Review of Nutrient Balance & Hair Analysis 
By Walter Sorochan

Posted October 24, 2016, updated October 28, 2016.  Disclaimer  The information presented here is for informative and educational purposes only and is not intended as curative or prescriptive advice. The statements of this web-site have not been evaluated by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Nothing stated here should be considered as medical advice for dealing with a given problem, or to diagnose / treat / prevent / cure any disease.

Nutritional balancing [NB] uses hair laboratory analysis and then interprets these analyses to prescribe a program to balance the nutrients that are needed to restore one body to a state of previous optimal wellbeing.  Is this a good or bad approach?  Is it scientific?  Is hair analysis as good as blood serum analysis?

This article reviews information about nutritional balancing.

What can you get from reading this article?

  • A new way of thinking about food, eating and wellbeing.
  • A few examples of Mineral ratios
  • What is nutritional balancing?
  • Pros & Cons of hair analysis
  • Every mineral has synergistic and antagonistic counterparts.
  • Mineral wheel
  • Minerals can fine tune the body into optimal wellbeing, but it takes many months and years.
  • Encapsulated Liposomes can deliver nutrients to somatic cells.
  • The human body system is an extremely complex and precise electro-chemical human machine that is living energy. 

So what is nutritional balancing or NB?

Nutritional balancing is not choosing foods, each of which provide a major nutrient, and assuming that you now have nutritional balancing.  That is, eating an orange for vitamin C, chicken nuggets for protein, carrots for vitamin A, flax seeds for anti-oxidants

Why this NB topic?

"Curiosity killed the cat!"

But in my case, curiosity will hopefully kill ignorance!"

I heard a lot of misinformation and half-truths about hair analysis and a lot of nonsense about nutrition.  It was time to become informed!

I share the information with you.

A new way of thinking about food, eating, nutrition and wellbeing!

An an independent research-writer, I have no axe to grind, except one .... I want to be healthy enough to be able to live to 120 years. Being informed can help me make wise decisions in attaining this goal.  So yes, I am a little selfish but motivated and willing to share what I have found out about this topic..

, ingesting vitamin B-3 supplement and you now have eaten a balanced diet.  This is what you were taught in school, by your parents and dieticians.  But this is not nutritional balancing!

Nutrition balance was coined in the mid 1970's by a medical doctor and researcher, Paul Eck. Dr. Paul Eck took Dr. William Albrecht ideas, of mineral balancing in the soil to improve plant growth in the twentieth century Ikerd: Albrecht linking soil & health, and established a link between foods grown on soil to mineral content in the human body and health. The mineral balancing system of the human body is very precise and much more complicated than in plants.

nb Healthy-diet Dr Eck stumbled upon the new assessment method of hair tissue mineral analysis in the early 1970′s and food, where others saw it mainly as a way to detect toxic metals, Dr Eck applied to this finding all of his knowledge of the Stress Theory of Disease, Metabolic Typing, Mineral Bio-availability and much more.

Nutritional balancing opens the door for more research into the issue of food, nutrition and whether food is linked to diseases.  Balancing the ratios and levels of the minerals requires knowing how the human body machine system works.  This balancing act requires more sophisticated understanding than what is taught in medical schools today about human physiology and biochemistry.

Nutritional balancing is complex and bio-tech precise. One administers small amounts of the appropriate minerals in an attempt to balance the minerals in a sick person, while avoiding supplementing or eating too much of other minerals or foods that would move the system away from balance. Here is a simple example of this:

Human molecular machines

body cell

Every cell in the human body, and neurons in particular, contains a collection of molecular machines, some free floating and independent, and others anchored in cellular structures called organelles that serve as factories for the production and shaping of proteins, lipids and other macromolecules. In this graphic, the structure labeled (2) is the nucleus of the cell containing the DNA instructions to build the entire organism. (1) is called the nucleolus and is responsible for transcribing (ribosomal) RNA used to build ribosomes — shown as small dots one of which is labeled (3) — that are housed in the endoplasmic reticulum (5) a structure that serves to fold the newly minted but only partially-formed proteins into their final conformations. There are also organelles, the Golgi apparatus (6), that manufacture the many types of membranes that make up the structural members of the cell and a class of organelles called mitochondria (9) which are actually symbiotic organisms with their own separate DNA that set up housekeeping within the cells of eukaryotes many millions of years ago and made themselves indispensable. Source: Thomas Dean

