Welcome to season 4 of the podcast! This season we are focusing on how to do mineral testing what the different minerals do in our bodies, how they impact our hormones and overall health as well as other systems of the body. 

We also have some exciting podcast updates. You heard me mention a podcast Patreon in the introduction. You may be thinking, what patreon? The AYM podcast patreon is new! I started it in February as a way to bring the podcast community together and provide more resources to support listeners on their healing journeys. You will still get your weekly episode of the podcast, but it will be a bit shorter (hopefully) and easier to digest. 

Each week, patrons get a bonus episode of the podcast along with downloadable resources. For example, in this episode I’m focusing on how to test minerals and what different types of tests tell you.  The bonus episode is a results review of a hair test and blood work to help bring all the principles of the episode together. The downloadable resource is a PDF of the main principles of mineral testing and lab testing resources. 

Visit patreon.com/hormonehealingrd to learn more and become a patron!

Links/Resources:
Patreon
Mineral Imbalance Quiz
Mineral Training
Feminine Periodical (monthly newsletter)
Iodine episode
Macro Minerals episode
Metabolic Type episode

References: 
The issue with blood labs: Serum magnesium example
Iodine Urine Testing
Optimal levels of iodine
All iodine research articles from Hakala Labs
HTMA Accuracy & Comparison to Blood

Listen Now

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Transcript:

0:01
Welcome to the Are You Menstrual podcast where we dive deep into all things women’s health to support you on your healing journey. I’m Amanda Montalvo functional and integrative dietitian also known as the hormone healing rd. If you enjoy this podcast and you want to keep learning, check out the podcast Patreon where I share a bonus episode with additional downloadable resources each week, you can go to patreon.com forward slash hormone healing rd, or check out the link in the show notes.

0:36
Welcome to season four of Are You Menstrual Podcast. I’m excited to be back we took a little break for the holidays. And so I can kind of regroup and figure out what are we going to focus on next season. And I also made a Patreon, which you probably heard about in the introduction. I’ll talk about that in a bit. But lots of exciting things coming this season, we’re really doing a deep dive on minerals. Today we’re going to talk about different types of mineral testing. Then we’re going to do deep dives on seven different minerals, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, zinc, iron, and selenium. And that’ll wrap up season four, but I’m excited we’re gonna learn a ton. I’ve been thinking about like, how can I make the podcast more digestible? How can I provide more resources and support for the podcast listeners. And that’s really where the Patreon came in. I started it in February. And I was just looking for a way like how can I connect with the people that listen to my podcast? Want You know, when you do an Instagram post, you get immediate feedback, you get questions from people, you get people liking it, not liking it, and you’re like, okay, cool, like I can use this information with the podcast, I get feedback online. But I mean, I have people that leave reviews and you know, reach out on my website and stuff that like they’re not necessarily on Instagram. So I wanted to connect with those people, and just have a place where everyone that’s listening to the podcast can support each other, and I can provide more resources. Because listening to an episode is great. I’m a very visual person. So I’m like, I would like to like give them something to kind of help them really apply this information. And that’s really where the bonus episodes and the PDF resources came in. I was like, I can make a Patreon and then have a place where I can provide a bonus episode, give people downloads, give them different resources. And it’s all right there and very easy. So that’s, that’s really the format of it. Each week of the podcast is in season, all the patrons get a bonus episode and some sort of resource depending on the Podcast, episode and what’s applicable. And like, for example, this episode, they’re gonna get resources on all the different like, where to test your minerals, the different types of testing that I’m mentioning, and I’m gonna go through two case studies, in the bonus episode to help them just take the information that we talked about and actually apply it because I feel like once you hear it related to a person and a case you’re like, okay, and then of course, seeing the actual test, I think is really helpful, too. So that’s what we’re going to have up for this week. That’s what it’s gonna look like each week. And when the podcast is not in season, I have surveys that I’m posting, and I’ll be making content and based off what people want to learn about. So I started it in February, and I opened it with I made a monster of a resource. It’s a blood testing, functional ranges reference guide. So like all your typical blood panels that you would get, but the functional lab range is not conventional ranges that you know, it, you’d have to be super out of balance to have something be high or low. So many people get their bloodwork done. And they have all these symptoms, and their doctors like bloodwork looks good. Everything’s normal, and they’re like, how is that possible? Like, I feel awful. I know, it’s happened to me in the past, and a lot of my clients, so the functional ranges allow you to take your labs put them in, see like, Oh, this is actually like high for it’s trending high, or is trending low, based on the functional range. And then I go through, like what could possibly be at the root of that. So very cool resource. And I’m going to keep doing things based off what people are asking for. As far as like the tiers of the Patreon go, I did make two tiers. So the first tier is $10. And you get access to all the basic stuff. So the bonus episode, the PDF, resources, anything like that. And then the exclusive tier, you get access to all content I’ve ever shared in Patreon. So when you join on the basic tier, you just get access to what’s coming that month, which you know, on the podcast is in season, it’s for bonus episodes and for resources. So it’s a lot. But if you join at the $20 level, if you say you wanted to get that guide for the blood Reference Guide, and it’s March and that was for February, you would still get that guide. Plus I do a monthly q&a with the exclusive members where you can submit a voicemail question or you can email us it’s whatever works for you. And I do a pre recorded q&a And I answer all those. So it’s fun. We did one q&a so far. It’s it’s people ask great questions. It’s really fun for me, and it’s been great to provide those resources. is to just support people more on their healing journeys because it can be hard and not everyone can afford to work one on one with the practitioner. So I’m hoping this will help bridge that gap a little bit. All right, that’s it. Those are all the updates. If you want to join Patreon, go to patreon.com forward slash hormone healing rd, I would love to have you and I look forward to getting to know everyone in there. So before I dive into how to do mineral testing the three different types that we’re gonna talk about, just a quick reminder, this podcast is for informational purposes only. So, I mean, I’m talking about how to do mineral testing today. So there’s not like a ton here. But just as always, like I’m a dietitian, but I’m not your dietician. So just talk with your health care provider before you make any nutritional lifestyle changes just to be safe. Alright, so before I go right into how to do mineral testing, I just want to do a very brief recap of why minerals are important in case anyone is new here. Or just, you know, if you haven’t thought about minerals in a while, or why this all this information could be applicable to you. We’ll just make sure we cover that first. So minerals can feel complex. And they are I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because I feel like people think they need to know like, what minerals are synergistic with each other. So that just means like what minerals work together and enhance each other’s functions. And then what minerals are antagonistic, meaning they can push each other out of balance, or impair the absorption or how one’s being used in the body. I don’t necessarily think we need to know every single intricacy in order to support our minerals. And even just to like appreciate how significant they are. I think we really just need to understand like, Okay, why do these matter in my body? And then what are some simple steps that I can get started supporting them. So when it comes to why minerals matter, I always talked about how they’re, they’re like Spark Plugs because they kick off reactions. And sometimes that can be hard to conceptualize. But if you think about it, like if I was doing the calcium episode yesterday, so I’ll use a calcium example. There’s a lot of different enzymes, which are low spark plugs, and I’m talking about, they are what carry out different reactions. So for example, like glycolysis, a very fancy way to say that the body is going to use glucose for fuel, we need certain minerals that are going to turn on that enzyme that helps that process carry out. So if we don’t have enough calcium or enough magnesium, that enzyme that works to make that glycolysis process happen. Taking that glucose and using it for fuel, then that process either gets slowed down, it doesn’t work properly. And at first, our bodies will compensate. And I think this is where things like minerals, hormones, thyroid stuff, even honestly, like gut stuff comes, it can feel like well, this came out of nowhere. Most of the time, our symptoms on our healing journey had been building for a very long time, our bodies have already been compensating and trying to make things work with what they have, even if they have some, maybe like slight deficiencies or things are starting to like not work properly. That’s how smart and adjusting our bodies are. So at first you can think like, oh, like nothing’s really wrong, I feel fine. And then all of a sudden, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like so much fatigue, I’m not handling stress, well, maybe you have a ton of period, pain, acne, that sort of thing. But if we look back, we can start to see like, oh, actually, you know, like, I started, like, I changed my diet around that time, like a year before. And I felt really good at first. And then like, over time, I started to feel worse and worse, you know. And so it’s like, if you really look back, and I like to have people make like a timeline like a stress timeline. And like, what are all the different stressors that have happened in your life? And then when did you start experiencing symptoms, and when you backtrack, you start to realize, oh, my gosh, you know, a year two years before I got all these crazy symptoms. This is what happened. I had this major stressor happened in my life, I got a divorce, I moved, I got it, I started a new job, you know, and I went back to school, it’s like, okay, well, of course, those things eventually are going to catch up with you. The way that we can help mitigate a lot of that stress is to do things like support our minerals, especially like sodium and potassium, and help our bodies handle stress better. But if we are not being mindful of minerals, if we don’t understand how important they are, it’s really easy for them to become deficient or get out of balance, and then all those actions don’t, don’t occur properly. Our bodies can only compensate for so long, and then we’ve got all these symptoms and it can feel like a mystery but I think if you walk it back you can start to understand like where yours came from. And the symptoms are really looked at as like this is my root issue. This is such a big problem. How can I fix this but it’s your body asking for help. And I think that can be like a hard thing to hear sometimes because it can affect you so much in your day to day. Your mental and your physical health but is your body like Scream And asking for you to slow down and give it what it needs. And I know firsthand how easy it is to just want to focus on the symptom. And look at that as the main issue. Right like estrogen dominance, maybe someone’s like, I’ve

