HTMA for your dog

Good news!!! I also offer HTMA for your furry family members too - at this time I am only offering HTMA for dogs. 

Dogs are affected just as much if not more than humans by poor food quality and toxins. My HTMA service for your pooch is very simple and much easier than for humans. 

This includes both the lab fee and your dog's written game plan. 

There is no phone consultation. You will collect the hair the same way as for human hair, on the back of your dog's neck area (behind the collar). You'll fill out a health questionnaire for your pet and once the lab results come in, I will review them and create a customized plan to send to you to follow. 

Here's some info on HTMA for dogs: 

Did you know that a dog’s hair/fur acts as a definitive, scientific, long-term record of “substances” that currently exist or has been historically present, in a dog's circulatory system, and that it has a major impact on both their mental and physical health? The most important way for these “substances” to enter the hair follicle is via the bloodstream. A dog’s hair cells form very rapidly and the hair follicle is provided with a good blood supply which allows “substances” circulating in their bloodstream to be delivered to their hair follicle.

The advantages of testing a hair sample over a blood sample are obvious:

• Collection is non-invasive
• Easy to collect at home
• The window and levels of substance detection are extended to months compared to hours for blood analysis.
• Blood provides you a snapshot of substances of concern from a fixed point in time but hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) is a test that gives us the daily average levels over 90 days.
• HTMA is significantly more informative than a blood analysis covering a period of perhaps up to one day.
  
  
  

There is no need for the anxious ride to the vet! The hair analysis test makes the experience simple and painless. The test utilizes the minerals found in your pet’s hair using the latest ICP-Mass Spectrometry, the most modern analytical technique to be applied to routine elemental analysis, giving you results without concern. You can now complete the process in the comfort of your own home, making it convenient to test your pet(s).

HTMA provides the most comprehensive Nutritional Blueprint testing system on the market for pets. They test for over 48 of the most common nutritional elements, heavy metals, ionic minerals, and trace minerals. These include calcium, phosphorus, iron, copper, mercury, and aluminum. When vital nutrients are missing from a pet’s body, optimal health cannot be gained.

“Hair is used as one of the tissues of choice by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in determining toxic metal exposure. A 1980 report from the E.P.A. stated that human hair can be effectively used for biological monitoring of the highest priority toxic metals. This report confirmed the findings of other studies in the U.S. and abroad, which concluded that human hair may be more appropriate tissue than blood or urine for studying community exposure to some trace elements.” – Trace Elements Inc.

Another reason to test hair is that it’s one of the many places the body unloads excess minerals and heavy metals for storage away from vital organs. The amounts of minerals deposited in the hair uncover several things about your dog’s health.

• An early indicator of health concerns
• Overall raw diet performance
• Heavy metal toxicities
• Mineral toxicities
• Mineral deficiencies

What do the results show?

You will discover some wonderful information that allows me to help you tailor their diet in such a way as to balance the minerals in their bodies and eliminate certain unwanted substances. This test acts as a baseline now for the future, giving me something to compare future tests to and provides feedback on the changes I have made.

Many factors contribute to mineral deficiencies and imbalances:

• Stress can deplete minerals from the body, most notably magnesium and zinc.
• Toxic Metals and Chemicals can replace minerals in enzyme binding sites and interfere with mineral absorption.
• Chronic viral and bacterial infections are subtle stressors on the body, depleting minerals. (Many dogs will end up suffering from gut dysbiosis, Lyme, and many other low-grade chronic infections.)
• Our food supply and soils are depleted of minerals. We have GMO crops, superphosphate fertilizers (i.e. Miracle Grow), refined foods, pesticides, food additives, and more, all contributing to a nutritionally depleted and toxic food supply.
• Drinking-Water can be a significant way of toxic elements. Tap water is not safe due to added chlorine, aluminum, fluoride, and sometimes copper, which cause toxicity or displace other minerals.
• Dogs can live unhealthy lifestyles just like we do! If they do not get enough sleep, don’t exercise enough (or too much) or have other unhealthy lifestyle habits like eating 100% processed food.

One of the concerns some dog owners have is the presence of mercury. How does Mercury find its way into the dog’s body? [ Vaccines, bones, food, pesitcides, fish, power plants].

Having this test done allows us to notice if your dog has any mercury stored in their tissues. There are no good levels of Mercury to be had. Mercury can negatively affect the endocrine system, thyroid, and accelerate aging.

Conclusion:

It’s important to remember that HTMA testing is not clinically diagnostic, but can be used as a tool to help pet parents detect what’s happening inside the dog. Blood tests only give us a snapshot of the moment: how your dog’s body is doing right now, based on their current levels of stress, medication, stimulants, hormones, etc. Because the dog’s body changes so much day to day, hour to hour, blood testing can be a difficult way to access what’s happening in the bigger picture. HTMA allows the pet parent to look at patterns over a longer period and can have dramatic insight on issues such as lethargy, digestion, endocrine function and more.

It's also important to note that hair testing doesn't show the pet parent exactly what's in our dog’s bodies, just how the tissues are responding. That's why your dog can be anemic yet have high iron levels in their hair tissue - because their body isn't properly processing iron although they are consuming enough of it - or why they can be both deficient in copper in their hair analysis, but toxic in their blood serum levels.

However, by looking at several percentages and ratios of minerals - how they all fit together - an HTMA can tell us a lot about the thyroid, metabolic type (how to speed it up or slow it down and how diet influences it) how your dog’s adrenals are performing, how the dog’s system is handling sugar and stress.

If you compare your blood work with HTMA results, microbiome testing, allergy testing, etc. you may just be able to eliminate certain suspected diseases, pinpoint areas of improvement and prevent disease all using nutrition! This my friends- is a holistic approach to dog wellness. 

Get started any time. As soon as you sign up, I will be in touch to mail you a test kit. Once you receive the test kit, you will have instruction on how to prepare and cut your dog's hair sample. You will then fill out the form and mail the sample to the lab. It can take 10 days to 2 weeks (sometimes less-rarely longer) to get the results back from the lab. 

Once I get the lab results back I will email you to let you know when you can expect your results and your pet's written game plan. You are welcome to email me with any questions you may have as you work on your pet's HTMA game plan.