I took this test—my first ever hair mineral test—four days after starting a low vitamin A diet. Hair tests show mineral levels over the previous few months, so these results show what my mineral levels were like on my previous diet, which was very high in vitamin A:
Beef, pork, chicken, some fish, crab one time
Beef and chicken liver (consumed irregularly—an average of maybe 8 ounces a week)
Other organs—heart, kidney, brain, thyroid gland (I had heart somewhat regularly, brain twice, kidney a few times, thyroid gland a few times)
Raw milk cheese (daily or near-daily)
Raw milk (1.5 to 2 gallons per week)
Yoghurt (sometimes)
Seaweed (sometimes)
Raw honey (some amount most days)
Coffee (coffee grounds soaked in mineral water)
Mineral water (Mountain Valley mostly)
Ghee and, for around a month, raw butter (I added ghee or raw butter to almost everything I ate, even fruit)
Mango (around 20 per week starting in March), papaya (5 to 10 per week), and various other fruit (longan, orange, rambutan)
People who haven’t “heard” me talking about vitamin A will be wondering why I went on a low vitamin A diet—isn’t vitamin A good?
In early April, I watched Judy Cho’s interviews with Grant Genereux and Garrett Smith and began to listen to Garrett Smith’s podcast, Nutrition Detective, all of which convinced me that vitamin A is nonessential and toxic, and that vitamin A was probably the main reason why I got a deep cavity in my upper left tooth, why my hair had started to turn white, and why I had gotten severe insomnia. So I went on a low vitamin A diet. This post is about my hair test so I won’t keep talking about vitamin A.
Garrett Smith bases his work on hair and blood tests. “Test, don’t guess, then address,” he says often on his podcast.
I don’t know why my aluminum is so high. I avoid aluminum. I cook using a glass pot, a slow cooker with a clay pot, and use wooden utensils and glass bowls. Maybe some of the cannabis I used to smoke was high in aluminum. Aluminum is linked to cognitive issues, including autism and dementia. I’ve begun to drink silica-rich water to detox aluminum. I’m looking forward to better brain function.
I’m not sure what the black bars mean in the right side of the test results. My aluminum result of 16 micrograms per gram of hair—or 16 parts per million, since there are 1,000,000 micrograms in a gram—seems like it should just be a point on the percentile section, not a long line. Anyone know what the long black bar means?
Garrett Smith says most people are deficient in selenium, molybdenum, magnesium, and zinc, and this was true for me. Zinc and magnesium are needed to detox vitamin A; in other words, vitamin A depletes zinc and magnesium. Selenium, molybdenum, and zinc protect from copper. Liver is extremely high in vitamin A and copper. My zinc is only a little low because I often eat red muscle meat, which is high in zinc. This protected me somewhat from vitamin A and copper.
I’m really high in boron. Most people think boron is essential but it might not be.
I’m below the 50th percentile for chromium, which is listed as an essential mineral but mostly likely isn’t.
I’m high in titanium.
I have staples in my lung from lung surgery in high school. I’ve always thought of them “steel staples” but maybe they’re titanium. They probably are, I just learned:
A paper titled “Potential neurotoxicity of titanium implants: Prospective, in-vivo and in-vitro study” states that “In summary, we show that high levels of titanium accumulate in humans adjacent to orthopedic implants, and our in-vivo and in-vitro studies suggest it may be neurotoxic.”
To me, this is good news because there’s probably something I can do to reduce the amount of titanium in me—I plan on looking into this—at which point I can expect better brain function. My brain is already working really well, in my opinion, these days, so the possibility of it working better is fortuitous.
Titanium has many other negative effects. It might be a cause of my high heart-rate.
My high aluminum and vanadium might be due to this too:
Very interesting – thank you for sharing. Loosely related, but I’m curious about your take on the efficacy of drinking chlorophyll water?
This is so interesting. Morely Robbins' Root Cause Protocol hails copper and Vit A as the cure for like, everything, and iron and vit D as the devil. Not sure what to believe yet. What are your favorite sources of nutritional info? i just try to eat a whole foods diet in accordance with my desires. Often that includes liver, if i don't have liver around menstruation I become a vegetable. I'm overall very healthy but have dealt with acne since coming off the pill (hormonal bc) a decade ago, no other menstrual or PMS symptoms. I wish the world we lived in wasn't so toxic so I wouldn't have to play detective. GAPS diet cured my acne for a bit but it came back when I went off of it. Luckily it cured my intersitial cystitis for good.