Mineral Nutritional Balancing
Why are minerals important?
Minerals participate in all chemical compounds in our bodies, regulate most bodily functions, and form the structure of our bodies. Mineral presence is essential for all enzymatic functions, hormone balance, protein synthesis, and other biochemical activities.
Minerals cannot be made in the body - they must come from our food and water.
The relationships between the minerals and nutrients in your body are major factors in how much energy your body has to digest food, heal, repair, detox, keep your hormones in balance, sleep deeply and easily, regulate your nervous system, process your emotions, connect with others, think, learn, focus, and thrive.
The Mineral System
Together, your minerals form a precise system. Every mineral has an effect on every other mineral. You cannot change the level of one mineral in the body without changing the levels of every other mineral.
Stress (emotions, life things, toxins, insufficient rest, poor nutrition, etc) affects our minerals, but our mineral levels and balance (or imbalance) also determine our resilience to stress.
The focus in mineral nutritional balancing is on balancing the entire body chemistry to bring back resilience and vitality, not just on one imbalance. It is a complex and precise science. We are not just supplementing what appears low in the hair (this is called ‘replacement therapy’ and is not an effective way to use a hair test). We are not looking to treat individual symptoms, we are aiming to get at the root by correcting the balance of the system as a whole.
What can be seen in a hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA)?
HTMA is a soft tissue mineral biopsy that shows a long range picture of the overall mineral system over an average of 2-3 months. It is a more accurate indicator of overall long term metabolic patterns.
Blood tests show a short term picture, a snapshot in time. Blood is a transportation medium, so the body will try to keep it stable to stay alive. This means that deficiencies and imbalances will show up much sooner in the hair than in the blood, allowing us to catch and address problems earlier.
Hair testing is not diagnostic, but it is useful for predictive and preventative purposes.
With a hair test, we get a snapshot of overall stress levels and patterns, lifestyle imbalances, potential emotional patterns and unresolved trauma, dietary issues, metabolic function, blood sugar balance/carbohydrate tolerance, cellular effect of the thyroid and adrenals, overall energy and vitality, likelihood and severity of heavy metal toxicity, immune function, and trends towards many common health conditions.
Why use a hair test to guide supplementation recommendations?
Feeling better alone is not a criteria that a supplement is correcting the underlying mineral imbalance. It is possible to make someone feel temporarily better by worsening a deeper pattern that is causing harm in the bigger picture.
The body will not automatically excrete the minerals it does not need. Getting too much of something that is not needed will cause further imbalance and imbalances down the line. Mineral balancing is more than correcting deficiencies.
Supplements need to be targeted to an individual’s oxidation rate and mineral balances, which can be seen on a HTMA by someone trained in mineral nutritional balancing.
HTMA is not read at face value. It is a complex system that can be understood as a full picture. We do not just supplement what appears “low”.
Mineral Balancing for Detox
Mineral depletion + imbalance sets the stage for poor detox capacity and accumulation of toxic heavy metals.
Each cell in the human body contains thousands of enzymes. These enzymes facilitate the chemical reactions within each cell, and are critical to our health. Each enzyme requires dozens of minerals and vitamins to function optimally. Our minerals are our spark plugs.
If the preferred minerals are not available, the body will replace them with less preferred minerals (or heavy metals). This is an adaptive strategy in order to maintain basic function. These less preferred minerals act as a crutch. They keep us going, but do not allow us to function optimally. This leads to more and more problems as heavy metals accumulate.
Mineral balancing involves replacing the less preferred with more preferred minerals in the enzyme binding sites throughout the body to promote detox, optimal health, and function.
Mineral Balancing supports detoxification of heavy metals and other toxins by:
Increasing the adaptive energy for healing and detox by balancing oxidation rate, autonomic nervous system, metabolism, and major mineral ratios and levels so that the body has energy to eliminate metals and toxins.
Removing the need for physical and emotional compensations. Metals can be used in the body as compensatory mechanisms to accomplish a short term goal, such as stimulating the adrenal glands for more energy. Correcting the root of the energy imbalance removes the need for the toxic “crutch”.
Replacing less preferred minerals for more preferred minerals in enzymatic sites.
The use of antagonists that oppose and compete with heavy metals and toxic substances to encourage elimination of toxins.