to sodium and potassium; a lowered metabolic rate, often with fatigue, feeling cold and weight carried on the hips and thighs.

Within each of those, subtypes describe where in the stress sequence a person currently sits — alarm, chronic resistance, or burnout. That is why two people can share a metabolic type and need different support: one is early in the pattern and one has been holding it for years.

HTMA and blood work answer different questions

These are not competing tests and there is no need to choose between them. Blood is a tightly regulated transport medium — the body defends serum values at the expense of tissue stores, which is exactly why serum can read normal while tissue does not. Hair reflects what was deposited over roughly the last three months of growth.

The pattern I see most often looks like this: blood work comes back unremarkable, symptoms remain medically unexplained, and a hair analysis finally shows measurable deviations from ideal — giving a clear direction for improving function. Run both. They measure different things and they complement each other.

Collecting the sample

• Scalp hair only, taken from several sites between the mid-parietal and occipital regions — the same region Trace Elements, Inc. established its ideal values against.
• About a teaspoon of new growth. The kit that arrives includes a small scale so you can weigh it properly.
• Cut close to the scalp and keep only the first inch and a half, discarding the rest. Longer hair records years of accumulated exposure rather than current status — in one published segment study, calcium read 27 mg% at the scalp and over 200 mg% at the far end of a 22-inch strand.
• Use good stainless steel scissors. Rusty blades add iron to the reading and chrome-plated blades add chromium.
• Note any shampoos, conditioners or dyes on the form so they can be accounted for.

Samples are analysed unwashed, because washing removes more than 90% of the sodium and potassium — the two minerals the Vitality Ratio depends on. Analysis is performed by Trace Elements, Inc., an H.H.S. licensed clinical laboratory (No. 45 D0481787).

Testing for dogs and horses

The same analysis is available for dogs and horses, with species-appropriate reference ranges and the same graphic presentation of levels and ratios. Animals share our households, our water and our dust, which sometimes makes a pet the clearest indicator of a household exposure.

From Eileen

I came to hair analysis in 2010, under ARNP Julie Walker in Kennewick, Washington, and then worked directly with Analytical Research Labs — running tests on family and friends until I could see what the charts were really telling me. I listened to every cassette tape Dr. Paul Eck recorded, the man who founded that laboratory, and read every newsletter it ever published. When I found out you could actually take a degree in Nutritional Balancing, I signed up with Dr. Larry Wilson in August 2011, and I have practised independently since autumn 2017.

Before any of it I was a nuclear quality engineer, which is where I learned to read data for what it actually shows rather than what I hoped it would show.

The mistake I see most often with hair analysis is people fixating on a single low number. It feels obvious — zinc is low, so take zinc. But we generally do not supplement to a low level, because there is an order of priority, and the ratios outrank the individual readings. Here is a real example: if sodium and zinc are both very low, adding zinc is usually the wrong move, because zinc lowers sodium and raises potassium. That drives the Na/K ratio down, and Na/K is the more important number. Correcting the zinc would make the person worse. That kind of reasoning is what a properly interpreted report buys you, and it is not something you can do from a list of levels.

How I am available. Hair analysis clients get text support from me while they are on their programme, which is when questions about retracing and detox symptoms tend to come up. It usually takes about three months of working together before someone understands their own chart well enough to adjust their programme between tests, and that is the goal — I would rather teach you to read your own results. Our Facebook group is free to join whether or not you have ever bought anything, and there are years of questions already answered in it.

I also work in order of priorities to fit your budget. Some people go all out for longevity; others take only the hair analysis supplements once a day. Both are fine. Tell me where you are and we will start there.

Eileen Durfee, NBS (Nutritional Balancing Science), NASM-CPT — wellness educator, inventor with 10 U.S. and 6 international patents, author, and Nationally Certified Spinal Fitness Specialist.

Frequently asked questions

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Hair tissue mineral analysis is a screening tool for nutritional and toxic element status; it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Your healthcare provider can help you fit this information into a plan that suits you.