10:12
got these painful periods. You know, I’ve my doctor finally did lab testing, and I’m estrogen dominant. So I’m going to take dim, which is a supplement that can help lower estrogen, it supports estrogen detox, but it can lower your levels. So it’s not appropriate for everyone. I only use it in very specific cases for short term symptom relief. But we still will be figuring out where did this estrogen come from in the first place, your estrogen is high. So why would you take a supplement to lower it rather than trying to figure out what’s going on? Because taking them can be helpful, it can bring down that estrogen, but it doesn’t fix why and then you stop taking it. And then you start to feel worse again. So if we can go one step further and look at okay, what’s foundational for my health, my nutrition, I’m going to maybe test my mineral status. So I can see why this estrogen detox maybe isn’t working as well. Or maybe it’s actually high estrogen levels. So you want to look at like thyroid health, are you ovulating, how’s your blood sugar, all that stuff, and minerals can show you all of that good health is huge for high estrogen, you can get a great picture of all those things. So instead of trying to treat the symptom, you’re trying to look at where the imbalances are coming from. And I say estrogen dominance, because I struggle with that for years as I get it, I know that it’s, it’s terrible to have really painful periods and to like, have to not work on those days or change your plans reschedule things, because you literally can’t get out of bed. I know the acne struggle, the gut health struggles, it’s really hard. And I was so focused on hormone testing, and gut testing. So it’s like I was getting there. I was like, working more towards the root cause. But I was so focused on how can I lower my estrogen and not why it was high in the first place, that I just skipped the foundational step of understanding mineral status. And especially since I was also hypothyroid. At the time, I was taking medication for that I thought that I just didn’t have enough thyroid hormone. And then when I finally tested my minerals after one of my colleagues was like, Look at this hair mineral tests I just did. You know, he’s showing me how cool it is. It’s like this new thing. We had never heard of it. And I was like, Man, I had the copper IUD for a long time, I wonder if that messed with my hormones at all. And then I started doing research. And then it was like estrogen and copper have a ton of links. And I finally tested my mineral status. And I saw my copper and calcium were way out of balance. And it was a huge lightbulb moment. For me, I was like, Wow, this lines up with my thyroid issues, my estrogen dominance issues. And it really took me for a loop because I had skipped over foundational things like that, and had been focusing on the more advanced testing like gut in hormone health. But I, you know, if I had started with the minerals, I probably wouldn’t even have needed that other testing. So this is why minerals are important, they kick off reactions in the body. And they really helped with that found the foundational just processes that need to carry out. And so if we skip this step, then we are going to be skipping a really huge part of what’s actually at the root cause of our health issues. So that is why minerals are important. Let’s go through the three types of mineral testing options.

