Everything You Need To Know About Hair Mineral Analysis.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. While you are listening to this episode, I am likely hurtling 40,000ft above Earth's atmosphere on a small metal tube on my way over to the Middle east, where I'll be teaching a workshop on becoming superhuman in Dubai. And that's why this podcast episode today is a special midweek audio episode on hair mineral analysis. Who would have thunk that would be interesting? But it actually is. Now one thing that you should be aware of is that after the discussion that you're about to look into, I actually did some pretty extensive testing on the water that comes out of the well in my house, and I found some very interesting things that verify what you'll learn in this hair mineral analysis podcast, particularly some metals that I actually need to filter out of my water. And these are things I never would have known I was exposing myself to until I actually sat in on the discussion that you're about to listen into. So just a couple quick housekeeping items before we jump right in.

First of all, I've been releasing a.

Ton of extremely interesting news flashes over on the Twitter page. So if you go to twitter.com BenGreenfield you'll get to read about everything from how you can combine caffeine and exercise properly to get more fat loss, the strange types of ways that you can play brain games when you're exercising to get even smarter, and some French ants that got totally screwed after their exposure to cell phone signals. So check all that stuff out over@twitter.com BenGreenfield.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I believe it was at Dave Asprey's Bulletproof Biohacking Conference that I first met Wendy Myers. And Wendy is a certified holistic health coach and she asked me when we first met if I'd ever had a my hair analyzed. And believe it or not, despite me on this podcast having talked about everything from blood analysis to poop analysis to heart rate analysis, I've never actually gotten my hair analyzed. So after talking to Wende, I decided that I was going to get it done. I was going to do what's called a hair mineral analysis. So I went into my my hair stylist, which I Should probably call actually just my hair cutter because there's not much styling that's done when I get my hair cut and they cut my.

Hair and I put it in an.

Envelope and I mailed it off to Wendy's lab where this analysis was done. I got the results back and I.

Found out some really interesting things.

And in today's show, we're going to talk about hair mineral analysis, what it is, what it's good for, what we found out in my hair, and how you can also do a hair mineral analysis and whether or not it's something that you should do. So, Wendy, thanks for coming on today.

Thank you so much for having me.

So, first of all, it's kind of weird when you meet someone and one of the first things that they ask you is if you've had your hair tested. At least I thought that was weird. So tell me about how you got into getting interested in hair mineral analysis in the first place.

Well, we were at a biohacking conference, so why not if you want to do further biohacking?

Exactly. The follow up question of that was probably something about enemas or like pulse oxygenation.

Exactly, yeah. And, you know, I got into this just, you know, seeking out my own, you know, improvement of health. I'd reached a point where I was just tired, I didn't feel good, I was having trouble losing weight, I had brain fog, et cetera. I thought, what's wrong with me? And went to my naturopathic doctor, did four grand with the test and she wanted to put me on a hormone replacement. I thought, yeah, not going to happen. And so I sought out a more natural means of improving, restoring my health. And I just happened upon a website that offered hair metal analysis and a program corresponding to the hair test to improve your health naturally with diet and supplements and detox. And I thought, that sounds good to me. Why not just restore my adrenal and thyroid health and get them working on their own? And that's exactly what I did. I started Pro, originally called Nutritional Balancing. I designed my own program called Mineral Power that's based on organic food based supplements and a little bit different. And I just had spectacular results with myself with my clients. And I love hair mineral analysis and I really like to communicate to people what a great tool it is to kind of get an overall view of your health and as a basis from which to design a customer supplement and diet program to heal your health.

Yeah, I don't know if I love hair mineral analysis yet. After seeing some of the results that Came through literally last night. That we'll talk about today. I'm notnot quite sure if I'm going to like what I hear. But anyways, before we even jump into any of that, what is hair mineral analysis? I mean, how can you actually get information from strands of hair?

Well, there's actually about four decades of research behind it. It's not just looking at the absolute mineral levels in your body, the heavy metals in your body. There's a lot to it, a lot of information underneath it, as you saw with the email I sent you. What we are looking for is patterns in the hair. Certain patterns will tell us the stressors your body is under, if you have adrenal fatigue, if you have thyroid insufficiency, how your immune system is doing, you know, how your kidneys and liver is functioning, your immune system, it gives us, your metabolic rate, gives us a lot of information about what's going on. And we also know by some of your heavy metal toxicities what kind of symptoms those can cause, what health symptoms you have that are attributable to your heavy metal toxicities and what future diseases those can cause. So it kind of gives you this crystal ball so that you can head, you can head off these health issues before even they start presenting with symptoms. Because by the time you start presenting with symptoms, you, this is a disease process many years in the making. So that's why I love hair mineral analysis, because it gives you the power to change course and to correct the mineral levels and mineral ratios in your body and detox metals and chemicals from your body so that you're able to prevent disease and reverse it.

