IdeaLabs Service - Mineral Analysis (hair and/or (toe)nail)

[yerrag]

I got a response from Peat. I asked a question about the Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cu, Se content which he ignored.

It's a difficult question to ask.

Is the nail considered a body part that approximates the mineral contents of the cells and the extracellular fluids?

Or is it considered as a receptacle for receiving the excretions of the body much like urine? On this matter, it would be interesting to get a 24 hr urine test for the minerals in urine to see if there is a correlation.

Normally, and by that I mean in a healthy body with good acid base balance, the mineral excretions in urine would be high when the body is on the alkaline side as these minerals would be the cationic pair to the anion bicarbonate when the kidneys want to relieve the body of excess alkalinity.

 

[haidut]

Is the nail considered a body part that approximates the mineral contents of the cells and the extracellular fluids?

Or is it considered as a receptacle for receiving the excretions of the body much like urine? On this matter, it would be interesting to get a 24 hr urine test for the minerals in urine to see if there is a correlation.

The studies with steroids published so far suggest it is the former. Hair and nails are after all composed of cells that were at some point alive and absorbed nutrients, minerals, steroids, etc just like any other cell in soft tissue, bone, etc. The few studies that exist on measuring things like cortisol, DHEA or even testosterone (usually in regards to determining stress load for an organism) in hair/nail found very good correlation with the average values of repeated blood tests over the same time period, as well as with other biomarkers of stress.
Now, saliva, urine, sweat, sebum, nasal discharge, and even seminal fluid are much closer to "excretion" vehicles in terms of purpose though they have other physiological purposes as well. That is one reason we probably won't do steroid and mineral analysis in earwax - it is mostly an excretion mechanism like saliva, albeit with other beneficial roles such as protecting the middle/inner ear.
But yeah, overall it is indeed not an easy question to answer. We plan on doing comparisons with the steroid analysis with blood, urine, etc and then we will know more about the correlations, but so far it seems that nails from the big toes are a good representation of systemic levels. This is a very new and experimental field, especially the nail analysis. Hair analysis for forensic and/or sport/doping purposes has been done for a long time, and is well-established as a reliable testing method for such purposes, though it has not really been used for general health purposes such as determining steroid imbalance. On the other hand, nail analysis is basically a blank slate, even for minerals, while for steroids it is basically the wild wild west. For example, for steroids, there is like maybe 10 publications total and they usually measure either only cortisol or at best cortisol and DHEA.
So, exciting times ahead

 

[haidut]

I got a response from Peat. I asked a question about the Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cu, Se content which he ignored.

I then said this, "Also, the analysis showed very high levels of Lead, Titanium, Platinum, Strontium, Antimony, Rubidium, and Beryllium, but this might be a whole seperate issue altogether."

He responded with, "It’s good to consider whether the person has been exposed to unusual amounts of those, but I would also consider that there might be something wrong with the lab’s methods or standards."

I then asked a follow up in which I revealed that it was Georgi's lab, and then asked a specific question. He hasn't responded.


Has anyone else done this mineral analysis? I'd like to know if I can rely on these results as an indication that I have large amounts of heavy metals in my system or not. Inferring from Peat's response, it seems like my results would need to be verified somehow. I've already started some gentle chelation strategies just in case.

The lab methods are standard, there is little room for error here. It is a standard method used by pretty much all labs doing hair/nail toxicology analysis. The samples are processed with nitric acid, which dissolves everything and leaves the elemental chemicals only. Then, the liquefied sample is passed through an ICP-MS machine and if it detects and quantifies an element in the sample, it is basically 100% certain it is there. The machine can't come up with fake values for say Lead or Titanium if those elements are not actually in the sample, and neither can those values be somehow manipulated by the technician. You can send him this link, for the lab method used.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We will also be doing repeated "validation" tests to make sure the technician is doing the work properly. We have collected some extra hair from subjects and then samples from that single pool will be periodically given to the technician in a blinded fashion. If the results come back largely the same (as they should) then this is an assurance the results are legit.
Finally, more as an anecdotal confirmation, a few people whose results showed high aluminium turned out to be using body sprays with very high aluminium content in them, which have been confirmed to raise body levels of aluminium in other human studies, done long before hours.
@yerrag

 

[Ismail]

See above.

Has the steroid analysis information been released? It’s been more than 4 weeks now.

Thanks ?

