i don’t advocate hair analysis and am personally trying to find out if it’s of any use. i know there’s quackery in alternative medicine but i also know that the fda is bullshit when they say MSG is a generally safe ingredient when i see my dad have horrible reactions (sick for days, throwing up) whenever he eats something with MSG. anyway, any help you can offer would be great.

Given that there the whole premise of nutritional medicine so shaky and that hair mineral analysis is completely unstandardised, isn’t it more likely you are just seeing normal health improvements?

Yes I have read biochemical individuality – pity the author’s dead I would have loved to have met him!

It should be on the syllabus for undergraduate medics/scientists impresses on need to appreciate the variability of biology and unwittingly takes to task the token nod to ‘heterogeneity’ in academic and clinical medicine.

Le Canard, I definately agree that it is a toxicologist that should analyse these results. I doubt many people would actually get to see a toxicologist (apart from in an acute setting) but we can dream.

Oh…. one point that made me smile…….

I had a quick browse on your profile and found this!

“If I had a pound for every quack who has accused me of being in the pay of ‘Big Pharma’ I would be richer than if I was really in their pay.
It looks like accusing someone of just being a shill for evil medical interests is a standard way that quacks avoid answering the criticisms made against them. Its very shallow.”

Le canard, i completely agree, how very shallow, shame on them.

Let me take you back a couple of paragraphs:

“you clearly do not understand analytical techniques – I guess you are in the business of selling vitamin pills? No?”

Hoisted by your own petard!Resorted to throwing out pathetic accusations. Boosh, got ya!

What a load of drivel anyway! Of course you should look for conflict of interest first! Just as if a probiotic was being clinically trialled, and it happened to be one of the big supermarket probiotic yoghurt brand carrying out the research, do you not think this may add an immeridate bias?!!!It immediately questions the integrity of the research. MONEY! It’s all business at the end of the day. Why do think conflicts of interest have to be stated!

You are discussing using HMA for the detection of exposures to toxic trace elements such as Hg or U. It may well be then possible to see gross and large changes in the concentrations of these elements and then indeed you may wish to see a toxicologist.

But this post is about going to see a nutritionist to look at nutritional levels of important trace elements. There, it would appear, the role of HMA is just as a quack’s sales tool.

Look at how you link to the Dr Wilson site. He offers nutritional analysis by HMA – but the papers he uses to justify this are selective and mainly based on toxic exposure levels. Classic misdirection.

“The consensus of most workers in the field is that if hair samples are collected properly, cleaned and prepared for analysis correctly and analyzed by the best analytical methods, using standards and blanks as required, in a clean and reliable laboratory, by experienced personnel, the data are reliable.”

Toxic Trace Metals in Mammalian Hair and Nails. United States Environmental Protection Agency Publication 1979; EPA-600/4: 79: 049

Their conclusion is further supported by the recent finding of substantial inter-laboratory variability in reported results by Seider et al.

The literature is replete with examples of the value of hair mineral analysis in assessing toxic exposure. I have come across papers supporting the validity of hair mineral analysis in assessing nutritive status but am less familiar with its clinical and diagnostic value.

Here is a link to a collection of excerpts relating to hair mineral analysis.

http://drlwilson.com/HAIR%20ANALYSIS/HA%20Prof.%20Statements.htm

I appreciate that these are highly selective and the author appears to offer detoxification therapies but I consider (I have also read several of these papers in entirety) that there is sufficient indication of efficacy and assuming there has been no attempt to misrepresent the findings, that the lay or educated reader could not defensibly conclude that this technique is no value.

The JAMA paper by Seider et al has been quoted followed by a remark by the author “It is no surprise then that QuackWatch calls this technique a Cardinal Sign of Quackery.’ At the very least I would offer that Dr. Stephen Barret is ill informed.

The quote from Seider et al was also selectively highlighted, appreciably to draw attention, however it is important to note the inclusion of the phrase “Hair mineral analysis from these laboratories was unreliable.” This would permit one to infer that hair mineral analysis from ‘other’ laboratories could conceivably be reliable adopting appropriate technical procedures – in line with the E.P.A statement.

I am loath to paste this link from wikipedia but it’s late and i’m tired

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis

Hair analysis is widely used in forensic toxicology (note this link does not discuss mineral analysis)

http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research/researchthemes/cancer/research_cancer/meta/toxicology/hair/

Whilst I was going to make this post substantially longer, I am sleepy so I will end on several sloppy points

- I have mentioned the literature is replete with examples supporting the value of hair mineral analysis

> I have provided no references so I could be confabulating

- People appear to have difficulty fathoming how one may garner useful information from hair analysis

> That’s your problem, go formulate a hypothesis and attempt to rigorously falsify it. As a side note physicians still, astonishly, conclude that a patient has normal magnesium levels from a serum test when no accurate determination can be made about tissue levels – Oh no!

- I have no love for people that misrepresent my love which is toxicology either denigrating it or stratospherically inflating it.
I impress upon myself the need for tentative knowledge, how do you know that they’re aren’t little fairies inside Quark particles telling them what to do? To my knowledge no-one has disproven this theory.

> A stupidly vivid point of the need for tentative knowledge and to abhor absolution – one i have been told off for using. Be warned i may be a fairy.

And whats wrong with vitamin pills? They are physiological substances of which deficiencies or insufficiencies can lead to metabolic deficits. A simplistic example may be the chronically tired patient with demonstrable insufficiences in several of the B-vitamins which are cofactors in the TCA cycle (wikipedia it if you must). Impaired ATP production is a valid cause of premature fatigue. Sometimes I do wonder when I hear ’some’ doctors saying you only need to eat a balanced diet. When questioned as to what this entails they tell me to go clerk a patient I know where i want to stick that bow tie. I also wonder when i hear ’some’ nutritionists say vitamins are soaked up by the brain – i missed the detailed workings of the vitamin sponge in biochemistry. To put it simply nutrient levels are function of metabolic demand and supply. (Saying that statistically defined nutrient sufficiency may not be equivocal to metabolically defined nutrient sufficiency due to enzyme polymorphisms!) Science is like Alice’s rabbit hole except a lot of the rabbits have their heads inside their bums and think thats all there is too see. Now thats gross. Returning to the notion of metabolic demand, find out what Michael Phelps eats on a day to day a basis then chastise him and his dietary advisers for failing to following a ‘balance diet.’ (Not directed at anyone. I believe many would readily consider macronutrient requirement i.e. protein, carbohydrates, fat on a day to day basis but fail to appreciate the importance of micronutrient requirement which has equal importance.) I feel it most unfortunate the potential for modification of biological systems with dietary constituents has been maligned but the fact that it is ‘food’ appears to colour its value and besides no-one likes food that is good for them!

Ps. I am a medical student and because I’m still a baby I feel the need having read more of Stephen Barrets writings – which contain some gross inaccuracies to say i’m not his friend and that he has cooties. Ewwwwww

Hal