13:22
There’s a few main ways there’s bloodwork and I do recommend this for some minerals like especially iron, I think it’s a really important way to assess iron status. But I don’t think it’s the best way to look at most minerals. That’s mainly because blood is looking outside the cell. And we’ll talk about this in more detail in a second. And most minerals are living inside ourselves. So it’s just not the most accurate picture, it doesn’t give you the most significant information for you to actually make a change. And I think when we’re doing lab testing, if we’re not going to make a change based off the lab, then it’s kind of pointless to do the lab in the first place. So that’s one piece of it bloodwork, you can also do urine testing. So I do utilize urine testing for iodine because iodine is not measured in hair. It’s not accurate. There are markers that you can use to like, get an idea of if you may have an iodine deficiency, but they’re not perfect, because I’ve seen plenty of people have iodine deficiencies that didn’t have all the markers. So I didn’t through urine. I don’t look at anything else through urine, you could I just don’t I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it depends on what you’re trying to figure out. But for most the general population, you would not use urine other than for iodine and then hair testing. So I do utilize hair testing for everyone that I work with. I obviously have the master minerals course. Hair testing changed my life and really the trajectory of my healing journey, which I think is important because I was not going down a path where I was going to get to my root cause and actually get rid of my symptoms in a sustainable way. And that’s how I found it to work for other people. If especially if you start with hair testing, I just I think it’s like the best way to get started. Sometimes we need further testing, like, we need to look more at hormones, or usually it’s got health. And we need to do that stool testing. But if we don’t have the information from a hair test to begin with, I think it’s kind of hard to fully understand the someone’s entire health picture without the mineral status in your hair test. And that’s really showing you the rest of your minerals. So it does have iron, but I would not use it solely to assess iron status. And it does not look at iodine, but it has all the rest of your minerals, and it looks at heavy metals. So let’s go through blood testing first. Since if you were to go to your doctor and say, hey, I want to test my minerals. One, they would probably say like why, because unfortunately most that work in conventional medicine don’t even think it’s possible for most people to have deficiencies other than iron, right? I feel like that’s like the one deficiency where you go to the doctor, if you’re like I’m fatigued, you’re like taking iron supplement. And it’s like you didn’t even test my levels, or it’s the only one that they’re like, willing to really look at most of the time. Because unless you’re like food insecure and it’s you don’t always have food available to you. Typically, they’re going to assume that there’s it’s not possible for you to have a nutrient deficiency, especially like mineral or vitamin, like, even I think of like vitamin A, I mean, that’s such a common nutrient deficiency, especially in women going into pregnancy, yet, we’re told to like avoid high vitamin A rich foods and don’t take vitamin too much vitamin A in your prenatal or anything like that don’t eat beef liver, because the vitamin A content content, when, in realistically, most women and during pregnancy are deficient in vitamin A. But it’s just because we have an abundance of food in our country. If you live in the US, we’re looked at as like it’s impossible, you’re free to have this. It also is the use of vitamin C, where it’s like really, really low levels for clients and their doctors basically like it’s pretty much impossible for you to have low vitamin C. And like, I mean, it’s not though so that I think that’s like the pushback and the hard part about asking a conventional provider for something like mineral testing, even if it’s via bloodwork, because usually they’re like, Well, what am I going to do with the results? Which is a very fair question, kind of like asking them to practice as a functional medicine provider, even though they don’t have that training, which isn’t really fair. So that’s my whole spiel on like getting the blood test, I don’t think it’s the best way. But I do think it’s really important for iron. And a lot of times people are like, well, how come it’s not? How can hair testing be like more accurate for minerals than blood. But when we think about what blood testing is, I think it makes sense because your blood levels are, they’re just they’re kept very tight, right? A tight range, your body regulates them very closely, like if we think of calcium, which all my examples are going to be calcium, because I just did that podcast episode. But if we think of calcium, that is a very tight range that we keep it in, in our blood, when it gets too high, we’ll excrete more through our urine, when it gets too low will excrete less throw urine, so our body will compensate in different ways. And it does this with all of our minerals. So if we want to get rid of more, we’ll get rid of him through sweat, urine or stool. If we don’t have enough, then we’ll take them from other places. So magnesium or calcium will take him from our bones and teeth. That’s where the majority of them are, are tissues. And then if we have too much again, the other way that we can get rid of it, get it out of the blood, keep that level, quote unquote normal, is to store it somewhere in an organ like excess iron often gets stored in the liver. So that blood range is by the time that gets out of range, like it’s not like they never do, otherwise, we wouldn’t do it. But that by the time your bloodwork is at range, especially for a mineral that means that your body has already been compensating in a ton of different ways for a while before then. So it’s not like it’s completely useless. But if you’re someone that maybe you don’t feel great, you go to your doctor, you share your concerns, and you’re like I want to do some testing, let’s do bloodwork. And everything comes back normal like that’s what I would keep in mind is like you’re not crazy, it could just mean that you it hasn’t gotten out of balance in the blood yet because your body’s still compensating. So that’s a blood piece. I think there are two caveats to that. So one way you can get around some for some minerals like magnesium is to look at the red blood cell measurement. So most bloodwork is looking at serum or plasma levels for whatever the mineral or the marker is, like if you’re looking at the UN or something like that, like your typical blood panel that your doctor would order. So that is like a really tiny percentage of most minerals. Like if we think of like magnesium, for example, point 3% is in our serum. And if you if your doctor runs a magnesium, it’s always going to be serum unless it says RBC next to it. And that would be like the red, the red blood cell version of magnesium. So it’s looking at how much magnesium is inside of red blood cell, which is better. And I do think it’s a pretty accurate way to look at magnesium status, especially if you’re using functional ranges, which we’ll talk about in a second. But it’s still not perfect because most of our magnesium is in mitochondria. And red blood cells don’t have mitochondria. So that’s just something to keep in mind. And red blood cell measurements are very expensive. So if you do, like, you can get red blood cell panels and stuff. But it’s like, I mean, if you’re doing a bunch of labs, it can be like $800, and sometimes more. So it’s like, Is that worth it? To me, personally, I wouldn’t do it. So but you can do it for some like I do, like I have plenty of clients that will get magnesium red blood cells, if they’re trying to understand if they’re magnesium status is improving, like based on what we’re doing and say they don’t want to do a whole nother hair test. That is definitely an option. Just because it’s going to be way more accurate than like a serum level. The other caveat is that you could use functional lab ranges. And it’s basically it’s the same blood tests, but you’re just taking those results. And instead of comparing them to like the lab reference ranges, you’ll be comparing them to functional ranges, and reference ranges, they are they can vary lab to lab. So keep that in mind. But most of them are defined as a set of values that 95% of the normal population falls within. And that means you can have healthy and unhealthy people come within that same normal reference range. So like you could have someone that’s healthy and like that, that could be like an optimal level for them. But someone that’s unhealthy. And so maybe that’s not optimal for them. And it’s you’re supposed to say okay, so mine is normal, you know, it’s, I feel like it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s a big, usually they’re wide ranges. And yes, like most of people would fall within it. And if you’re really, really sick, you’ll probably fall out of it. But it’s like, a lot of people now are trying to be more proactive about their health, and they’re trying to not settle or deal with debilitating symptoms, until they can’t do it anymore. They’re trying to like, Okay, let me be a little proactive. Let me see if there’s any lab tests that I can do. And then they’re disappointed when they get the labs back in their normal. If you use a functional range, that’s going to show the ranges that are optimal, based on the organ system. So are those nutrient levels actually optimal to support, you know, red blood cell formation, iron circulation, that sort of thing? Are you know, if I think of like, if they have functional ranges for like liver enzymes and stuff like that, a lot of the times they’re not marked low. Like I know, a lot of people are worried about them being high, but they can actually be low because a lot of liver enzymes require minerals like zinc in order to function optimally. So it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, we don’t want to be necessarily like low either, like we want to see a tighter range. And that’s what functional labs do. Instead of having this wide range, it’s usually a smaller range. And it’s based on what’s going to help that organ system, they depending on the lab function optimally, versus like, what do we accept as normal in society, like, and it could be like healthy or not healthy. And I think the other thing is, like, how you’re interpreting those labs matters. So like, if you have most of us have done labs a number of different times, unless you’re a practitioner, you may not be looking back and comparing your labs. Oftentimes, people will be like, Oh, yep, got my lipid panel, it