What's going on when my hair gets to a lab, like what are they doing to it?

They burn it up in a mass spectrometer. And this is science used by NASA to evaluate moon rocks and things of that nature. It's a very, very precise instrument. And they're just able to see all the minerals and metals in your hair.

Okay, gotcha. So are those minerals and metals that they see in the hair indicative just of what's grown in my hair in the past few months? Is it kind of like an acute picture? Is it a really long history, a really short. I mean, I know like when you test in blood, for example, there are some measurements that are very acute, right? Like cortisol, I guess, you know, it's like a snapshot. Whereas some things like hemoglobin A1C gives you like a three month picture of your, of your faceted blood glucose levels with hair, what kind of timeline are we looking at?

Well, it's a three month picture. If you cut an inch of hair, about two and a half centimeters of hair, that gives us a three month average of what's depositing into the hair. So it gives us a nice picture of what's going on the past few months.

Okay, gotcha. Cool. Well, I thought that maybe one of the things that would be most helpful to actually walk people through the type of things that you find out from a hair mineral analysis is to go through my results because there's some really interesting things on there. And so if you're listening into the podcast, by the way, I will put a little PDF where you can download my results and also a link to getting your own hair mineral analysis and everything else that Wendy and I talk about. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hair that's hair, like the stuff that grows on your head, not hair, the bunny rabbit. H A I r. Go to BenGreefulFitness.com hair and you'll be able to follow along with this stuff if you want to just like see some of the results there. So if I look at the main analysis of my hair, just the basic feedback that I first got, the one that says trace elements on it, the thing at the top there is nutritional elements in blue. And it's like this chart with a bunch of different elements that appear to be. They appear to be minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, stuff like that. So what exactly is going on there?

Well, let me preface our talk with saying that as an athlete yourself, you put your body under a lot of stress. You don't need me to tell you that. So what this hair test is showing is that your body's under a lot of stress. And I'll tell you how we see that in a minute. But the first four mineral pattern, the first four minerals, the calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, are basically what show us how much stress you're putting your body under, the calcium and magnesium. When that magnesium is really, really high like this, the first thing to go when you're stressed is magnesium. So what happens is when you're very, very stressed, your adrenal glands are releasing adrenocorticotropin hormone, your cells are going to just release all of their magnesium, and then that will see that as a large deposit in the hair and a high magnesium level.

So what you're saying is, like when you see high levels of something in the hair, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have it in your body, it instead means that your cells might be releasing it.

Exactly.

Okay, soand the reason I ask that is like, magnesium, for example. Like, I look at this chart, I see magnesium off the charts, and I think, great. You know, I've got a lot of magnesium, which is a common deficit in athletes. But what you're saying is that when you see high magnesium, for example, in hair, it can mean that the cells themselves are actually at a magnesium deficit.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you can alsoi also do blood work with my clients as well. They can do an RBC magnesium test and other blood work analysis. That helps us, you know, just, just get a better picture of what's going on. That's, of course, optional, but yeah, when many people under stress, I mean, join the club, there's a lot of different stressors. Yours, yours is exercising, and most people are magnesium deficient. And so what I have people do they need to supplement roughly five times their body weight in magnesium. In milligrams.

Yeah. And I actually use, I use a transdermal magnesium. Perhaps I need to be using more magnesium than I currently use, or even introducing more oral magnesium sources. But that's really interesting that you can tell something like stress levels from magnesium. And then also you mentioned in your email to me that you thought I was in a state of high stress as evidenced by high sodium and potassium levels. Can you explain how those relate to adrenal function and stress?