"The human body system is an extremely complex and precise electro-chemical human machine that is living energy [as depicted in the illustration on the right]. For example, giving a particular mineral may in fact lead to a lowering of that mineral level in the body tissues.  This was one of Dr. Paul Eck’s great discoveries early in his research on hair mineral analysis. Eck structured precise ways to gather hair samples.  He found that giving calcium to someone with a low calcium supplement would often result in a lower hair level of calcium. Giving zinc to a person with low zinc sometimes caused the zinc in hair tissue to become lower.  He experimented with balancing these mineral effects to find the healthy ratios and levels of minerals, including the impact of such changes on co-factors or nutritional helpers.

ca-mg balance After years of research, Eck figured out that giving just calcium upset the balance of calcium with magnesium, which in turn caused a lowering of the calcium. He found he needed to give copper along with magnesium in order to raise a low calcium level, rather than give just calcium.

He also figured out that just giving zinc lowers the sodium/potassium ratio, a critical ratio in the body. Since this is often undesirable, the body does not accept the zinc and there is little effect on the zinc level in the hair, or it might even become lower. In order to raise the zinc level, one must increase the sodium/potassium ratio in many cases, and this is done using vitamins B1, B3, B5, C, E, chromium, selenium, copper, manganese and adrenal or thyroid gland taken together in the right proportions."  Wilson: Balance concept of healing 2016

Eck progressed from his research of calcium, magnesium and zinc to other minerals [he referred to these as elements] and eventually helped formed the mineral wheel.  This wheel is significant for it links one mineral as having a direct impact relationship on other minerals, as well as other nutrients like vitamins, amino acids [proteins] hormones and enzymes.  Most important, Eck  pointed out that balancing a ratio between two minerals caused an imbalance in many others that are referred to as co-factors [helpers].  Thus balancing minerals and vitamins is a very sensitive, precise and complex process.  It is not as simple as what most persons do when they ingest vitamin-mineral supplements or adjust their food intake with recommended daily inntake. 

Eck realized that the body heals as a whole and not as a separate organ or tissue; hence, whole body healing.

Nutrients need to be balanced precisely for good normal health and to prevent illnesses and diseases.  Such a therapy can take months and even years of juggling mineral ratios and at the same time, adjusting level amounts of different nutrients as supplements, for healing to occur.  All this is referred to as nutritional balancing!

Below is a mineral wheel created by Eck and his associates:

NB meineral-wheel

Although the human body requires about 100 elements [minerals], this mineral wheel shows some of the most important elements needed by the body, and more importantly, it shows the interrelationships between the elements. This is the most complete wheel ever developed. The major minerals, electrolytic minerals, and many other trace minerals are represented here.

The above mineral wheel may seem complicated but the wheel can be restructured, as below, for the sake of simplicity, like the mineral magnesium, and its relationships with other minerals on the left, and on the right, for vitamins: Watts: Mg wheel 1988

Nb Mg wheel Trace Elelemnts 1988

Both drawings depict the antagonists that exist between the various minerals.  An excess of one mineral may inhibit the bioorganic chemical activity of an opposing mineral(s).  This is related to the electro-chemical series as part of the mineral interference that goes on in the body, all of which helps to bring about chemical balance within the cell.  It is also a part of the explanation as to how one mineral element is able to reduce the toxicity of another.  The concept of mineral interference is of the utmost importance in understanding how minerals work in the body.