was normal. And I’m like, Okay, was it the same as your last one? Or do we have changes there? So you always want to look at your patterns, because you can even functional ranges to I would do this because you can have normal levels are within optimal range levels. But if there’s a trend that’s happening for you, like I think that’s really important to recognize. So for example, like say, someone had their like watching their cholesterol, they saw like a slight increase, or their doctor told them that it was like, technically high, because it may be that their total cholesterol was like, right at 200. But, and they had maybe it was a new doctor, or they hadn’t seen this one before. But then we go back and look, so then they’re freaking out, right? Especially like a lot of people I work with will like, they’ll take that information to heart and they’re like, Okay, well, I’ve been working on this, this and so like, why is this getting worse, which is a very understandable reaction. And then we go back and I’m like, nope, your cholesterol has been this level for the last 10 years, you know, so it’s like, you have to keep everything in context to you. So even though functional lab ranges can be a great way to utilize bloodwork, especially especially like things that are actually covered by your insurance, which I feel like is so hard to find these days, that you’re not paying out of pocket for like a functional lab tests you are going to have to pay out of pocket most likely. You want to be able to utilize the functional ranges, but you still have to keep it in context to yourself. So like if your TSH or something like say your TSH was always like, point five point 5.5 And then like it’s two technically it’s still in the optimal range, but that’s like a trend you’d want to pay attention to. And that’s just the thyroid marker. So we can use functional ranges, we can do red blood cell versions of bloodwork. But I still don’t think that it’s the best way to assess your mineral status, other than to definitely look at Iron status that way. So it’s really important for iron labs, we’re going to get into more details on this, like when we we do the deep dive on iron. But clinically, I don’t think it’s going to be the most useful way to be like, Okay, here’s my minerals, status, this is what I’m going to do differently, it’s probably not going to give you a lot to change in your day to day. And Rick Fisher. He’s the Creator, creator of the mineral Mastery program, he I love this quote from him where it’s just like a good reminder, because sometimes as a practice, you’re like, well, we could use those blood labs, because you want to, like, you know, meet people with where they’re at. But you know, hair testing would be more optimal. He always says, our biochemistry happens in the cell, not in the blood transport system. Because even red blood cell measurements, it’s not perfect, it doesn’t have that mitochondria. So and I just don’t think that could be more true. So if you’re ever kind of wondering, like, why can I just look at bloodwork, it’s really because it’s tightly controlled, it’s not going to show you the mineral status inside the cell, which is what we’re trying to see. And it most likely isn’t going to give you the most to do clinically like in your day to day. Alright, let’s talk about urine testing. So we went through blood talking about urine, and then we’ll get into hair. urine testing, I feel like is not very popular, I don’t use it a ton. I do use it for iodine, though, that is the one marker that I do like to see in the urine. Because the 24 hour item loading test has been shown to be the most accurate. And that’s when you take a dose of iodine before you start collecting your urine samples, and you collect them for a whole 24 hours. And then you like shake up the sample, you write down all these measurements, and then you isolate a spa amount of it. That’s it’s the most accurate way to look at iodine testing, because it’s looking at how much you’re excreting in the urine. So if you’re, the more you’re excreting, the better your iodine status is because you took the iodine tablet, remember, our bodies will regulate the mineral levels based on what’s going on in the body. So if we have too much, we’ll get rid of more, if we don’t have enough, then we’re gonna retain most of that iodine, and we won’t have it leaving in the urine as much. So you want to see more is the goal, because you obviously we don’t want people to be iodine deficient. But sometimes it is nice to have an answer as to like, how come I don’t feel better when I take thyroid medication, you know, how come I don’t notice a difference, or if you’re just have a ton of fatigue, but your thyroid labs are technically normal, or they’re just out of the optimal range, but they’re not bad enough to go on medication, that sort of thing. Iodine is really useful. I will say it’s not the I don’t immediately do an iodine test. So I like to focus on the macro minerals first. So that’s calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. And those are the minerals that are going to have the biggest impact on all the rest, I’ll link a podcast episode that I have on them from season one. And it’s really, when we can optimize these as much as possible with like food, any like food supplement changes, then that’s going to set us up for success with all the rest of our mineral concerns. Because remember, minerals are synergistic. So if we can work on these macro minerals, it’s going to help some of our other levels. So I don’t go to iodine first. I also don’t go to iodine first, because when you utilize iodine supplementation, which I do with a lot of my clients, I’ve done it myself, I have a whole iodine podcast that I’ll put in the show notes. And I talked about it a lot on my pregnancy journey episodes because it was a really big part of maintaining my thyroid health throughout pregnancy, and postpartum. It seems like a life changer for me. But I don’t start there because it does support thyroid hormone production and use and if you don’t have the metabolism to back that up and the energetic resources in the body, like say, you’re just your body’s still super stressed. You’re deficient in a lot of other nutrients, especially like sodium and potassium and calcium. You wouldn’t necessarily want to start taking iodine right away, you’d want to support one number one your food are you eating enough? Are you eating regularly? How’s the stress look in your life, like you don’t want to start iodine if you’re in a super stressful season, you’re not eating consistently. Maybe you’re under eating some days and not on other days. You know, you haven’t figured out the exercise thing like maybe you’re still addicted to like exercising constantly. We don’t want to add iodine to like an already stressful situation. It’s not going to help but it is really helpful when someone has been working on the foundations and putting other minerals first and then they’re in a place where they’re like you know I’m I’m definitely feeling better. I’ve seen these improvements. But I still have these main concerns especially when it’s related to like thyroid labs, thyroid health and general fertility. I just think it’s so important for fertility so many people enter pregnancy in an iodine deficient state and our thyroid works so hard during prep Betsy and postpartum. So I think it’s really important in that season of life. And then that way, then you can start working on it and addressing it. I think one thing we want to keep in mind when it comes to iodine testing is that halogens can impact those test results. So halogens are other compounds that are basically have the same chemical structure as iodine. So think iodine, think, chlorine, fluorine, and then bromine, they all have a very similar chemical structure, so they can bind to iodine receptors in the body. So for this reason, if you have a lot of halogens, like, if you’ve had a lot of chlorine exposure, a lot of fluoride exposure throughout your life, then you can actually get those iodine test results back and have your levels look really good, because those iodine receptors already have another halogen bound to it. So your body’s gonna get rid of that iodine that you took before you did the loading test. So you can get false positives, you can test for halogens with the urine test, I personally don’t add this on, because half the time I never see them out of range, what I prefer to do is have someone salt load before they do an iodine test, which is when you utilize a small amount of salt a couple times a day, two weeks before you do an iodine test. And that will help clean off some of the halogens from the iodine receptors. And if you’re in the bonus episode, I’m gonna go through exactly how to do salt loading, because it’s a process and then I’ll have like written instructions for you guys, too. And you can join patreon.com forward slash hormone healing rd if you want to get access to that. But if you do that, first, the I found that like I had someone do, they did their iodine test because we wanted to see, she’s like, I don’t think I’ve had a lot of halogen exposure. But she didn’t want that to impact her results. So she got a test. And then I got her another test. And we’re like, let’s just see the difference between like her doing it off the bat. And then she redid it with salt loading, it was a significant difference. And I was like, well, thank goodness, we did this. And ever since then I’m like everyone’s gonna salt load, because I want to get an accurate picture of iodine. Like, again, what’s the point of doing the test if it’s not going to change what you’re doing. So that is urine testing. They do also have organic acids testing, which is out or oat tests, a lot of people utilize these for nutrient status markers, because they’re looking at byproducts. So basically, it’s measuring byproducts. And so if a certain if there’s like a certain level of them, then it could indicate an imbalance in different vitamins and minerals. You can also look at like, you know, fungal markers, gut health, that sort of thing, digestion, all that stuff. They’re cool, but I don’t, I don’t. Again, like I don’t think I learned a ton more from a note tests that I wouldn’t learn from like hair testing, urine and blood like Tim, unless if I do have someone with a very significant mental health concern, health history, I do like to do Oh testing, but they require a very skilled practitioner to interpret it and apply it to you without giving you a billion supplements. And just to help it make sense if you do have a mental health concern, so I think they can be helpful, but I don’t it’s not one that I’m necessarily using for minerals, but I figured Someone’s probably an ask about it. So that is the oat test is technically a urine test and it can give you information on micronutrients, but I don’t think it’s the most applicable for most people.