 

[haidut]

Has the steroid analysis information been released? It’s been more than 4 weeks now.

Thanks ?

No, it has not yet but it is getting close. R&D is not something you can put a definite timeline on. I will make an announcement on a separate thread when it is ready.

 

[Mauritio]

Depends on the person. Most women who do pedicure would probably say 3mm is not much. Depending on how big the toe is, smaller pieces may also suffice. We need 100mg-150mg of nail, so if the toe is big and the nail is say an inch wide, then a length of 2mm or even 1mm would suffice.

My toenails started looking kind of gross to the point where I didn't want to take of socks in public. To my surprise I all 10 combined only weigh like 100mg. I guess summer is not the best time to do this
( The weight is minus my right big toe ,becuse that one's special and just breaks when I grow it too long...)

 

[haidut]

My toenails started looking kind of gross to the point where I didn't want to take of socks in public. To my surprise I all 10 combined only weigh like 100mg. I guess summer is not the best time to do this
( The weight is minus my right big toe ,becuse that one's special and just breaks when I grow it too long...)

Yep, it usually takes at least 2 clippings from the big toe to get ~100mg. Hair is even lighter but there is usually more available for harvesting.

 

[yerrag]

The studies with steroids published so far suggest it is the former. Hair and nails are after all composed of cells that were at some point alive and absorbed nutrients, minerals, steroids, etc just like any other cell in soft tissue, bone, etc. The few studies that exist on measuring things like cortisol, DHEA or even testosterone (usually in regards to determining stress load for an organism) in hair/nail found very good correlation with the average values of repeated blood tests over the same time period, as well as with other biomarkers of stress.
Now, saliva, urine, sweat, sebum, nasal discharge, and even seminal fluid are much closer to "excretion" vehicles in terms of purpose though they have other physiological purposes as well. That is one reason we probably won't do steroid and mineral analysis in earwax - it is mostly an excretion mechanism like saliva, albeit with other beneficial roles such as protecting the middle/inner ear.
But yeah, overall it is indeed not an easy question to answer. We plan on doing comparisons with the steroid analysis with blood, urine, etc and then we will know more about the correlations, but so far it seems that nails from the big toes are a good representation of systemic levels. This is a very new and experimental field, especially the nail analysis. Hair analysis for forensic and/or sport/doping purposes has been done for a long time, and is well-established as a reliable testing method for such purposes, though it has not really been used for general health purposes such as determining steroid imbalance. On the other hand, nail analysis is basically a blank slate, even for minerals, while for steroids it is basically the wild wild west. For example, for steroids, there is like maybe 10 publications total and they usually measure either only cortisol or at best cortisol and DHEA.
So, exciting times ahead

Thanks for the explanation. There is a lot to find out in this are of testing. A lot of it is still in discovery, and I'm glad you are stepping into this space.

I want to ask you about saliva as I differ in my view of saliva. I consider it to be a secretion instead of an excretion because it stays internal within the oral cavity and within the gut. You are well justified in thinking of it as an excretion as we can consider the gut to be external in many ways. However, unlike urine and sweat, sebum, nasal discharge and seminal fluid, saliva gets to be recycled back in the system.

I got to ask myself this when I began to use urine and saliva as proxies to gauge acid base balance, along with breath rate. The breath rate gives an indication of the pH in the blood. If both urine and saliva are both considered as excretions, then they both would be about the same in pH, given that excretions are mostly the waste coming out from the body. But urine and saliva have different pH. In a healthy body, which is in balance, the urine always has a lower pH than saliva. The saliva is roughly 1 pH higher than that of urine. So if the urine pH is 6.4, the saliva pH is 7.4.

So far, what I've said in the above paragraph is stuff I've picked up, mostly from material from www.biomedx.com. There is no explanation as to why saliva pH has to be higher. So I had to figure out an explanation for why this is so. The only explanation I could come up with is that the urine is an excretion, and that saliva is a secretion. If our body ecf is acidic, then the way to get rid of the acidity is through the lungs (only for CO2) and through the kidneys (though the skin does that, but in a minor way). So thru the kidneys, urine is excreted carrying away the acids normally (but bases also in a situation of imbalance). So, while optimal urine pH is around 6.4, there is nothing alarming with urine pH going down to as low as 4.5 as that indicates that the body is doing what it should be doing when the ecf is getting very acidic - as long as it is not chronic, and as long as the saliva pH is higher than the urine pH.

