Welcome to Phoenix Rising!
Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.
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more pple on the fb page so far.....
I am gone from here for now. Too tiring to keep up with both.
At first, I thought it was going to be group about low maintenance hair styles for the fatigued!
(Recently, I've found that hair dangling over my face leads to roseacea - I need it short).
A quick google made it look like there has been problems with quackery and hair analysis in the past. Is this a new test? As ever, I'd encourage people to be cautious about what tests they pay for, what treatments follow, and what they put in their bodies. It's best to try to make decisions based upon published data, rather than trusting someone who claims to be an expert. Good luck all.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/285/1/67Assessment of Commercial Laboratories Performing Hair Mineral Analysis
Conclusions Hair mineral analysis from these laboratories was unreliable, and we recommend that health care practitioners refrain from using such analyses to assess individual nutritional status or suspected environmental exposures. Problems with the regulation and certification of these laboratories also should be addressed.
I could certainly use a hair style that is low maintainance.
Hair analysis is neither a valid nor reliable test. Things from hair dye, the water used for washing hair, exposure to things like cigarette smoke, your shampoo or just being out in the sun can influence the results of hair analysis.
I asked my doctor about this and he said hair analyses is only reliable in spotting deficiencies as anything on your hair can make it appear like you have too much of something in your body eg hair dyes etc can make some things look higher then they actually are, environmental factors can get on and enter hair too.
My doctor has found it useful thou in picking up some deficiencies in his patients (there are some things which should show up in hair) but said to ignore all the other results eg so he wasnt concerned about very high copper showing on my hair test but he wanted me to supplement with things found deficient. What he said does make logical sense.
You can get blood tests that are reliable and can spot deficiencies, so why go with something that isn't validated as being an accurate test?
You can get blood tests that are reliable and can spot deficiencies, so why go with something that isn't validated as being an accurate test? Barb C.:>)
Hi
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Brenda
You can get blood tests that are reliable and can spot deficiencies, so why go with something that isn't validated as being an accurate test?
There was lots of things on my hair test in which doctors never tested me for.. eg how many doctors blood test someone for a molybdenum deficiency. If it wasnt for the hair test, I wouldnt have found out I was deficient.
Actually, this seems to me like a very positive point for hair testing. It might not be thoroughly reliable and validated, and maybe some of the factors mentioned (pollution from environment etc) mean that it can never be definitive, but it does appear that the low cost of performing the test might make it a good way to get a very rough idea of deficiency patterns, and a broad spectrum of clues as to what to look into next. I would imagine that the battery of blood and biopsy tests needed to explore all the various different deficiencies that hair tests explore would be very expensive indeed.There was lots of things on my hair test in which doctors never tested me for.. eg how many doctors blood test someone for a molybdenum deficiency. If it wasnt for the hair test, I wouldnt have found out I was deficient.