Yeah, absolutely. The sodium and potassium levels, the na and the K here absolutely correspond to stress on the adrenals, additionally on the kidneys as well, when the adrenal glands are stressed. And this happens for a number of reasons. A lot of exercise, heavy metals. Heavy metal toxicity is a very common one because our adrenal glands will release a lot of stress hormones when we have heavy metal toxicities in an effort to push them out of our body. And when this happens over a period of time, eventually the adrenal glands will fall into, say, stage three adrenal fatigue, and the sodium, potassium will be very, very low. But for you, I think yours is due to a lot of exercise. I think it's also due to some heavy metals as well. Everyone has a little bit of adrenal fatigue due to heavy metals, but the kidneys also regulate sodium potassium in the body. So we know when there's certain stressors in the body, the kidneys will retain sodium and potassium, and that can also cause a rise in the sodium and potassium that can also be due, again to heavy metals. Heavy metals deposited in the kidneys. Cadmium is a big One, so there's a number of things that can raise the sodium and potassium, but it's showing right now you're kind of in stage two, adrenal fatigue, the resistance stage of stress. But there's ways that we supplement to reduce the sodium, potassium. But it's all, you know, it's all about a number of things. It has to do with diet, it has to do with lifestyle, sleeping enough and exercise. And it has to do with supplementing in a way that corrects these levels to get them to more normal.

So you don't think that doing something like, say, you know, I'm a huge fan of salt, right? Like, I do lots of rock salt and sea salt, and I'm definitely not salt food. And I, you know, I get a lot of minerals and I use like, you know, when I'm at work during the day, I use like effervescent electrolyte tablets. When someone has high amounts of sodium and potassium in their hair, can it be reflective of just taking in lots of salts in the diet, or does it in fact indicate adrenal function?

No, I find it has nothing to do with salt intake.

Okay.

It has to do. And I encourage my clients to just heavily salt their food. We need sea salt in our diet because there's about 100 minerals in that that we're very hungry for because our soils are deficient. And so that's why the focus of this program is minerals. People are grossly deficient in minerals and need to supplement them. So sodium, potassium really only have to do correlate to adrenal functioning and kidney function.

What's the. In the section under minerals, you use the term mineral power program. You say, here's your mineral power program. What do you mean when you say mineral? A specific mineral supplementation protocol that you use?

Yeah, well, that's the name of my program. It's a comprehensive program with diet, customized supplements, detox protocols, like infrared saunas and optional coffee enemas and lifestyle changes as well. Sleeping. Mainly sleeping.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. And I definitely want to talk about some of those things. One last question on minerals before we move into metals. What do you personally use in addition to just like, so salt for your own mineral replenishment? Do you use, like, trace minerals or like magnesium powder before bed or what's your protocol?

Yeah, well, I use several different forms of magnesium. I do a transdermal magnesium, I do oral magnesium, and I do trace mineral drops in my water that also contains magnesium. I also do a copper liver chelate where it's actually a food based copper supplement extracted from livers. Just a little bit of copper, a little bit tiny bit of zinc, again from livers. I do food based vitamin C because it's not just taking minerals to replenish them. You kind of have to get your whole body working correctly so that everything can regulate. So B vitamins, a food based organic B vitamins is very important to manage stress. And certain nutrients are needed to feed the adrenals and thyroid, which are glands that produce the body's energy. So the program is very much about supporting those glands. Nutritionally, of course, you need meat to support those glands. Very, very important. Meat is very, very mineral rich, as are organ meats and liver. But I also take, like I said, the trace mineral drops. I take kelp. Kelp has about 20 to 30 trace minerals and iodine to support the thyroid. So that's just kind of it in a nutshell. I have a number of other things. I take probiotics and some other digestive supplements, Oxy, bile and digestive enzymes, et cetera.

Yeah, I noticed on my feedback there's a lot of supplements which I don't necessarily like. I'm all about better living through science. But I was looking at the list of stuff and like, holy cow, there's a lot of stuff you could take to fix your body. So you also of course get into heavy metal toxicities. And this, you kind of scared me on this one because I actually try and do a metal detox about once a year. I'll just use like a metal chelation. I use this stuff called metal free. And when we went over my results, when you sent me my results, I'm looking for your comment here about metal toxicities because you said something that concerned me. Need to find it here. Well, you list your metal toxicities. You list things like arsenic, cadmium, aluminum, barium, bismuth, vanadium, stratium. Can you go into some of these metal toxicities and what they actually mean?

Yes, exactly. Well, here's the thing. Everyone has metals in their body. It comes from air, food and water, industrial dumping. It's unavoidable. Everyone has metals. And so you have to do something to address these. And for you, I think a lot some of your problem is the well water that you're drinking. All my clients that drink well water have manganese toxicity.

Really interesting. I just moved into a home like four months ago and pretty much all the water I'm drinking is from a well.

Yeah. And even if it's filtered, a lot of my clients have filtered well water. But a lot of my clients that have that, they have lead toxicity. They have manganese. They'll have iron, not the good iron that's found in meat, iron that causes oxidative stress. They'll have arsenic, and it's just problematic. And you need to get a really, really good filter or just drink spring water.

