Why Don’t Medical Doctors Recommend Hair Mineral Analysis?

What is Hair Analysis?

Hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) is the test I use to help my clients determine which foods and nutrients they need to function their best. The test provides a blueprint of your body chemistry, which, when interpreted correctly, can be used to recommend nutrients in a balanced and precise way.

When I tell people about hair analysis, it all sounds great. However, a common objection that I receive from those interested in hair analysis is, “if hair analysis is so great, why isn’t it more popular or well-known? If it’s so great, why didn’t my doctor recommend it?” This article answers this common objection.

Hair analysis is part of a health-centered paradigm

The main reason why hair analysis is not more popular, I believe, is because it is part of a new paradigm that is not familiar to most people—especially medical doctors. Let me explain.

The modern medical system is disease-centered. Medical doctors are trained to identify or diagnose a recognized disease and then to use a specified remedy to treat the disease. The remedies used by modern medicine are mainly pharmaceutical drugs, surgery, and radiation.

Toxic and ineffective. Most of these treatments are focused on removing the “problem” at any cost, without concern for creating other problems and without seeking to understand and remove the underlying cause. As many know, all medicines have “side effects,” which are really just new symptoms that are the direct result of the treatment. Modern medicine is well-suited for emergencies or battlefield medicine. However, it is wholly ineffective when it comes to producing health and preventing disease.

Hair analysis, in contrast, is part of a health-centered paradigm. The goal is to improve a person’s health, not manage their disease. Using hair analysis properly requires a new way of thinking about health and disease. The hair analysis approach is more like balancing or engineering the body instead of fighting disease entities. Unfortunately, this idea is quite foreign to most people, and few practitioners are trained in this method.

Hair analysis is not a diagnostic test

As a feature of the health-centered paradigm, hair analysis cannot diagnose a specific disease such as Lyme disease or Autism.  Instead, it is a screening test that can identify underlying biochemical imbalances that are associated with dozens of health problems. The same imbalance on a hair analysis can manifest as several different ailments.

For example, copper toxicity can cause multiple symptoms, such as PMS, migraines, fatigue, anxiety, and more. Instead of treating each symptom individually (for example, treating the migraines with anti-inflammatory drugs, anxiety with anxiolytics, and so on), a health-centered approach would involve removing excess copper and improving the body’s utilization of copper. Correcting the copper problem will not only end migraines and anxiety, but it will also improve or eliminate every other symptom related to excess copper.

Pharmaceutical Interests Control The Practice of Medicine

If doctors were to use hair analysis, they would have to learn an entirely new and complex system. If they began using hair analysis, most of their drugs and surgery would become obsolete.

Of course, this will never happen because the pharmaceutical industry controls medical education and the medical licensing boards. There is an enormous financial interest in preserving the drug-based and disease-based medical system. Even natural doctors rely heavily on the diagnose-and-treat model, although their treatments and remedies are usually less toxic than conventional medicine.

Other Reasons Hair Analysis is Not More Popular

• Doctors are not trained in nutrition. Doctors are trained to manage symptoms and simply don’t know how to use nutrition to correct the underlying problems. A 2008 study that surveyed all 126 US medical schools accredited at that time showed the average nutritional training of 24 hours! This should be a huge red flag since nutrition is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of health. Any thinking person should question why doctors and medical professionals ignore nutrition.
• Not a quick fix. Most people are not interested in making real changes to improve their health. Hair analysis reveals imbalances that are caused by improper diet, stress, and poor lifestyle habits. These revelations force you to consider significant lifestyle changes to improve your health.
• Nutrition-based, not drug-based. Inexpensive nutrients have lots of competition and therefore are not as profitable as patented drugs.
• Lack of marketing. There are no associations that lobby for hair analysis. Each practitioner or company does their own marketing, which often takes the form of word of mouth rather than million-dollar ads. This is a stark contrast to the level of marketing done by the medical establishment, whose associations continuously lobby congress to pass laws in their favor and suppress the competition.
• Real controversy. There are real controversies and problems with hair analysis that leads many to question its efficacy. These controversies are due to the fact that each hair analysis laboratory uses different procedures, and therefore test results may differ from lab to lab. This problem is corrected, however, when the testing laboratory does not wash the hair sample at the lab—a practice that has been shown to wash out water-soluble minerals and produce erratic results.
• Misuse of hair analysis (replacement therapy, measuring toxic metals instead of metabolic typing, stress theory). Besides different lab procedures, another valid critique of hair analysis is the fact that practitioners interpret the test results differently. So, even if you use a lab that provides accurate test results, the meaning of the results can vary from practitioner to practitioner.
• Modest practitioners. Because the medical establishment rejects health-centered services, those who offer hair analysis are often unlicensed practitioners. This increases skepticism about the test, since the general public is conditioned to trust only those with advanced degrees and diplomas—no matter how ineffective or harmful their services are.
• Not covered by insurance. This is a prime method that medical cartels use to control health care. Everyone is forced to purchase health insurance from certain entities, but only approved services are covered. Covered services are mostly drugs, surgery, and radiation. Most insurance providers only cover alternative therapies that have large associations.
• Deep healing. Many nutrition professionals are too often concerned with superficial problems, such as weight loss.
• Preventive. The medical system has no incentive to prevent disease using health-centered therapies. In fact, their business model is only successful when people are sick.
• Opposition from medical lobbies and associations.
• Phony ‘studies’ attacking hair analysis.

Conclusion

Hair analysis can sound too good to be true, and this alone prevents many people from using it. I was certainly skeptical when I first heard of hair analysis. However, I trusted my judgment of what I read and gave it a try. I encourage you to review the merits of the articles on this website and use your judgment to determine whether or not this system makes sense for your health. It’s up to you to shift the paradigm by rejecting disease-centered therapies and seeking services that foster true health and development.