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What is basic nutrition?
Simply put, basic nutrition is about all essential nutrients that include minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids essential for life. Essential nutrients must be consumed in the diet.
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis is a bottom-up approach to basic nutrition.
There are two ways to approach basic nutrition; bottom-up or top-down. Nutrient tests such as amino acids, vitamins, and so on, are a top-down approach. As seen in About Us, we once offered a variety of top-down analyses and the following information may help you understand why we chose to specialize in hair tissue mineral analysis.
The top-down approach to basic nutrition.
Before we explain the bottom-up approach to basic nutrition, let’s explore the top-down approach.
Let’s say you are experiencing a variety of symptoms and found they could be the result of an amino acid deficiency or excess. You decide to spend two or three hundred dollars (or more) on this analysis. After all, every essential amino acid has a laundry list of potential symptoms and diseases associated with each amino acid.
Anyway, your analysis reveals several excesses and deficiencies of amino acids. Your supplement recommendations would include a base amino acid mix with additional amino acids needed to boost deficient amino acids combined with a variety of known mineral and vitamin cofactors (a substance important for the activity of an enzyme).
However, an amino acid test does not include nutritional and toxic elements. Essential amino acids require many minerals (e.g. magnesium, zinc, iron, copper, manganese, etc.) as well as a variety of vitamins throughout many metabolic pathways. These additional nutrients are essential cofactors. Because minerals are an essential component throughout many metabolic pathways, a mineral analysis would also be required to complete your amino acid formula. All of these nutrients are important for nutrient transport.
In addition, toxic elements also need to be addressed at the same time because they interfere either directly or indirectly with all essential nutrients. As such, a variety of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals are required to detox the body of toxic elements.
As you can see, this top-down approach will require additional analyses just to become a foundational approach for basic nutrition and increase its effectiveness. This becomes much more expensive. An amino acid test, depending on the type of test and the analytes count, it may be two to three times more expensive than a hair tissue mineral analysis!
The bottom-up approach to basic nutrition.
The bottom-up approach to basic nutrition is a foundational approach. Think of it like your home. The walls, floors, ceilings, and roof (and everything else inside) depend on a strong foundation. If the foundation rises, sinks, or buckles, what happens to your walls, floors, ceilings, and roof?
Minerals are foundational for basic nutrition and unlike many vitamins and amino acids; they cannot be synthesized or produced by the body. Like all essential nutrients, they must be consumed in the diet.
As we revealed in the top-down approach, an effective mineral analysis must include both nutritional as well as toxic minerals as revealed in a hair tissue mineral analysis.
The bottom-up approach also uses known cofactors that include vitamins and amino acids required by each nutritional element to achieve a synergistic result. This is further revealed in nutrient interrelationships and is important to help eliminate mineral excesses and deficiencies.
At the same time, if any toxic elements were revealed, they are addressed at the same time with additional increases in minerals, vitamins, and amino acids required for detoxing the body.
However, mineral balancing primarily focuses on bringing about a dynamic balance between nutritional elements. Metabolic pathways are obviously important but they are secondary because as you begin to rebalance minerals, improvements throughout your metabolic pathways naturally occur. This is why we focus on basic nutrition and not symptoms.
Let’s run through a quick example.
Your hair analysis reveals several minerals are excessive and several are deficient. Your copper level is one of those that are deficient. Copper, a micro-element, is an essential nutritional element used in numerous metabolic functions throughout the mind and body.
From the bottom up approach, a deficiency of copper could be the result of toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, or mercury. It could result from excessive zinc, iron, phosphorous, potassium, or other essential minerals. It could also be the result of excessive vitamins such as A, C, B3, B5, and so on.
If toxic elements contributed to your copper deficiency, a variety of minerals and their cofactors (sulfur amino acids and vitamins) would be used for detox. Additional amino acids and vitamins that are antagonistic to excessive minerals affecting your copper would be used and at the same time, synergistic minerals, vitamins, and amino acids would be used to increase your copper level.
Low copper and other mineral imbalances also indicate the metabolism of many amino acids and their cofactors were compromised. These include phenylalanine, tyrosine, and the branched chained amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, and valine) that require copper.
As you can see from this short and simplified example of the bottom-up approach, by analyzing nutritional and toxic elements, you need a wide variety of minerals, vitamins, and amino acids to rebalance essential minerals and detox the body. Detox includes both toxic elements as well as chemical toxins.
Keep in mind, the bottom-up approach is a foundational approach for basic nutrition. As we state in About Us, every direct and functional nutritional analysis we once offered is a valid and informational test. We only advocate that you begin with the foundation and then, if need be, you can fine-tune your other nutrient needs.
Why fix the roof, ceiling, floors, and walls when the foundation is the primary problem?
Hair Analysis helps reveal your foundational minerals.
A hair analysis is a very helpful tool that reveals mineral excesses and deficiencies as well as your current toxic element exposures. As just seen on this page, minerals are the foundation of nutrition.
Click here to order your Hair Analysis.
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The content and laboratory services provided on this site are for educational and informational purposes only and not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure disease.
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