So they actually, they make filters that will filter out. The reason I ask is, like, I have high iron in my well water. I know that. And I have an iron filter. But they actually make filters that will filter out some of these other metals, too, that an iron filter may not catch.

You know, I honestly don't know. I've been meaning to look into that, but there's a company called apswater.com and they have live representatives you can talk to. There are experts on filtration. They're very, very good company. So I recommend calling them to find out what your options are.

Interesting. Okay, I'll give them a call. The guy who installed my iron filter, he's actually really knowledgeable on water. I'll have to ask him about the manganese issue. He may have some thoughts on that. So, yeah, you mentioned manganese is an issue. And when you talked about manganese, what you told me was that it's an antagonist to copper and is contributing to some copper toxicity issues that you also notice in my body. Can you talk about copper toxicity and why that's an issue?

Yeah. And I just did an amazing podcast with an expert on copper dysregulation with this guy, Morley Robbins, that's going to be up on my website on Thursday. It's already up by the time this podcast will go up. But this is a very confusing issue because copper dysregulation entails typically the simultaneous copper toxicity as well as copper deficiency in the body. And so on your hair test, you'll see your copper is at 4. That's fairly high for a first hair test. So we know you've got copper toxicity going on. You have other signs of copper deficiency, which is the fatigue you mentioned. You have a little bit of fatigue, or you're trying to get more energy, and obviously you're exercising a lot. But because of this high manganese, that's a copper antagonist. So that's going to contribute to any copper dysregulation issues that you have. So you've got to get rid of that manganese, and you can do that in an infrared sauna, sweating it out and addressing the water that you're drinking. So if you moved to that house just four months ago, this manganese is. It could be from the well water, but this is really, really high. So this is coming from probably another source.

What are the type of things that would be sources of copper toxicity?

Usually it's coming. It's not that simple. People are typically not getting copper toxicity from food. It's more because they have a zinc deficiency going on. It's also because of other antagonists and imbalances in the body. So copper toxicity is very, very difficult to kind of diagnose and to treat, so to speak. But it's more about not avoiding foods, etc. To address it. It's more about doing a complete type of program to balance all of your minerals, mainly balancing copper, zinc and iron. Those all need to be at very similar levels and proper ratios for copper to work in the body. You also have to address adrenal fatigue. You already told you your adrenals are very stressed. And when the adrenal glands are stressed, they are not able to send signals to the liver to produce a protein called ceruloplasmin that binds to copper to make it bioavailable in the body and usable in the body. So you have to heal the adrenals as well for copper to function properly in your body.

Interesting. So you think it's a 1, 2, 3 combo of manganese from, for example, well, water affecting copper metabolism, stress affecting the ability to detox my body of copper, and then finally a zinc deficiency. With a zinc deficiency also being related to stress and adrenal gland issues.

Yeah, yeah. And also your zinc is really high. When someone's Zinc is over 20, yours is 24. That also basically means there's a copper shit storm. Dysregulation.

Hang on, hold on. I thought if zinc was high, that meant I had a zinc def. Zinc was high in the hair, it meant I had a zinc deficiency in my body.

Exactly. So you're losing a lot of zinc. And that is again, is another indication when we're looking at the patterns in the hair test, another indication of copper dysregulation.

Interesting. So you just did a big podcast on copper, huh?

Yeah, I did. Because it's a two hour, two part series on it. It's very, very important because people's main issues are magnesium deficiency and copper dysregulation, and that happens because of stress. And when you correct those two issues, most people's health issues go away. Their disease labels reverse their health issues, their brain fog, fatigue, et cetera, weight gain issues, adrenal issues, thyroid Issues, they just go away because most of these disease labels are actually mineral imbalances in the body.

I'm definitely going to link over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com hair to this podcast, this copper podcast, because I think I have the link to that somewhere for folks to listen into. You also, another thing that you talked about in the results, in addition to manganese and copper, was what you call a calcium shell. You say I have very high calcium, that I have a calcium shell. This is a term that I'm unfamiliar with. What exactly is a calcium shell?

Yeah, well, anytime someone has calcium, you're right at 170 or over. That's what people call a calcium shell. You're at 167. So you're kind of right there at the door. And what this means is part of the reason you have high calcium is because you have high copper. And high copper is somewhat painful. It can cause lots of aches and pains. It can cause a lot of emotional stress, anxiety, mind racing, insomnia, et cetera. Many, many symptoms that I sent you in that email. And one of the body's ways of compensating and protecting you is raising the body's level of calcium as a protection, because calcium kind of numbs you out emotionally and physically. It's a very relaxing mineral as well. So when people have a lot of copper toxicity, they also tend to have very high levels of calcium. And this is also reflective of the storage levels of calcium you have in your body. Again, caused by adrenal fatigue. This process is caused by adrenal fatigue. When we have high sodium potassium in our tissues, the body kind of robs the blood of calcium and it starts calcifying your tissues and calcifying your joints as well. So you may not be there yet, but if this kind of was allowed to continue, at some point, you'd start getting the typical achy joints and maybe really, really tight muscles. And those are signs of calcification.

