HTMA stands for Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis. Who should get one? Anyone and everyone! Especially if you are a woman who has dieted and cut calories ever in your life to try and lose weight. 

It is a test that summarizes your mineral status over the last 3ish months, and it tells us many pieces of information:

• How your body is utilizing minerals to respond to internal and external stressors over time.
• A better understanding of the stage of stress you are currently in (chronic or burnout)
• Nervous system dominance: is your stress causing you to lean more toward a parasympathetic state (rest/digest) or a sympathetic state (fight/flight)?
• Metabolic type: are you a fast or slow metabolizer and how is your metabolism synched up to your adrenals and your thyroid?
• How your minerals are working together to power certain processes within your body such as the vitality of your cells, adrenal health, thyroid health, sex hormones, emotional/mental health, blood sugar management, and your nervous system.
• Heavy metals and how they are leaving your body via the hair (which we want!)

You might be wondering, how does the HTMA differ from blood work? Can’t you just test your potassium or sodium from a lab draw? 

Great question → An HTMA is showing us an accumulation of mineral status over three months and takes a deeper look at what is going on inside of the cell. Blood work is more about showing us what’s happening outside of the cell and in that one snapshot in time.

So how does this all relate to you being able to lose weight? 

Minerals are like the spark plugs to our cells because they act as cofactors for literally thousands of metabolic reactions in the body. This means that minerals are involved with your:

• Thyroid health
• Digestion
• Blood sugar balance
• Stress response
• Metabolic rate

AKA: Mineral balance is essential for your overall health and metabolism. 

When it comes to weight loss, you always want to start with the foundations. This means focusing on:

• Blood sugar balance
• Daily movement
• Building muscle
• Stress management
• Getting enough sleep
• Good gut health

These foundations are what we dive into at myDietitian. These pillars are going to start putting your metabolism into a place to be able to lose weight successfully and keep the weight off long-term. 

BUT if you’re doing all these things consistently and still not seeing results – it could be time to make sure everything is okay from a mineral perspective.

In a perfect world, our minerals stay balanced and regulated by eating a well-balanced diet with a lot of variety, managing our stress, and getting enough sleep….but we all know that we don’t live in a perfect world. 

Our stress levels get out of control, our meals can be less than ideal at certain phases of our lives, and sleep can be nonexistent sometimes. 

On top of this, if you have ever been pregnant or if you have conditions like hypothyroidism, Hashimotos, or PCOS, you are definitely at a higher risk of mineral depletion and this could impact your ability to lose weight.

A sneak peek: 

Below are some sections of an HTMA that you would review with your practitioner. These tell us the status of the major macro and trace minerals in the body. It’s important to know that these levels are not just “high” or “low.” They are either optimal or being depleted at a faster rate from stress, which could drive them too high or too low.

The ratios section of the HTMA is one of the most valuable parts in my opinion. This is what gives us insight into your thyroid health, adrenal health, overall stress response, cell vitality, and more. It tells the story of your body’s responses to your lifestyle and environment over the last 3 months.

Every analysis will also classify your metabolic type. This will be a “Fast” or “Slow” 1, 2, 3, or 4. So you could be a Fast 4 or a Slow 2, for example. This doesn’t mean that you have a fast or slow metabolism exactly. It’s more so indicating how well your metabolism is synced up with your adrenal and thyroid function. It’s also not set in stone because as you change your mineral status, your metabolic type can change over time when it’s more supported.

If you are a slow metabolic type, your body correlates more with the depletion of the adrenal glands and is stuck in the “rest and digest” mode of the nervous system more often. If you are stuck in a fast metabolic type, your body correlates more with chronic overstimulation of the adrenal glands and is stuck in the “fight or flight” mode of the nervous system. 

When it comes to the 1, 2, 3, or 4 subtypes of a fast or slow metabolic type, 1’s indicate that things are closer to regulation and balance, whereas 4’s indicate things to be more out of balance and much more dysregulated. 

There is so much to unpack with the mineral results, ratios, and metabolic type! It can truly be a game-changer to understanding your body and why you might not be seeing results.

The benefits of an HTMA: 

• Instead of guessing, we can get to the root cause of what’s really going on with your metabolism and stress response
• It helps us pinpoint nutrient deficiencies, which are VITAL to improving your metabolism and weight loss resistance
• It’s fast and non-invasive

From this information, we can create a protocol to bring your mineral status back into balance and support your ideal metabolism for weight loss. 

Are you interested in an HTMA test? We’d love to help! And we have 2 options to do it. 

1. An HTMA test + interpretation alone. 

This option is for you if you are only looking for places to fill in the gaps in your nutrition and lifestyle to optimize your metabolism even more. It will give you answers and a starting point!

2. Premium services at myDietitian

This option is for you if you’re looking for long-term results and solutions to your weight loss resistance. We combine weekly virtual coaching with lab work to personalize everything to you and your body.

You’re ready to dig under the hood and have the continued support and accountability to fit the adjustments you need to make into your life in a sustainable way.

You’re sick of being given more lab test results without a step-by-step game plan to actually make things happen.

Our dietitians can help!

Coach Elle