In this way, saliva pH is regarded as a proxy for the ecf pH and for that to be the case, saliva has to be considered a secretion.

Anyway, I think such distinctions are important because being able to make such distinctions are important when we ask how the hair and nail values of minerals reflect the body's content of these minerals. Could hair and nails be seen as the urine and saliva (or even breath rate) tandem in a different sense? Are values from hair indicative of minerals being excreted, or of the mineral content in the blood, or of the ecf, or of the intracellular fluids? I also consider that the hair follicles act like mini-kidneys in an article I shared some time ago. If they act like that, where is the waste being expelled going to? Is it in the sebum, or is it in the hair? What about the nails? In this case, there is no sebum to speak of. Are nails are excretions, albeit in solid form, why are the minerals in ipeat's results so high? Is it because there is no way to discharge these minerals in urine, because the urine is always on the acidic side (normally), and that the electrolyte minerals only get used when excreting alkaline urine? But if the nail is a secretion, is it possible the nail's minerals can be recycled back into the system much in the same way that calcium from bones is leached by osteoclasts when the body needs it?

 

[haidut]

Thanks for the explanation. There is a lot to find out in this are of testing. A lot of it is still in discovery, and I'm glad you are stepping into this space.

I want to ask you about saliva as I differ in my view of saliva. I consider it to be a secretion instead of an excretion because it stays internal within the oral cavity and within the gut. You are well justified in thinking of it as an excretion as we can consider the gut to be external in many ways. However, unlike urine and sweat, sebum, nasal discharge and seminal fluid, saliva gets to be recycled back in the system.

I got to ask myself this when I began to use urine and saliva as proxies to gauge acid base balance, along with breath rate. The breath rate gives an indication of the pH in the blood. If both urine and saliva are both considered as excretions, then they both would be about the same in pH, given that excretions are mostly the waste coming out from the body. But urine and saliva have different pH. In a healthy body, which is in balance, the urine always has a lower pH than saliva. The saliva is roughly 1 pH higher than that of urine. So if the urine pH is 6.4, the saliva pH is 7.4.

So far, what I've said in the above paragraph is stuff I've picked up, mostly from material from www.biomedx.com. There is no explanation as to why saliva pH has to be higher. So I had to figure out an explanation for why this is so. The only explanation I could come up with is that the urine is an excretion, and that saliva is a secretion. If our body ecf is acidic, then the way to get rid of the acidity is through the lungs (only for CO2) and through the kidneys (though the skin does that, but in a minor way). So thru the kidneys, urine is excreted carrying away the acids normally (but bases also in a situation of imbalance). So, while optimal urine pH is around 6.4, there is nothing alarming with urine pH going down to as low as 4.5 as that indicates that the body is doing what it should be doing when the ecf is getting very acidic - as long as it is not chronic, and as long as the saliva pH is higher than the urine pH.

In this way, saliva pH is regarded as a proxy for the ecf pH and for that to be the case, saliva has to be considered a secretion.

Anyway, I think such distinctions are important because being able to make such distinctions are important when we ask how the hair and nail values of minerals reflect the body's content of these minerals. Could hair and nails be seen as the urine and saliva (or even breath rate) tandem in a different sense? Are values from hair indicative of minerals being excreted, or of the mineral content in the blood, or of the ecf, or of the intracellular fluids? I also consider that the hair follicles act like mini-kidneys in an article I shared some time ago. If they act like that, where is the waste being expelled going to? Is it in the sebum, or is it in the hair? What about the nails? In this case, there is no sebum to speak of. Are nails are excretions, albeit in solid form, why are the minerals in ipeat's results so high? Is it because there is no way to discharge these minerals in urine, because the urine is always on the acidic side (normally), and that the electrolyte minerals only get used when excreting alkaline urine? But if the nail is a secretion, is it possible the nail's minerals can be recycled back into the system much in the same way that calcium from bones is leached by osteoclasts when the body needs it?