33:32
If you’re listening to this episode, and wondering if you may have a mineral imbalance, you can head to the description of this podcast or my website hormone healing rd.com and take my mineral imbalance quiz. It will give you a rating of low, moderate or high risk based on your answers to questions mostly related to symptoms that you may be having. And from there, you can take my free mineral training, that is really where I recommend everyone start with supporting their minerals, it’s gonna walk you through three ways you can start doing this at home today.

34:10
Alright, let’s talk about hair testing. We’ll wrap it up with hair mineral testing. This is my favorite way to look at mineral status. So bloodwork is I really like using for iron panels, urine testing I use for iodine and then hair testing I use for the rest of your minerals. So hair testing is going to look inside the cell and that’s why it hair tissue, we’re looking inside the tissue. And that is really showing us what our mineral status is how our minerals are being utilized. Sometimes we see high levels on a hair test. And that can mean that you are using up a lot of that mineral like magnesium, for example. Very common to see high magnesium on her chest. It’s just a sign that your body is stressed and it’s using that magnesium. We can also see high levels that’s a sign that you have too much of a mineral like calcification, for example of calcium is really high, especially if it’s like above 170 You can get what’s called a calcium shell and that can be lead to unwanted health concerns with like muscle cramping, you can experience like higher blood pressure, usually high calcium is going to lower your magnesium, which can lead to blood pressure hypertension issues, it can also lead to heart health concerns. i We talked I did a whole episode on cholesterol that’s so important for our heart health, but I think we overlook things like calcium and calcification, which also has really increases our risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke. So things like that, that would be a big red flag to be like, okay, am I taking calcium supplements, am I taking too much vitamin D, that can raise calcium and cause calcification like that, too low vitamin D can also cause calcification, so it’s like Goldilocks finding the right amount. And then I mean, I really like to look at things like potassium, because potassium 98% of it is inside the cell. And I would say that’s one mineral that is just so looked over and just under appreciated, when it’s so important for blood sugar can literally shuttle glucose into our cells. And then it’s really important for thyroid health to amongst many other things. So it’s one of those minerals where I’m like, we could all use a little more potassium, obviously, unless you have like, end stage kidney disease. But, again, I’m a dietitian, I’m not your dietician. So talk with your health care provider. I think most people could use more potassium though, especially from food. And that is one that is really hard to see out of range on bloodwork. And by the time it is I’ve had clients that have had very, very low potassium on bloodwork, and it’s like, can’t even be read on their hair tests, it’s so low. So really great for looking inside the cell, especially our intracellular minerals, and then seeing our stress response, right, instead of just seeing like a something higher low, we can see, okay, if if sodium is super, super high, and really a way higher than potassium, like you’re probably in that first stage of stress that alarm stage, what can we do to reduce that stress response and support your body out of that nutrient wise, and also like, you know, lifestyle wise? Or is your potassium really, really high, and then your sodium starting to go down, that’s a sign that you could be more than, like, the exhaustion stage of stress, or just low minerals in general can be assigned. So it’s one of those things where you get a lot of insights into like your stage of stress, how you’re responding to stress, are your minerals replenished? Are they depleted? Do you have some that are too high that could be causing certain symptoms or health issues? And can we make nutrition or supplement adjustments based on that information, I just get so much information for my hair tests. I also really, really like that it looks at the last three months, I think that really sets it apart from other lab tests, like blood is a moment in time 24 hour urine test is 24 hours. But even like Dutch hormone testing is over 12 hours. With a hair test. It’s really rare that you get information for a three month period. So I love that. And I think it’s really helpful when you’re making health choices. And there’s just so many things where we’re like, you know, I think of like period concerns, like someone’s like, oh, I had really bad cramps, this period. What did I think? I didn’t change anything I did this cycle, like, where did it come from? It’s like, Well, what did you do the last three cycles, because the last 100 days impacts your current cycle. So it’s that’s why I think hair testing is so appropriate when we’re looking at thinking about hormone concerns. And just extra helpful in general, I do think that the interpretation of the hair test is very important. And I think that this is why a lot of people do not use hair tests in their practice, like actual providers, because they don’t understand it. And I think this is where like the accuracy issue comes into. There have been many studies done that, that it is very accurate for trace minerals, especially not for other nutrients, but specifically for minerals. But then there’s also like people that say only quacks use hair tissue mineral analysis, and it’s like, well, what if you actually understand the science and you’re taking that information and using biochemistry and physiology, and then making recommendations based off that I don’t think that’s like quackery, you know, I mean, obviously, it prevents depends on the provider. But I think most people don’t know how to read it. They see a high level and they’re like, oh my gosh, they have too much zinc. And it’s like they that could be a loss of zinc though. And if you check their blood, you may see low zinc, but most likely they have very low magnesium, which is why they’re using up the zinc. So if you can find someone that knows how to read it, or I have my course that teaches you how to interpret your hair test and make changes off of it. I think that’s really, really important because I feel like that’s where the discrepancy with like, Is this accurate? Is this useful? Is this real? comes in because like it is helpful, but it’s not as straightforward is like oh, you have a high level or a low level. It’s okay. We don’t want to just look at this one mineral we want to compare it to all the rest of your minerals. Like I would never just look at a high calcium and then be like we got to, we had to just do this one thing to bring that calcium down. It’s like, well, magnesium affects calcium, and so does boron. So it is copper. So that’s the beautiful part of a hair test is you get to look at all those different levels like side by side. And I’ll just do a quick screen share of an example of like, what the report looks like, while I’m thinking of it. So this is what a hair mineral test looks like. It’s two pages, I’m gonna go through this test, and one other one inside of the bonus episode and Patreon. But you can see this purple chart here, this, these are the main, like the majority of our minerals are here. We also have heavy metals right next to it, there’s additional elements in the green box. And then on the second page, we’ve got significant ratios, toxic ratios, and some additional ratios. The most important are the nutritional elements box, the heavy metals, and then the significant ratios. I do think that certain things like rubidium can be helpful on the green box. But for the most part, that’s where we’re focusing, but this is what it looks like. So this middle section here, the green, I mean, the white boxes, these are technically optimal, like this line here is the ideal range. So you can see like, sometimes we have really high levels of minerals, and sometimes we have lower levels. We wouldn’t take these as like, Okay, this is literal, like this person should stop taking their magnesium supplement, they should, they probably they have too much calcium, they shouldn’t have calcium from food, which SPOILER ALERT calcium from food doesn’t give you calcification, only from supplements. We’ll talk about that in episode two. But you know, like you wouldn’t make recommendations, they shouldn’t have salt, you know, because the sodium is high, you wouldn’t make recommendations like that. And so I think this is where the confusion comes in. And where you have to make sure you’re working with a provider that understands how to interpret the test properly. And not like freak out, like even with heavy metals, like a lot of people will be like, Oh, my gosh, I have very high levels. Yes, you want to look at what is your current exposure to heavy metals and address that for sure. But I also look at okay, well how’s your Selenium because selenium is a really, really important mineral for removing heavy metals in the GI tract. So this person has lower selenium. So that will probably be one of the first things I worked on. Because their uranium is high. Arsenic is high aluminum is a little high. Magnesium is also really important for heavy metals in this person’s is very high, which means they’re using a lot of it, you know, I would look at are they replacing that magnesium was supplement because magnesium is harder to get from food. But there’s, there’s so many takeaways you can get from a hair test, you can also look at the ratios. So these show you these compared to different systems in the body. So like your calcium phosphorus ratio, this first one, this is your nervous system ratio. And then we’ve got your sodium potassium ratio. This is looking at like stress, a lot of people call it the vitality ratio. It’s comparing those two minerals. And when they get out of balance, it can show you like are