Dec 30 2007, 02:34 AM
Here is the best description of hair analysis interpretation I have found...its long but very informative.
Introduction:
Mercury poisoning is difficult to determine; mercury "hides".
Trying to figure out whether someone has mercury poisoning is not an easy, direct thing to do. You cannot just test the level of mercury to find out. That is, one cannot simply test someone's hair, or blood, or urine, or feces, and measure how much mercury is there, and go by that.
Why not? The body's tissues are selective about how long they keep mercury inside themselves. Mercury will stay in some body tissues (such as the brain and liver) which are very attracted to it, for a long time. Other tissues (such as blood), will clear out the mercury pretty quickly. Blood will keep mercury for a few months. The brain keeps it for a lifetime. Other tissues are in between.
At first (soon after exposure), mercury is present in hair and blood. This means that soon after someone is poisoned, their blood and hair will probably show high levels of mercury. But later, in most cases, the mercury is "hidden". It is no longer present in the blood or hair or urine or feces.
If the person is poisoned, it is still present in other areas (such as the brain) and is still doing damage. For people who have been exposed to mercury through vaccines (thimerosal) or through amalgam (dental fillings), the exposure is usually too far in the past and/or too slow and chronic for mercury to show up in hair or blood or urine or feces.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: A PERSON WHO IS MERCURY TOXIC will usually (in most cases) have a NORMAL reading for mercury on tests of hair or blood or urine or feces. You cannot go by that.
The most recent edition of many medical textbooks tell physicians that mercury poisoning cannot be ruled out based on the urine or blood level of mercury. This is also true for hair levels of mercury. Only about 1 poisoned person in 10 shows up with a high level of mercury on these tests. The other 9 poisoned people have normal readings for mercury.
If the reading for mercury is HIGH (red) on a hair test, this probably indicates the person has mercury poisoning. On the other hand, if the reading for mercury is normal (or even very low), this indicates nothing one way or another about whether the person has mercury poisoning. Mercury can still be present in the brain and organs, doing lots of damage there, and NOT be present in the hair. THIS IS VERY COMMON.
Blood, urine, feces and hair are all relatively easy to test. But, the mercury level there is not a good indicator of past mercury poisoning or slow chronic mercury poisoning. Because of this, measuring mercury in blood, urine, hair or feces is often not helpful in determining whether a person is poisoned.
The way to tell if a person is poisoned (when mercury doesn't show up), is to use the available samples (hair, blood, urine, etc.) and look for the biochemical aberrations which mercury causes.
We can look for what mercury DOES: impaired "mineral transport"
Mercury usually interferes with the body's ability to use, process, and store minerals. Regular minerals: stuff like calcium, magnesium and sodium. (On a hair test, these are called "essential elements".) While this is a very bad thing in terms of health effects, it is "helpful" for the purpose of determining mercury poisoning, because it is a pretty predictable result. This is exactly what the "counting rules" look for: seriously messed up minerals.
To be just slightly more technical about it, mercury poisoning usually causes impaired "mineral transport". Mineral transport is the ability of cells to pull minerals into themselves and pump minerals out of themselves selectively.
If mineral transport is normal then someone with too much mercury will have high hair mercury levels. This happens with about 1 person in 10 who have a mercury problem. This person will have a HIGH reading for mercury. In this case, it is easy to see they have a problem with mercury. These people have normal mineral transport, and can move mercury from the large pool in the body into the hair.
For the other 9 people who are mercury toxic, it is harder to figure out if they have a problem or not. The normal level of mercury present in their hair could mean they don't have much mercury in their body (they are okay), or it could mean they have impaired mineral transport due to mercury poisoning, and that is why there is little mercury in their hair.
Since mercury impairs mineral transport, examining hair for the level of many minerals lets us determine if mercury has left its signature in the hair's biochemistry even if the mercury itself doesn't show up.
What the counting rules should be used for:
The counting rules determine if a child/adult has impaired mineral transport. That is what they are for.
Impaired mineral transport indicates mercury poisoning is likely:
In a strict sense, all the "counting rules" check for is that SOMETHING is causing disordered mineral transport. While in theory there may be many things that do this, the only one we know of is mercury poisoning, and it is certainly the only common reason for mineral transport to be messed up.
We are not aware of any other condition (besides mercury poisoning) which regularly results in impaired mineral transport. This does not mean that some other cause is not possible.
In particular, the other heavy metals (other than mercury) do NOT generally appear to cause impaired mineral transport. If you have normal mineral transport (as indicated by the counting rules), and you have a high level of a toxic metal (other than mercury), this would tend to indicate that you are poisoned with that element, and not mercury.
Another point worth noting is that it is having mercury in one's body (not brain) which causes impaired mineral transport. A person with mercury in their brain only would most likely not have impaired mineral transport. They would still have mercury poisoning, but would not show up as having impaired mineral transport, based on the counting rules.
This would be likely in a person who was poisoned with mercury long ago, with no exposure since. This gives the body organs time to slowly clear out the mercury. The brain (unfortunately) hangs on to the mercury much longer, and does not clear itself out. Such a person might not have any laboratory abnormalities. Or, they might have endocrine (hormone) abnormalities (of the sort that endocrinologists and mainstream MD's are unlikely to understand), or neurological abnormalities.
Most people with mercury poisoning do seem to have abnormal mineral transport as shown by their hair tests, and small children do not appear to have enough time to clear all the mercury out of their bodies to get normal mineral transport again, if they are mercury poisoned.
The only group of people likely to have mercury poisoning AND have normal mineral transport AND have a normal reading for mercury are those who have tried to remove the mercury from their bodies for many years but who have been using protocols that do not clear the mercury out of the brain, or those who have had no exposure to mercury for at least a few years.
In other words, from a practical standpoint, almost everyone who is mercury toxic will have EITHER impaired mineral transport (what the counting rules measure) OR have high level of mercury in their hair.
If your hair test shows a high level of mercury:
If the reading for mercury is HIGH (in the red area) on a hair test, this indicates the person may have mercury poisoning. You do not need the counting rules. It is clear that there is mercury present at high (unhealthy) levels.
Other ways to look for mercury toxicity:
There are a number of other ways (besides looking for impaired mineral transport) to look for mercury poisoning. However, getting a hair test and using the counting rules is RELATIVELY cheap and RELATIVELY easy and RELATIVELY reliable.
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So when you read both of these pages...one having to do with contibuting factors for candida overgrowth...and the other demonstrating the type of metabolic disturbances which mercury creates in the body...you can see how all these things are related.
http://www.arltma.com/CandidaDoc.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/HOW_TO_hair_test.html