Good questions all around. I guess we will find out when we start doing the steroids and keep doing more mineral tests and eventually correlations will emerge. One thing we did notice is that if there is a high result for one of the elements in hair then the values are usually elevated in nail, and vice versa. It is not always the case for nutritional elements but it does seem to hold for the toxic and miscellaneous ones. So, the correlation with the nutritional elements with various body functions/biomarker is yet to be revealed, but the correlation of steroids in either hair or nail with repeated blood tests has been confirmed, at least when it comes to things like cortisol and DHEA, and even testosterone. The steroid testing in hair is a standard procedure in doping testing by WADA, but they screen for the synthetic anabolic steroids and maybe testosterone, while we will try to take this accepted approach and apply it to the endogenous steroids. Nail steroid analysis is not really done, even for doping purposes, and we hope to get it developed and compare to hair testing with the ultimate goal of both answering the questions you posed and determining which one is a better testing process that provides info on the long-term steroid exposure/levels of the organism to certain steroids.
Btw, the question on excretions vs secretions maybe a bit moot when testing for overloads since if one has, say high arsenic in hair or nail, that pretty much suggests systemic overload as well, since that substance detected in high levels must come from somewhere and it is not really possible to somehow concentrate it in the nail/hair without the entire body getting exposed to it. In other words, regardless if those are secretions or excretions, elevated levels are suggestive of an overload and thus probably indicate exposure to such substances environmentally, so the person can take action (which is what the value of the test for user is anyways).

 

[tastyfood]

Another method of testing toxic metals is checking the feces. Would that compare to other excretion mechanisms?

In the past, I had urine and stool tests done almost concurrently, and the results for mercury and lead were very similar in levels.

 

[haidut]

Another method of testing toxic metals is checking the feces. Would that compare to other excretion mechanisms?

In the past, I had urine and stool tests done almost concurrently, and the results for mercury and lead were very similar in levels.

Stool test would work similar to urine, but will only come back positive if a person is actually excreting the toxic element. If the element is stored in tissues like bone, brain, etc and there is no displacement of it the excretion tests will probably not show much. Also, if urine/stool are positive for an element, blood tests should also show it since in order for an element to appear in urine/stool it would have to get out of the tissues and go through the blood first.

 

[yerrag]

@haidut

On the subject of tests, I hope I'm not getting off base here but I've wondered about the nature of snot and boogers.

If the reality is different from perception, and snots and boogers are actually excretion of toxins and waste products of the immune system rather than just external contaminants covered in mucous and expelled back out, would there be a good use of a snot and booger testing service?

I've read of the lungs being a detox organ and it's not just about expelling CO2. Ray has talked of the lungs being where SOD is abundant and where most of the body's serotonin is deactivated or eliminated.

Lately I've learned of a South African doctor by the name of Chetty that after the initial symptoms of COVID disappear, new symptoms in the lungs would result from the debris that included the spike protein going to the lungs.

But then to get snot and boogers these have to be expelled from the lungs. In the case of dry cough, which is common in COVID, speaking from my limited experience, there is no phlegm discharge but there are boogers that form.

Of course, the substances being detected would be microbes or their dead remains, and this would be outside the scope of minerals and hormones.

Still, I wonder if there is some value-add here since in a typical modern lab nothing can be expected by way of microbe identification outside of the usual suspects.

 

[tastyfood]

Stool test would work similar to urine, but will only come back positive if a person is actually excreting the toxic element. If the element is stored in tissues like bone, brain, etc and there is no displacement of it the excretion tests will probably not show much. Also, if urine/stool are positive for an element, blood tests should also show it since in order for an element to appear in urine/stool it would have to get out of the tissues and go through the blood first.

Do you think the toxic elements can accumulate in any tissue in the body, or are some completely shielded from things like lead or mercury? Could they accumulate in the testicles, for example?

 

[TheCalciumCad]

Would this be a more accurate way to test iron levels than a full iron panel blood test? (ferritin, transferrin saturation etc)

 

[haidut]

Do you think the toxic elements can accumulate in any tissue in the body, or are some completely shielded from things like lead or mercury? Could they accumulate in the testicles, for example?

Some of the toxic metals (lead, mercury) preferentially accumulate in some tissues like bones, brain, gonads, etc. I don't know if this is true for all of them, but virtually all of the toxic ones have been shown to harm the gonads if a person has been exposed long-enough. The good news is that most of the toxicity seems to come from interaction with PUFA in tissues, so using vitamin E and/or increasing SFA intake should be protective.

 

[haidut]

Would this be a more accurate way to test iron levels than a full iron panel blood test? (ferritin, transferrin saturation etc)

If the full iron panel is done then I think the results from both type of testing would be similarly accurate. If only serum iron is done (as doctors often do), then hair/nail testing is probably more accurate. We actually did iron panel blood tests for a few people to confirm the results on mineral analysis showing iron deficiency or excess and the match was pretty good, even though nails show values ~3 months in the past while hair shows ~1 month in the past.