So this calcium shell, is this something that's recognized by modern medicine or. Or is this something that is basically a term used in natural medicine?

Yeah, definitely natural medicine. And, you know, the Dr. Paul Ek and Dr. David Watts are two doctors that were involved in kind of cracking the code in hair mineral analysis and how the minerals and ratios relate to health conditions. They did hundreds of thousands of hair tests and, you know, four decades of research on this. So this is really their work. And so definitely not something known in mainstream.

Yeah, the reason I ask is, like, you know, I will look on PubMed a lot of times to kind of see if there's been studies done on certain things. When I look for calcium shell on PubMed, most of the. Most of the research that comes up is in like marine biology, talking about the shells of mollusks and things of that nature. So this is definitely one I'll have to dig into a little bit more. And I know you sent me some links on that, so I'll include those in the show notes for folks. Folks as well.

Yeah. And taking magnesium. Magnesium is the boss of calcium. So you have to take adequate levels of magnesium to tell calcium where to go.

Gotcha.

Issues partially solved by taking adequate magnesium.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So let's talk about metals a little bit, because we talked about copper, but then you list all these other metals that you say that I have toxicities in. Can you talk about how toxic metal levels like this actually occur and what you recommend people do about it?

Yes. Well, for you, you have some low level toxicities. Some metals are far more toxic than others. Like cadmium is extremely toxic and it causes kidney disease and cancers. And it's typically found in cigarettes. It makes the cigarette papers burn really nicely. It's also found in marijuana. Even in some of my clients that vaporize the marijuana, they have extremely high levels of cadmium. Alarming levels of cadmium. It's also due to industrial dumping. That's just a big problem. You know, landfills will, you know, stuff in landfills. Cadmium is used in televisions. So all Those flat screen TVs we're throwing into the trash, seeps into groundwater and gets into us. And another one that you have is arsenic. Arsenic also found in, well water. It's also big in rice. You know, I like people not avoid rice. But to source it properly, you know, organic from the United States is probably a good idea. It's also found in chickens. They actually routinely feed conventionally raised chickens with arsenic because it makes them grow about 50% faster.

Interesting. Okay, so we've got arsenic and cadmium as two. There's some others on there too, like vanadium and strontium. Are these also coming from those same sources or do these come from other places?

You know, a lot of stuff is from industrial dumping. It's unavoidable in our environment. The barium here is just somewhat elevated. That can be from cigarette smoke. If you're just around smokers. It can be found in water. It's definitely used in medical procedures like X rays. It's also just from industry. We just pick it up from the environment.

Interesting. Okay, cool. What do you like to do when it comes to toxic metals?

I'm definitely gotta hit that infrared sauna. I know you're a big user of infrared saunas.

Yeah, I use the Biomat. It's kind of more like an infrared mat.

Yeah, and that works too. Any infrared sauna is a good sauna. You have to use it fairly frequently, and you have to sweat. Whatever sauna you're using, you need to make sure that you're sweating. You need to excrete all these metals and chemicals from your body.

Interesting. So you do infrared. Do you do anything else for metals, like a chelation supplement or anything like that?

I'm not real huge. I do like zeolites. I'm not a big, huge fan of the synthetic chelators simply because they can also chelate minerals from the body that can be very difficult to replace. So a lot of people, like you said, you do them once a year, and it's just not enough. It's not enough because we are so toxic. It takes literally two to three years of doing a very intense detox program like Mineral Power to remove the bulk of heavy metals. And even after that period, you can still keep releasing metals and chemicals.

And when you say a detox program like Mineral Power, if you're not doing chelation, you are doing infrared saunas. And then the other component of that, it would appear, based on your email to me, is that enemas are a component of this as well. Yeah, yeah.

