Mineral and Toxic Elements Status
 
Sample type: Hair
Biomarkers tested: 20 minerals and toxic metals
Lab processing time: 6-8 weeks (excludes transit time)
Lab: ARL (Analytical Research Labs)
 
Providing a mineral blueprint of one's biochemistry, a hair tissue mineral analysis can offer pertinent information about one's metabolic rate, energy levels, and stage of stress.
 
ARL are one of only two laboratories that do not wash the hair at the laboratory. Washing hair samples at the laboratory has been shown to erratically remove water-soluble elements. This creates much less accurate results. In a 2001 study in the Journal of the AMA (Seidel, S. et al., Assessment of Commercial Laboratories Performing Hair Mineral Analysis, JAMA, 285(1) Jan 3:67-72.) the two laboratories that did not wash the hair, of which ARL were one, showed superb reliability.
 
Toxic elements may be 200 to 300 times more highly concentrated in hair than in blood or urine. Therefore, hair is the tissue of choice for detection of recent exposure to elements such as arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, lead, antimony and mercury.
 
The CDC acknowledges the value of hair mercury levels as a maternal and infant marker for exposure to neurotoxic methylmercury from fish.
 
Through recent vast improvements in technology, instrumentation and application of scientific protocols, hair element analysis has become a valuable tool for providing dependable and useful data for physicians and their patients. 
 
It should not be considered a stand-alone diagnostic test for essential element function, and should be used in conjunction with patient symptoms and other laboratory tests. 
 
Once you have paid for your test, you will receive instructions on how to provide a hair sample.