you currently under a lot of stress? Or is your body compensating or is it exhausted, and then your calcium, potassium is the thyroid ratio, because those two minerals play a huge role in how you were able to utilize thyroid hormone and iodine, and then zinc and copper. These are very synergistic, but they’re also antagonistic minerals. And so you want to have them imbalance. So there’s a ratio comparing those two, sodium magnesium is the adrenal ratio. This is because those two minerals are very tied to our adrenal function. When it’s higher, it’s a sign that you’re under a lot of stress, your adrenals are working hard when it’s lower to sign that you’re more depleted. And then our calcium magnesium is our blood sugar ratio, because calcium is really important for insulin secretion from our beta cells. And magnesium is really important for insulin sensitivity, and many other things glycolysis all this stuff using glucose for fuel both of them are so when we see imbalances in these minerals, it can definitely affect how sensitive we are to insulin if we can release insulin, which is going to impact our blood sugar. And then there’s an iron copper ratio because those two minerals, very important to be imbalanced, right, that we need copper to utilize iron properly, when too much iron can deplete our copper. So we just want to make sure they’re in balance. But I just think it’s super important not to just look at a hair test for iron status. I think you do need to look at a blood panel as well. But those are those are like the major things there’s there’s digestive markers on here like phosphorus and cobalt can give us insights into stomach acid protein intake, digestion, and then cobalt also can be like a sign of like liver detox along with sulfur. There’s markers you can look at to like see could iron be at a balance like this person’s iron is low, but their Chromium is a little high, which can be a sign that iron is a little bit out of balance. Their copper is also very low. So we need copper for iron and then they Have like very high calcium, which makes me think, are they taking vitamin D supplements? Are they super duper stressed, they have a lot of mineral loss, right? They’ve got high calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium, which means they’re losing these minerals. This is an energy loss. And it’s a sign of stress. So my first thing with them would be like, what’s, where are those stressors coming from? And how can we start to minimize those. So that’s just an example of what a hair mineral test looks like. And then, you know, taking a sample is super easy, it’s not a ton of hair, it’s easy to do at home, you just can use that little scale. It’s about a heaping teaspoon of hair, you put it in your sample, and you sent it into the lab, when it comes to other issues with accuracy. The other thing I think, is important. So when you’re looking at research, I’ve put a ton of research articles looking at the accuracy of hair mineral testing, because I know this is not mainstream. And I know that there’s a lot of like pushback. But I think if you’re looking at it scientifically, that you’re in a good place, if you’re with the right provider, you’re in a good place that will be accurate for you. The other thing you have to consider is the lab. So what are the lab practices? Because I think this is the hardest thing with the research around hair mineral testing and accuracy is repeatability. I do think this goes back to understanding the lab test. But like can this can someone’s results in one lab be repeated. And another one, they’d have to do the sample at the exact same time. So it looks at the last few months. And I think that’s very different from what most people are used to in research because we’re thinking bloodwork right a moment in time. So I think that’s part of it. But also like is the lab washing the sample, this is probably the biggest issue. And why when people are like, where should I get a hair mineral test, I only recommend two labs, I recommend trace elements. That’s the one that I personally use. That’s the chart that you just saw, I think you get the most information from it, it’s the easiest to look at. And it gives you the most markers, analytical research labs, also a great lab, they are both transparent, they do not wash the hair samples beforehand. And they are very transparent with the actual process of collecting and then completing the sample. I would I personally would not use any other labs outside of those two, those are both in the US, they can accept samples from other countries, I have in my on my website on my master minerals page, at the very bottom, you can scroll down the FAQ. And it says what countries they can’t accept lab test samples from it’s quite a few if you are like I want to get a hair test done. But I can’t like I’m in one of the countries where I can’t send it to the lab, you can reach out to them the email is there on my website. And it says like, here’s your email, and they’ll give you a recommendation other country because it’s it’s usually because they have contracts with other hair testing labs and other countries. That’s why they can’t accept your sample. So they can refer you to someone else. But if you are if labs are watching this sample, then this is going to change the test results. So you want to make sure that you’re working with a lab that you trust and work and has actual solid processing guidelines or like standard operating procedures. So that’s that’s like a big part of it. And then the last part I do think is on the person, right? There are things to take into consideration before you cut your hair sample. Number one, have you colored your hair, like I’m on my, on my website on the course everywhere. It says Like if you have colored your hair, you need to wait six to eight weeks. For most people, it’s eight. If your hair grows fast, it could be six. If you have highlights, you can cut the sample just don’t cut it from a part that is highlighted. Do you have hard water because that can affect your calcium level. And I go through in the course like how to know if you have hard water. Here’s how to wash your hair with distilled water in the meantime, or get a water filter to get that extra calcium out. Most of the time, unless someone has like super, super high calcium, it’s not always a huge issue. But that’s important to keep in mind. Are you using medicated shampoo that has zinc or selenium in it, because that’s really common. And a lot of people that are wanting to assess their mineral health, uh, one of their main issues could be like dandruff, or dermatitis or something like that on their scalp. And so they do use medicated shampoos, you’d want to stop using that. And then I would say like, wash your hair with a distilled water, try to get it all the buildup out if you can, or just know that depending on what the ingredients are, that mineral could be off, like I have a client that use one of those, but she’s like, it was so uncomfortable for her to stop that I was like, you know, it’s only going to affect your zinc. So we’ll just do the sample anyway, as is. And we’ll basically like disregard the zinc. So I think it’s like you need the lab to be like, obviously reputable. And then you have to understand like the what your responsibilities are when you complete the hair test. And then finally, of course, the interpretation, it’s not going to be accurate if you don’t know how to interpret it or you’re not working with someone that knows how to interpret the data correctly. Because it’s you know, it’s a little bit more complex, but I think once you understand it, you’re like, oh, all these minerals work together. So you know if I have high calcium, these other minerals I need to look at I’m not just gonna look at a calcium When this is why I always say, just work through your hair test. So slowly, like people in my course, I’m like, if your calcium is high and you’re overwhelmed, just focus on that, there’s plenty of things that you can work on, you don’t. And if I were working with a client, you don’t immediately have them address everything at once you do one thing at a time. So yes, you can get a lot of information. But it doesn’t mean you have to address every single thing right away. If anything, you’d want to like go through things slowly. The and some of the other benefits, you can do it at home, it’s a lot less expensive. In my course, it’s $99 for a hair test. I know you can get them online, I’m sure you can. The only thing and someone had this question based, can I get a hair test online? I’m sure that you can. And I tried to google it before this, I can’t tell which lab they’re using. So I think if you’re going to purchase a hair test online, just email them and say, hey, where what labs are you using for this because I’ve seen people have the trace elements online, I don’t sell mine separately. Because if you get a hair test from me, I want you to know how to interpret it and what to do with it. So that’s what the Course teaches you, you can just buy the test from other companies I I’ve seen them I just can’t tell which lab it is. So you just want to say hey, which lab is it, and they should be able to easily tell you that. So it’s not expensive, you can show early imbalances versus like waiting to see something at arrange and your bloodwork years down the road, you can see a much sooner on a hair test, it looks inside the cell, you get to see the mineral relationships. And then you’re not just it’s not just minerals, like you get to use that information applied to the different systems of the body stress, digestion, blood sugar, thyroid hormone, all those things. So that’s how you test your minerals, blood, iron, urine, iodine, hair mineral testing, pretty much everything else. I think it’s a beautiful combination and picture of your health when you can use multiple of those tests. But I also think, for most people starting out hair mineral testing is plenty. All right, I’m going to do the Instagram questions now. And I’m going to try to get through these as fast as I can. Because I don’t want to. I’m trying to make these episodes shorter for you guys, but it’s really hard.