Coffee enemas are optional. Not everyone wants to do those, but they're very good at detoxing the liver, getting your liver working, because the whole program is about supporting your body so that it can get it detoxing on its own. But we're so toxic, and there's so many chemicals that our body just doesn't recognize. It doesn't know how to deal with them. We really got to get that liver functioning, optimal performance so that it can help to detox. So it's kind of a mechanical way to help the liver dump all its toxic contents. And it's a great way to manage detox symptoms as well as when you're pulling these metals out from storage sites, like copper from storage sites, it will cause headaches or nausea, fatigue, irritability, anger, et cetera. And a coffee enema is a great way to mitigate and reduce those symptoms.

And how often do you do a coffee enema?

I do them about once a week. Some of my clients do them every single day. When people first start the program. Sometimes it's a good idea to do them on a daily basis, but I encourage people to find out the frequency that works for them.

Well, we talked about sodium and potassium and magnesium deficits. Do enemas have the ability to strip your body of minerals? I've heard that if you overdo them, that they can strip your body of salts and kind of act as almost like a diuretic.

Yeah, they definitely can. They do deplete electrolytes, which is why I want people supplementing minerals while they're doing them. Also juicing. I like clients to do one juice a day. Gives lots of minerals. Adding sea salt to the coffee enema water is great, too, to reduce that effect. But I also want people to judge how they feel. Some people have much more of an effect like that, a diuretic effect, than other people. Some people are not affected at all. But I do have some clients that are doing them daily that do have kind of an alarming drop in their mineral levels on the hair test. So it's an individual thing, and I like people to kind of find the pace that works for them.

Interesting. Now, on page two of this analysis, you have significant ratios and toxic ratios. What's the difference between a significant ratio and a toxic ratio?

Well, the significant ratios are the ratios that we're mainly focusing on. This type of program to correct the toxic ratios more relates to the heavy metals that you have on your test and. And how alarming that ratio is of these metals compared to other metals. It's a little too complicated for our purposes, but I focus more on the significant ratios with people because the individual mineral levels give us a lot of information, but the actual ratios give us a tremendous more information. And it's kind of what we're focusing on to correct on the hair test. And if you look at yours, a lot of your levels are in the acceptable range.

Yeah, except my calcium. Is that the calcium potassium ratio? No, the sodium potassium ratio is in range. Looks like calcium potassium is slightly out of range. And then what's this other one? The calcium.

The phosphorus.

Yeah, the calcium. Phosphorus. Yeah, exactly. I was trying to remember what P stands for, and that one's out of range. What's going on with phosphorus?

Yeah. Well, I sent you a sheet that help you understand these ratios. It's called understanding the mineral ratios. And that helps people really understand what's going on for you. Your phosphorus level was on the low side. Phosphorus of 12 can mean a number of things. Either you're not eating enough protein or you're not digesting your protein very well, or you could be having an excessive breakdown of tissue. I have a feeling for you. Yeah, you're kind of catabolizing your body because you're exercising so much. And for how I tell people to raise the phosphorus is, of course, they probably need to eat a little bit more protein and take digestive enzymes to really help break down their food. Because when people have low phosphorus, it's a sign they have low stomach acid.

Interesting. Yeah. Which I've actually tested low for before. Low stomach acid. And I've also tested low for pancreatic enzymes as well. So it's kind of interesting that. That those correlate.

Yeah. And that's why I had people take a supplement called GB3 that has oxybile and pancreatic enzymes in it. Because systemic proteolytic enzymes like pancreatin, pancreatic enzymes are very, very important for people to take.

Gotcha. And I did certainly read through some of the things that you wrote. And it's a funny story. I actually woke up this morning and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do a coffee enema. Wendy recommended a coffee enema. So, yeah, my kids were getting ready to go to school, and I was like, okay, kids, see you later. I'm gonna go up to the bathroom. They're like, where you going, daddy? I'm like, I got to the bathroom, so I brought my cup of coffee up there. And I did a coffee enema this morning. Good for you.

Good for you.

I feel clean as a whistle. So we've got these ratios, these mineral ratios, we've got our toxic metal ratios, we have some of the things that you can do to detox as well as remineralize the body. You've got some of your de stress recommendations on there. Is there anything else that you can kind of get from a hair mineral analysis as far as information about your body?

Yeah. Well, we can kind of go over your significant ratios. That's kind of where all the juicy info lies.

Sure, let's do it.

