Hair Mineral Testing

That is why I said that I do not know that this applies to others. She was speaking to my particular situation and not making a general statement. I just thought people should know that it can be counter-productive in some situations.

I do horribly with milk thistle. It makes me feel very agitated within a few hours. My TCM guy told me that in his experience this is not unusual with people who have MCS.

I prefer to take NAC, which Christine told me is a bad idea. But since I have recently developed a severe skin allergy to my TD-glutathione cream, I have no other option. When I am toxic, NAC is like a miracle for me. It works to clear my worst toxic reactions better than anything else.

I think people have lost the point here.

Whether a supplement helps/hurts our condition or Christine is spouting correct theories is not related to hair analysis. Hair analysis is not a reliable nor valid test for determining nutritional status.

So even if she is correct, not trying to mislead us, her method of analyzing is not credible.

That's the bottom line.

Barb C.:>)

Doesn't make sense Barb -- if she's correct (and she's basing ALL of her conclusions on HER interpretation of hair samples) -- then HER method has to be credible. One of her main points is that she believes others interpret tests using an older method, and she's discovered some missing links. Anyway, we can agree to disagree.

Personally, I think she's on to something, as does Rich Van K., and others. Perhaps something that will benefit the methylation protocols.

She may very well be on to something, but that is a separate issue. It has nothing to do with what I think of the methylation protocols or Christene's motives for being on this board. What it does have something to do with is that what you describe is not science. It's opinion about the results of her work, and by default that means the method she is using to get that result. Nothing wrong with opinions/anecdotes but it doesn't speak to the issue that numerous studies show that hair analysis for suggesting supplements, is neither reliable nor valid. That has everything to do with her results. It has everything to do with any scientiests' conclusions.

Look at the controversy about finding XMRV. Some say it's there or not there because of the technique used to find it and I think that is true.

Just because she is using her own method really doesn't have anything to do with the validity of her results.

So, yeah, we will have to ATD.

Barb C.:>)

The anemia of human chronic diseases is particularly interesting because it occurs under conditions such as infection or inflammation, which involve decreased circulating iron, increased reticuloendothelial iron and decreased intestinal iron absorption, all features of iron disorders that could be explained by up-regulation of hepcidin. Fleming and Sly (21) already predicted such an inflammation-induced increase in hepcidin, and this increase is now under investigation with mouse models of inflammation. The putative role of hepcidin in inflammation is reinforced by the interesting finding by Pigeon et al. (7) that lipopolysaccharide, a classical inducer of acute-phase proteins involved in response to inflammation and infection, is able to induce hepcidin gene expression both in vitro and in vivo.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123693/?tool=pmcentrez

"Not reliable or valid...." Says who? Of course there's many health care professionals with their heart and efforts in the right place, but the health care system as a whole is the biggest racket going. It's a money making golden goose the likes the world's never seen and my opinion (with the self serving cozy interrelationship of hospitals, doctors, big pharma, medical study grants, and insurance and with a regulating agency, the FDA which not only likes to turn the cover down but often slips right in bed with them is a closed looped big bubble that's sucked in the masses to preached their own agenda.

Give you one small example I can personally attest to(for whatever that may mean to you, guess you could assume I'm lying, making the story up, can only say it's the truth). I took a friend to the emergency room not a month ago, his bp was 213/134, he saw doctor who told him he had hypertension, hooked up a machine to check his heart, got a pill to lower bp,
got 3 hours of observation and got a bill for 2730.00 Was told to get on bp medicine.

He decided against the bp medicine, has had three sessions with an accupucturist and some chinese herbals, walks regularly now, and his latest pb was 129/88. Total cost thus far: 190.00 and a little wear and tear on his shoes, but no side effects.

There's another bottom line from a different viewpoint.

I am on the same page with you, Lou. At this point 36% of Americans use some form of alternative medicine. http://altmedicine.about.com/od/alternativemedicinebasics/a/CAMuse.htm And considering how popular the the Dr Oz show is, you can bet that that percentage is on the rise.

I personally avoid MD's as much as possible. I have consulted an MD only 3 times in the past 10 years, and 2 of those times turned out to be disastrous for me. IN fact those visits are the reason I am having this three and a half year long crash.

The medical model does not work for me at all. I am relieved there are other options.

For those of you following Christine's work, here's some info on manganese she thinks may be pertinent:

Adverse Effects of Manganese Deficiency on Reproduction: A Literature Review by Tuula E. Tuormaa

"Even though manganese has been known for a long time to be officially an essential trace element, it is still greatly underrated. One of the reasons may be the assumption that as the trace mineral is fairly widely distributed in most foodstuffs so manganese deficiencies will not arise, therefore there is nothing to worry about. Unfortunately this assumption is not correct. Even if dietary manganese deficiency was not detrimental to healthy non-pregnant adults, an adequate amount of this trace mineral would be absolutely vital during gestation for normal fetal growth and development. This being the case, all would-be mothers should be informed about the importance of adequate dietary manganese before and during pregnancy."