52:08
Okay, I already answered this one, can I do a hair mineral testify of highlights? Do I have to wait eight weeks just get a chunk of hair that’s not highlighted? And you’re totally fine. What does it mean if I have low iron in the hair test? So yeah, so the a lot of these questions are going to be single minerals. And I know it’s annoying, but I can’t really answer it. Because like, hopefully after I went through that hair test and showed you some examples, you can even start to understand that. Okay, so we can’t really look at one mineral in isolation, we have to compare it to other levels. So low iron and a hair test may mean nothing. I would also look at your chromium. Is that high? Is your zinc high? Is your boron low or high? Those are other is your copper lower high. Those are other signs that your iron could be out of balance. But if you have iron concerns, then I would do an iron panel. I think that’s like the best practice. Is it concerning to be high in zinc on a hair test? It could be like the first thing I think of is magnesium. So I think of is this person deficient in magnesium? Are they getting enough magnesium. Because as magnesium gets used up, your body will then utilize zinc if it doesn’t have enough. So usually in most people are deficient in magnesium. So I would say like look at magnesium. It can also be a sign of inflammation and just like stress. And then whenever I think of magnesium, I always think calcium. So like, is your calcium really high? Are you taking any calcium supplements? Are you taking any aging like a really high dose of vitamin D, like five to 10,000 I use or more because that will affect your calcium, which will then in turn affect your magnesium, which then in turn will affect your zinc? So it could be concerning, but I would just compare to your other levels? How often should one do a hair test? So I think this really depends on the person their main health concerns, even for like our one on one clients. Like we’ll do one at the beginning of the package and one at the end. So it’s usually between like four and six months. I don’t do it sooner than that. I just don’t think it’s necessary. Because again, it’s showing the last three months of time. And then like say someone has been working with me like we work together for like six months or a year. They’re basically in like a maintenance phase. They’re just kind of like ironing out a few other health challenges, but they don’t have like a ton of concerns. Certain things just take time. Then I would typically say probably like once a year, like I’m meeting with a client tomorrow and we’re gonna go through her hair test and she hasn’t done one for like 10 months because she she didn’t really need to if it’s not going to change what you’re doing. I don’t necessarily think you need to do one. But if you have a lot of concerns and you’re actively working on things you’re trying to figure stuff out, like if you had really high calcium and maybe you’re doing iodine like definitely redo your tests in like four to six months. Okay, what could be the cause of being low in most minerals, so I often See, usually it means you’re like in the exhaustive stage of stress, you’ve been either under chronic stress for a really long time, that can be mental, emotional, that could also be physical, I tend to see very low minerals with people that have a long history of gut health issues. And sometimes people don’t even know they have the gut health issues. So that may not resonate with you. But say, for example, like, we’re working with someone and they get, we get their hair test back, and it’s like, fast for their metabolic type. So they’re like, really depleted and their bodies burnt out, and most of their minerals are low, then I’m almost always going to recommend a GI map stool test for that person, because they most likely have some gut stress going on, even if they don’t necessarily have gut symptoms. I often see this with people with histamine intolerance, mold, if they’re having a huge reaction to mold mycotoxin exposure, and then pain, like I think chronic pain is just so debilitating and stressful. My endo clients, I would say they almost always have like fast for low minerals. So I mean, I don’t know the cause, because I don’t know you. But those are just some of the common cases that I see low deficient in minerals, like across the board. Does he made tests for hormones? It does not. So it’s looking at minerals, which then you can use that information to understand your hormones. So like, if you if you do and the next one is does it test your thyroid, it doesn’t test your thyroid, but has a thyroid ratio, the calcium potassium ratio, because that can show you how you utilize thyroid hormone. Or if calcium is super high that can block iodine receptors, which can you know, we did iodine to make thyroid hormone. So of course, that’s going to affect thyroid function. So you get to see lots of thyroid insights, you also get to see like blood sugar, which has a huge impact on your hormones, digestion, stress. So it’s showing you like all the different things that could affect your hormones, but it’s not actually testing estrogen and progesterone. I would recommend a Dutch test for that. But I don’t start with that. I just think we could probably guess what your hormones look like based on your symptoms and your hair test, or stool test. And it’s very expensive. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, is it? Is it going to change what we’re doing? Probably not. Okay, Ken, he may help you figure out the root cause of heart palpitations. i Yes, I mean, if you, it’s like you would pair that hair test with your health history and your nutrition. And then that could help. So like potassium, very common. Potassium is very connected to heart palpitations, I see low levels on a lot of people or like really high potassium, like a lot of potassium loss connected with heart palpitations, or like calcium, calcium shells, like really, really high calcium that will deplete magnesium, which can also lead to heart palpitations. So it can I think it can help you get to the root cause. But even when you get those mineral results, you then have to look at why is my calcium high? Do I take a lot of vitamin D? Do I utilize calcium supplementation? Am I been under a lot of chronic stress? Do I am I deficient in magnesium? That’s a very common reason for excess calcium. So you still have to look back and compare it to yourself. But it’s definitely can help you get more to the root than any other lab tests for heart health. How soon before trying to conceive should someone test? So I mean, it depends on like your current health. I mean, I think most people should start working on their preconception health at least a year. And I know that’s not great to hear for a lot of people. But I think at least a year before you want to conceive because so often I’ll get women that come in there, they do a hair test, and maybe they do a stool test. And then they get pregnant right away. And we haven’t even finished working on everything, which is like fine in the long run. But then maybe they had a lot of stuff going on in their gut and then they have more symptoms during pregnancy. And we didn’t get the chance to rebalance and fix it before they were before they conceived. And I don’t think you need to be in perfect health before you conceive. I was not. And I you know, I had eczema during pregnancy. And I think in like some tenant issues that I think I could have mitigated if I did work on my gut health a little bit more before but I also don’t regret it. So I just think it’s one of those things where if you aren’t if you have a lot of health concerns, I give yourself at least a year, probably two. If you are in generally good health and you’re like I just want to be like proactive and preventative that I would say six months because you’ll see the last three months and then you can work on stuff and then you can retest right before you conceive ideally, or right after you can see and then you can see the changes and see what you need to still work on. Okay, what books can help you understand your test? I think trace elements and other essential nutrients by Dr. David Watts is a great one. And then the strains of health by Rick Malta. He’s a PhD that’s another good one. If I go through the master minerals course once I get my test what happens? Do I get a protocol created for me So if you go through my course, you get your test, you send in your test results. My amazing VA Katie emails them to you. And then from there you go through the course yourself. So I have it broken down into all the different sections of the test and I go through, here’s what it could mean if you have this. And then it goes through questions like, here’s the possible things that could cause it, which ones apply to you, you kind of connect the dots. And then there’s a protocol section that has templates for different common mineral patterns. So like really high calcium, really low calcium, really high copper, or low copper, high iron, low iron,