 

[bobbity]

I thought it might be worthwhile to share my results with the forum. For background, I am a 32 year old male, living in London. I do not work with or around any heavy industry. I found several of these levels to be surprising.

- Low copper. I enjoy copious quantities of chocolate. For breakfast I invariably make a skimmed goats milk hot chocolate with a good quality cocoa. I would have thought this would stave off any deficiency. As for liver consumption, my intake is intermittent. Clearly it should not be. Is cocoa actually a comparatively poor source of copper? Not bioavailable etc?

- Elevated levels of Antimony/Beryllium/Lead. I eat a clean, peaty diet of organic meat and vegetables. I do however supplement with methylene blue and have done so for the past 5 years. Previously I had considered the heavy metal load from 5mg methylene blue to be insignificant. I now wonder whether this risk needs to be taken more seriously. I had been using what I considered to be a high purity MB, it now seems that USP grade might be the way to go - this is not particularly easy to obtain.

Would chronic methylene blue supplementation in varying dosages account for such high levels of beryllium and other heavy metals?

I expect that I am probably not alone in my use and abuse of MB and so I would be interested to see whether other members report anything similar...

 

[Surfari]

I thought it might be worthwhile to share my results with the forum. For background, I am a 32 year old male, living in London. I do not work with or around any heavy industry. I found several of these levels to be surprising.

- Low copper. I enjoy copious quantities of chocolate. For breakfast I invariably make a skimmed goats milk hot chocolate with a good quality cocoa. I would have thought this would stave off any deficiency. As for liver consumption, my intake is intermittent. Clearly it should not be. Is cocoa actually a comparatively poor source of copper? Not bioavailable etc?

- Elevated levels of Antimony/Beryllium/Lead. I eat a clean, peaty diet of organic meat and vegetables. I do however supplement with methylene blue and have done so for the past 5 years. Previously I had considered the heavy metal load from 5mg methylene blue to be insignificant. I now wonder whether this risk needs to be taken more seriously. I had been using what I considered to be a high purity MB, it now seems that USP grade might be the way to go - this is not particularly easy to obtain.

Would chronic methylene blue supplementation in varying dosages account for such high levels of beryllium and other heavy metals?

I expect that I am probably not alone in my use and abuse of MB and so I would be interested to see whether other members report anything similar...



View attachment 35883

Hi Bobbity,
I got my results back and they too showed higher levels of antimony, I don’t take MB, but I was thinking it could be from drinking from plastic or being around furniture treated with fire retardant.

I'm going to do another test in 3 or 6 month to see if the antimony is going up or down. Hopefully that would indicate whether I’m still being exposed to it, or if it’s something past that my body is working to get rid of.

My potassium levels were also high, did you have any thoughts on that?

 

[bobbity]

Hi Bobbity,
I got my results back and they too showed higher levels of antimony, I don’t take MB, but I was thinking it could be from drinking from plastic or being around furniture treated with fire retardant.

I'm going to do another test in 3 or 6 month to see if the antimony is going up or down. Hopefully that would indicate whether I’m still being exposed to it, or if it’s something past that my body is working to get rid of.

My potassium levels were also high, did you have any thoughts on that?

Interesting. I stopped drinking from plastic bottles a few years ago, having done so for a lifetime - my parents saw bottled mineral water as preferable to tap. The high potassium came as something of a surprise, I drink orange juice quite frequently but I don't think my diet is especially high.

I wonder whether @haidut would have any thoughts regarding possible environmental/dietary sources for these toxic metals. I am still at a loss regarding the beryllium.

Hopefully this service will be popular with forum members, it seems that there's been rather less enthusiasm than I would have expected!

 

[golder]

Interesting. I stopped drinking from plastic bottles a few years ago, having done so for a lifetime - my parents saw bottled mineral water as preferable to tap. The high potassium came as something of a surprise, I drink orange juice quite frequently but I don't think my diet is especially high.

I wonder whether @haidut would have any thoughts regarding possible environmental/dietary sources for these toxic metals. I am still at a loss regarding the beryllium.

Hopefully this service will be popular with forum members, it seems that there's been rather less enthusiasm than I would have expected!

I’m very enthusiastic. If others are anything like me, then I’m waiting for the steroids lab to be added to this service so I can do them both at the same time.