"The medical profession is already stressing the importance of folic acid in the prevention of spina bifida. Similar action should be taken with manganese. In order to assess body manganese status, blood tests are unfortunately misleading, as normal human blood shows wide varying concentrations of the trace element, with higher concentrations in the red cells than in the serum. 2,82-86. However, hair mineral analysis, when using correct measures and sample preparations, is an extremely valuable diagnostic tool for obtaining body manganese status." 70.87-89.



http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1996/pdf/1996-v11n02-p069.pdf

Thanks for that - very interesting indeed. As hair mineral analysis is used in orthomolecular psychiatry, shouldn`t it be classed as intergrative medicine and not alternative with all the negative connotations that involves? It is also used in forensic science.

Orthomolecular any medicine is alternative medicine. Anything that doesn't fall under allopathic/conventional medicine is alternative medicine.

Hopefully one day there will be true integration, but that certainly is far from here yet. Anyone who practices integrative medicine is typically bundled in the alternative cateogry.

hixxy

I'm curious if a person has pretty much no heavy metals showing up on hair mineral analysis, but obvious detoxification/methylation failure, is this likely to be an indicator that my body is holding on to all those heavy metals? I mean, everyone is exposed to heavy metals, so there should at least be some coming out in your hair?

My old HMT is attached.

hixxy

Yes it is alternative medicine.

Barb C. :>)

As I understand it, heavy metals to which you have been exposed in the past may be stored in your body. If they are not circulating in your system, they will not get into your hair. If something, such as detoxification, caused the metals to be pulled from their storage location, they can then show up in your hair.

from Christine

"Hair mineral testing has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for assessment of heavy metal burden within tissues. 1 This is because most heavy metals do not remain with the bloodstream for longer than 24 hours, so an alternate method of detection was needed. The scientific community found that heavy metals accumulate in tissue storage locations. Hair is considered a soft tissue of the body, so by testing the hair, it is considered suggestive or reflective what may be occurring within the soft tissues within the body.



This is one of the instances where Christines company feels that much of the hair mineral testing community has made an error in interpreting the hair charts. Their theory believes if you are removing a heavy metal from tissue storage, it will then show up in the hair. Based on the previous description of hair being a soft tissue of the body, this is in direct contradiction of the scientific community's description. If the metal were being removed from tissue storage, and hair is considered reflective of a soft tissue, then the hair metal reading should go down, not up. In her companys experience, this is what occurs; as the heavy metals are removed from the body, the levels of heavy metals become undetectable on hair mineral charts.



The other instance where Christines company disagrees with the hair mineral testing community is in their interpretation of the values for heavy metals. Most hair mineral testing laboratories have set heavy metal parameters to detect toxic levels of each heavy metal. If toxic levels of heavy metals are observed, then a toxicologist is recommended for immediate care.



Christines company has developed new theories on interpreting the amounts and types of certain heavy metals. In the case of people with low energy production, her companys interpretation of heavy metal levels is reflective of various vitamin and mineral deficiencies that affect energy production. An example would be for lead. A lead reading of greater than 0.001 mg% indicates the body has accumulated lead. The body should never contain any lead due to its detrimental effects on the bodys numerous energy systems. Christines company interprets a reading of 0.01 mg% to be an elevated reading for lead. Though it is not considered a toxic level of lead, and though it may not be observed on a bar graph on the hair mineral chart, the fact that there is detectible accumulation of that metal must be considered as detrimental to the energy systems of the body.



1 Toxic Trace Metals in Mammalian Hair and Nails, EPA 600 4.79-049, August 1979, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research and Development"

I remember a dentist showing my a pre-chelation and mid-chelation HMT for the same patient 2 years ago and the mid-chelation HMT has significantly higher heavy metal readings.

This is truely why I have avoid HMT for so long. This single test has more inconclusive, contradictory "knowledge" about it then any other test in existence.

Also, if you were to take into account Andy Cutlers counting rules for mercury toxicity. The actual readings of level of heavy metals on the test are fairly meaningless, as the counting rules have to do with detecing faulty mineral transport, which is typical caused by mercury.

So if Any Cutler is to be believed, even if your heavy metal readings flat-line, but you have shonky mineral transport, you are mercury toxic.

I'm not voicing my opinion here -- just pointing out lots of conflicting information.

hixxy

Thank you Brenda for posting this information.

Just to be clear, isn't "Christine's company" equivalent to "Christine"? As far as I can tell, she works alone. Or were you referring to the lab which processes results and provides automated interpretations and supplement advice?

Christine works alone in her company.