1:00:36
I go through like, sodium, potassium, all that kind of stuff. Do you have like really a lot of liver stress? Here’s some tips for that. So there are protocol templates, you can easily follow. But you can also edit them and make them your own too. So we don’t give you a protocol, you would get it through the course you have to apply it yourself, I do have an option. And someone asked us Can you cover the different options you have, in addition to the master minerals course if we want to connect for a review of our hair test. So for those inside the course you can get a results review. So that’s when we do a video recording of us going through your tests. And then we make recommendations in our protocol. So if you’re like, I don’t want to do it myself. Or if you go through the course or like I want a second opinion, you can do a results review, we open them up every month, and everyone on the list gets emailed. And then if you you can bypass the course and all of that and just do one on one, we do take one on one clients as well. And you don’t have to go through the course or anything like that. We just work with you one on one. Some people a lot of people from the course will do it, I would say most just do the results review because they don’t need the one on one. But we have a nice growing list of one on one clients that I mean, I love one on one. I think that’s where we get like some of the coolest work done. But the course was my way to make one on one more accessible to everyone. So those are the different ways we also offer gi map. So stool testing and hormone testing results reviews inside the course as well. Because some people do need further testing. But you don’t have to do any of those, you could just do the course. So let me see what’s the cheapest way to get a hair test? I would you could definitely Google like hair tissue mineral analysis. I’ve seen some websites like selling the trace elements ones. But I’m like how is this real? Because when you sign up as a provider, you’re like not supposed to do that. Like you’re supposed to, like teach them how to read it. So I don’t know. I just thought that was interesting. Again, like you could get one on line I would just reach out to them and say hey, what company is this test through and if it’s trace elements, or analytical research labs and I would say you’re fine, but that is it. So that is all the different ways you can test your minerals. That’s how I utilize mineral test different types of testing with clients. I answered a ton of the Instagram questions questions about the course I hope that’s helpful. If you want to join the Patreon to get the bonus episode you can go to patreon.com forward slash hormone healing all rd and I will see you in the next episode where we dive into calcium

1:03:15
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Are You Menstrual podcast. If you want to support my work please leave a review and let me know how you like the episode. This lets me know like what you guys want more of less of I read every single one. And I appreciate them more than you know. If you want to keep learning you can get access to the bonus episode and additional resources on patreon.com forward slash hormone healing rd I’d love to have you in there. Thanks again and I will see you in the next episode.