But, yeah, so your. The first ratio is your cap, the calcium to phosphorus, and that is your sign of your metabolic rate. So if you look at the top of the page, it says metabolic type slow. And that's because when you have really, really high levels of calcium like you do, that slows down your metabolism. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with weight. Like, if your metabolism is slow, you're going to gain weight. It can have that effect, but it's really more about the metabolic processes in your body creating enzymes, digestion and all the little metabolic processes we have to do in our body. When you have high calcium and low phosphorus levels, it just slows everything down a little bit. So that's what that means. The next ratio, the most important ratio is your sodium to potassium, the na k. And what that means is basically it's an overall vitality ratio. You're pretty much right there in that sweet spot. I mean, yes, your potassium and sodium are too high, but they're still in a good ratio, which is very, very good. Means you have very good vitality in your body.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah. And the sodium. There's one good thing about the test.

Yeah. Finally something good.

Yeah. So the sodium level kind of roughly is an indication of aldosterone, which is a pro inflammatory hormone. And your sodium roughly indicates cortisol production, which is an anti inflammatory hormone. So you're in a good range.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah.

And by the way, for those of you who are more visual than audio listeners, I'm going to put both this ratio list that she's going through as well as the hair mineral analysis results in the show notes. So go to bengreefulfitness.com hair if you want to dig in and see how messed up my results actually are. Okay, so what's the next one?

The next one is your thyroid ratio, the ca k calcium to potassium. And so that again also defines your metabolic rate. And what's happening here is it's just showing that your thyroid hormones that your thyroid is making, say you did a thyroid test and your thyroid's working just fine. If you have too much calcium surrounding your cells and inside your cells, that's going to reduce cell permeability. It's going to reduce cell osmosis. So those thyroid hormones that you're making that you test out normal at the doctor's office, those thyroid hormones are not effectively getting into your cell as well as they should be.

Interesting. And that's because of the calcium issues.

Yes. And if you've ever studied cell biology or anatomy, we have to have proper ratios of minerals, sodium, potassium and calcium for cell osmosis and permeability to work properly.

Right.

So this kind of shows what's going on at a cellular level. And so it's also preventing nutrients from getting in and toxins from getting out. So it creates a number of problems. But, but yours really isn't that bad. I've seen this as high as 100 before. Wow. So yours is not that bad.

Interesting. Okay, got it.

Yeah. And so the next ratio is your zinc to copper. This just shows basically your. It's basically the hormone levels in your body. It can also show hidden copper toxicity. If it's kind of high, zinc kind of roughly correlates with testosterone in men, and the copper roughly correlates to estrogen.

Okay, got it. And so in my case, when it comes to the relationship between zinc and testosterone, the fact that my zinc to copper ratio is high would indicate that my zinc is deficient. That could potentially be influencing my ability to create testosterone.

No, actually, your zinc to copper ratio is low. And this is because I see that now.

Yeah. Okay.

Your zinc is on the high side, which means you're probably producing a lot of testosterone, so you're fine.

Got it. Got it. I was gonna say I'm not really having any issues in that department, but. Okay, good to know.

Yeah. So the next one is your sodium to magnesium. Na mg. And that is your adrenal ratio. And so this one is on the low side because you do have a little bit of adrenal issues going on. All the stressors you're placing on your. So this is on the low side, but it's not that bad. It's not too bad.

Are you suggesting that crawling under barbed wire, running through mud, clambering over walls, doing ungodly amounts of burpees, and then going out and riding my bicycle up really, really steep hills could potentially be stressing my adrenal glands?

Possibly.

Okay, got it. Surprise. Okay. All right. It's very interesting to see these things played out, though.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. What's next?

Yeah, and the next one is your blood sugar ratio, the camg, calcium, and magnesium. And this is also a sign of cardiovascular health when this isit's a little bit on the low side. So you probably are under eating carbohydrates a little bit. I very rarely see this as low, but I think it's also because your magnesium is a little bit on the high side in comparison to calcium. So I think it's just more a stressor where you're losing too much magnesium is why this is low.

Okay, interesting. So you tend to see a low calcium to magnesium ratio sometimes in people who might not be eating enough carbohydrates.

Exactly. Most people are overeating carbs. So this is a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it.

Yeah. And the next one is your iron to copper. This has to do with infections in the body. Yours is fine, but sometimes when they're real low, that can be a tendency for bacterial infections. High a tendency for viral infections.

Okay, got it. Wow. So when you're looking at each of these ratios, whowho came up with what these actually mean? Like, is this, like, a group of physicians who design these ratios? Is this based off of these three guys who are written at the bottom here? This Larry Wilson and Michael McAvoy? Looks like the name Morley Robbins is on here, too. Who came up with these ratios?

Well, it's actually the brainchild of Dr. Paul Ek and Dr. David Watts. David Watts runs the trace elements lab. Whose test? This is the lab we use for the hair test. Dr. Paul Ek died about 20 years ago, and he and David Watts worked together to crack the code, so to speak, of this hair test and. And what the ratios mean in developing these ratios. And they did well over 100,000 tests to determine and correlate these mineral levels and ratios to health conditions.

