Heavy Metals & Essential Minerals

Heavy metals can be toxic to organ systems when they accumulate in the body and may disrupt the balance of essential nutrients. A number of variables impact which sample type is most applicable including toxicokinetics, dose, length of exposure, route of exposure and half-life.

Heavy metals can accumulate within the body after exposure, attaching to your cells preventing them from performing their functions, causing symptoms that could be life threatening without treatment

Who might benefit from Heavy Metals Testing?

Sign and symptoms vary for each type of metal and range in severity based on an individual’s exposure, symptoms could include:

• Weakness
• Nausea or vomiting
• GI upset, diarrhea
• Dehydration
• Numbness or prickly sensation in hands and feet
• Chills, low body temperature
• Arrhythmia
• Anemia
• Memory loss
• Difficulty breathing
• Organ damage, kidney, liver
• Risk of developing certain types of cancer

Multiple sample types allow for the practitioner to choose the most clinically appropriate option.

Why choose hair

Hair is primarily an excretory tissue in terms of its element content. By analyzing the elements present in hair, practitioners can identify physiological disorders associated with imbalances in essential and toxic elements, in conjunction with other laboratory values and symptoms.

During protein synthesis in the hair follicle, elements become permanently incorporated into the hair and do not equilibrate with other tissues. This makes hair an ideal tissue for detecting recent exposure to toxic elements such as arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, lead, antimony, and mercury, as these elements may be 200 to 300 times more concentrated in hair than in blood or urine. The CDC recognizes hair mercury levels as a useful marker for exposure to neurotoxic methylmercury from fish in both mothers and infants.

Nutrient elements, such as magnesium, chromium, zinc, copper, and selenium, are essential for the normal function of vitamins and hundreds of important enzymes, and the levels of these elements in hair are correlated with levels in other tissues and organs.

Advancements in technology, instrumentation, and scientific protocols have made hair element analysis a reliable tool for providing useful data to physicians and their patients. According to a recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, if hair samples are collected, cleaned, and analyzed properly by experienced personnel in a reliable laboratory, the data are reliable. (U.S.E.P.A. 600/4-79-049)

Hair element analysis is a useful and cost-effective screening tool to detect excess, deficiency, or uneven distribution of elements in the body.

Sample required: Hair

Turnaround Time: 1-2 weeks