Practitioner Blog: How a HTMA works alongside homeopathic principles to reveal where the energy got stuck and the governing mineral
What is a HTMA test (hair tissue mineral analysis test)?
A small sample of hair, the last 3 to 6 months of growth, is sent through Mineral Check to Trace Elements laboratory for analysis. What comes back tells us which minerals were available to the body while that hair was growing, and what was circulating at the point of its formation. It is a recording of those months and what the experience has been for the patient.
What it reveals
The report shows nutritional elements, additional elements and toxic elements. But it also gives us ratios, and that is where it stops being a list. The ratios show the relationships between the minerals, and therefore the functional roles those elements are playing in the body.
I will admit that the first time I saw one, I could only really read it in terms of big excesses, big deficiencies, and the toxic elements. That is where most of us start. Several courses later, I can see how much more is there.
There are seven significant ratios or mineral relationships on every report: Ca/P, Na/K, Ca/K, Zn/Cu, Na/Mg, Ca/Mg and Fe/Cu. Between them they speak to metabolic rate, thyroid and adrenal activity in the tissue, blood sugar handling, hormone balance, histamine response, digestion and absorption, iron utilisation and the handling of infection, tissue breakdown and repair, and how this body has met the demands placed on it.
So the report not only tell us about mineral balances, it tells us how well the body is functioning, how it has responded to stress, and whether it still has the capacity to carry on responding in the way it has been. It shows whether the body is still mounting its response, or has moved into compensating for it.
And it shows where the energy has become stuck and which governing mineral the whole picture is organised around.
Why that matters to a homeopath
What is happening at the cellular level is happening at every level.
The governing mineral is orchestrating the whole. The way that element behaves in the body is the way the person behaves: in the physical symptoms and the pathology, in the shape of the timeline, in the mental and emotional picture, and in how they meet their life. One behaviour, running right through.
Which is why the remedy made from that same mineral is what meets it. It carries the same behaviour.
None of this replaces homeopathy
Nothing here moves away from homeopathic principles. All of them still apply, and all of them are applied. We still take the case properly, we still analyse it, we still repertorise. We still look for the totality, for what is peculiar, for the direction of cure, and for the person rather than the pathology.
The report does not prescribe. It cannot, and it never should. It instead sits alongside the case as another route into seeing the same person, and everything on it is read against what the patient has told us. Where it agrees with the case, we prescribe with more confidence. Where it does not, that disagreement is worth thinking about, and the case still leads.
What it adds is not a different method. It is another view of the ground the case is already standing on.
What it explains for us as Homeopaths
The experience of the patient over the last 3 to 6 months. Whether they are stuck in flight or fight or exhausted and depleted. Whats happening with their hormones, histamine, infection and much more.
It is also what explains why a well chosen remedy acted and then failed to complete its action even after repetition and careful potency selection. It is what explains the rebalancing symptoms that sometimes appear afterwards. And it gives us another route into understanding the patients susceptibility: but where the energy gets stuck in this person, which mineral it is stuck in, and why it was there rather than anywhere else.
What the report itself looks like
The results come back as two pages. Here is what is on them.
The header. Laboratory and account numbers, the profile that was run, and whether the sample was scalp or body hair. Age, sex and the date of the test. Worth reading first, because sample type and age both affect what the reference ranges are being compared against.
Nutritional elements. Fifteen minerals across the top of the first page, each drawn as a bar against a shaded reference band, with the measured value printed underneath. Calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, copper, zinc, phosphorus, iron, manganese, chromium, selenium, boron, cobalt, molybdenum and sulphur. Levels are given in milligram percent.
Toxic elements. Eight down the right hand side, on their own scale. Antimony, uranium, arsenic, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, lead and aluminium. The logic here is inverted: there is no band to sit inside, only a ceiling to stay below. Where a value falls beneath what the instrument can measure, the report marks it rather than reporting a number.
Additional elements. Nineteen more along the bottom, including germanium, barium, lithium, nickel, strontium, tin and zirconium. Often these reveal context for the nutritional elements and the balances between them, as well as an excesses to be explored with a patient.
Significant ratios. The second page opens with the seven ratios drawn as their own graphs. These are the relationships between minerals rather than the minerals themselves, and for most practitioners this is the section that turns out to matter most.
Toxic ratios. Nine more, each pairing a nutrient mineral against a toxic metal. The laboratory's note beside them is the useful part: a person with raised toxic levels may show no symptoms attributable to that metal, while the metal is still interfering with how the nutrient mineral is used.
Additional ratios. A table rather than graphs, with a calculated value and an expected value alongside. The laboratory states plainly that these are reported for research purposes.
Current and previous. Every section carries two rows of figures, this test and the last one, with both dates printed at the foot of the page. On a first test the second row is empty. On a retest it is the most valuable thing on the report, because a single test gives you a position and two give you a direction.
Further information is also often provided by the company providing the HTMA. This can include nutiritional recommendations and potential trends in pathology.
That is what arrives: roughly fifty measured elements, and around twenty five ratios.
What does not arrive is what any of it means for the person who gave the sample. The report is a set of readings. Assessing it alongside the case, one that connects to susceptibility, to the symptom picture and to the remedy, is the work.
That is what you will learn on the course.
If you would like to learn more about this
If you would like to learn more, or you have already done an HTMA course and want to know how to respond to it Homeopathically, please get in touch or visit the Practitioner section of my website to find out more about the course.
HTMA Homeopathic Practitioner Course, Aspire Academy.
If you are a patient rather than a practitioner and would like to learn more about your results please also get in touch.