So were they doing, like, blood tests simultaneous to see how these type of things measured up to blood tests, along with qualitative measurements of fatigue and stress and things like that?

Oh, yeah. They did all kinds of things. All kinds of things. Unfortunately, there's no clinical trials for anything of this nature. They did lots of correlating, like with questionnaires and with different health conditions, like I said. But I really wish at some point there'd be some clinical trials.

Yeah, that'd be interesting, because I know we'll get some comments on this podcast that there really aren't any clinical studies on hair mineral analysis, and I couldn't find any either. But it's very interesting that a lot of what was found on my hair mineral analysis test does indeed line up with what I see on my bloods, which are clinically researched and proven measurements. So there's definitely some correlation there. It's really interesting. Unfortunately, you have me very worried now, too, about my copper, my manganese, my zinc, this calcium shell, and some of these metals. So I think I might have a little bit of work to do.

Yeah, you know, and it's all correctable. It's all correctable, but it does take time. You know, the body chemistry doesn't change overnight. It took you three decades to get to this point, so it doesn't happen overnight, but people can and do. There's thousands of people that have done this type of program. Dr. Lawrence Wilson is the doctor I train with. He's treated 50,000 people, and people have amazing results. They really, really do. And there's lots of Facebook groups for nutritional balancing hair analysis. You can do, you know, go on my Facebook group Mineral power support. It's an open group and see people getting the results, the health results that they seek.

Once people test their hair, do you go back like every three months and retest your hair or do you see people coming back for retest once they implement some of these things and if so, what are you seeing?

Yeah, you do have to retest because the body chemistry changes and then we have to supplement in a way that corrects that picture of your body chemistry at that time. So people can stretch it out about six months or they're trying to save money or whatever, or if I think they're, their test is not likely to change, you never know. But yeah, you do have to do testing about every three to four months for about two to three years. And people kind of figure out on their own they kind of know what to do with their health after doing a program like this. They know what supplements they need to take, they know how to, they know how to live a healthy lifestyle, eat the right diet and supplement.

Okay, got it. Interesting. Man, thisyou could dive so deep on some of these toxicities and deficits. I mean the, the feedback on the form that you sent me after my test is, I mean it's incredibly comprehensive. I got it last night and it's going to take me a little while to go through, but this is really cool stuff. So if you're listening in and you want to get a hair mineral analysis or you want to look into some of these ratios or perhaps look at my results so you can kind of see what they look like, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hair Wendy, was there anything else that you wanted to point out when it comes to hair mineral analysis, my results or anything else that you think is important for people to know?

Well, yeah, I wanted to make one more comment on any clinical studies done on hair mineral analysis. Most of the studies people will find on PubMed about the validity and accuracy of hair mineral analysis are bogus junk science. And that's kind of my main message to people. I'm trying to get the word out about the depth of breadth and knowledge that you can get. You can glean from a hair metal analysis. Because a lot of the studies that were done or can't really even be called studies, they'll be using one or two participants which as we know, unless you have a sample size over 20, it's not statistically relevant. But you can't generalize that to the population. So the problem is there's not any really good studies that show the validity and accuracy of heroin analysis. But there are thousands of people on these types of programs using hair metal analysis as the basis of their programs and getting amazing results.

Wow. Cool. All right, well this is a wealth of information. I can't wait to later on today curl up on my couch with my results and scare myself even more. But anyways, no, seriously, I'm all about proactively improving your health and kind of being able to quantify and test not only where you're at but where you're progressing. And so this is going to be really helpful for me, I think. And of course, if you're listening in and you have comments of your own that you'd like to add or you want to see what type of things that I felt and discovered as I take into account someone Wendy's advice, just go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com hair check out the comments section because a lot of times after a podcast I'll post follow up comments to kind of give you updates on what I'm finding and I'll also update that with any follow up results that I get once I do a follow up test after I've addressed some of these issues. So Wendy, thanks so much for coming on the call today.

Thank you so much. And listeners, if you guys want to find me, you can find me on livetow110.com you can find my mineral power program@mineralpower.com and I have my own podcast, the live to 110 podcast and cooking show, the Modern Paleo Cooking Show. So lots of good info, free info on my site if you'd like to take a look.

Awesome. We'll link to all that stuff over in the show notes and until next time, thanks for listening in everybody. Have a healthy week and thank you Wendy.

Thank you so much.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.