The lines and arrows on the diagram connect specific minerals to others. Every mineral has synergistic and antagonistic counterparts. The importance of this is, if you have too much or not enough of a specific mineral, it will affect the counterpart causing a mineral deficiency or excess that may be toxic.

On this wheel, an arrow pointing to a particular mineral means that an excess of the mineral may cause a deficiency of the mineral that the arrow comes from. For example, an excess of calcium can cause decreased absorption of Phosphorus, Zinc, Magnesium, and Manganese. This is the same thing that happens in farming soils. Too much or too little of any nutrient results in sick plants, animals, and humans alike. You only need to read the United Senate Document #264 to see how the mineral deficiency in plants can result in the mineral deficiencies and disease in those who eat those plants.

Caution:    Mineral ratios reveal not only the important balance between minerals, but also possible factors that can disrupt mineral relationships, such as diseases, diet, drugs, and glandular effects. For example, the ideal ratios or balance are interpreted by Trace Elements lab, originally founded by Dr. Paul Eck. Here are a few examples of hair analysis for minerals and their ratios: Watts: Mineral ratio importance 2010

  • Ca:P = 2.6:1
  • Na:K = 2.4:1
  • Zn:Cu = 8:1
  • Na:Mg = 4:1
  • Ca:Mg = 7:1
  • Fe:Cu = 0.0:1
  • Ca:Pb = 84:1

Hair analyses supposedly reveal balance between minerals in hair samples.  Such hair analysis, as ratios, do not indicate the amount of the minerals we should ingest as supplements or eat as found in food. 

This is very important information to understand if you are seeking answers to the health problems we face today. There are many factors involved that are purportedly the causes of disease: such as pollution, acid rain, electro-magnetic fields, pathogens [disease causing organisms], lack of nutrition from a variety of sources such as: mineral depletion of our agricultural soils, refining of foods as in white flour and white sugar and lack of enzymes.

The main point of this mineral wheel is that it helps to explain the intricate and precise mechanism by which the human body can be fine tuned to prevent diseases and enhance optimal wellbeing.   It goes beyond the knowledge that the medical establishment uses in adjusting drug medication to the needs of patients.

Shortcomings and Limitations of NB

There is no gold standard ratio norm for minerals among different hair laboratories.  Thus, hair analysis is not interpreted the same way by different hair analysis labs.  This makes interpreting hair samples somewhat confusing. 

Hair Analysis: The process of balancing and healing is based on using hair samples that require at least several months growth of hair, thus requiring many visits to the healer and many months and even years before a correct optimal functioning balance is achieved for a patient.  "Practitioners I spoke with said it was at least 7 years before they were “functioning normally.”  Wilson: comparing NB programs 2016  We need a better way evaluate nutritional balancing .... other than hair analysis.  Hair analysis relies too much on hair samples that take over several months to grow, thereby greatly lengthening the time it should take to make ratio adjustments.  This is a major flaw in nutritional balancing! 

Medical hair analysis science is also controversial because those who practice this art of using hair analysis to balance nutrients have difficulty in consistently interpreting and applying the results of hair analysis to healing sick persons. Each hair analysis laboratory has its own methodology and interpretation of results.

Practice of NB: It is important to point out that Nutritional Balancing does not focus on removal of symptoms but rather on restoring the body to a former state of optimal health and beyond through a process of deep healing.  This profound process of healing involves detoxification, purification, complete nutritional rebuilding and a healing lifestyle that is supposed to restore the body's health. Obviously, balancing nutritional needs includes minerals, vitamins and amino acids.  

Adding to the troubles in NB healing process is that, the original work of Eck's nutritional balancing has been altered and modified, diluted if you will, by many of those now contending to practice their own brand of nutritional balancing.  Many practitioners of NB are non medical persons and have added spiritualism, yen-yang, and whatever they feel as part of the healing process.

The practice of nutritional balancing, as used by most NB practitioners, has patients cooking their vegetables and eating meat.  The scientific reasons are not given, and this is worrisome.  When vegetables are cooked above 117 degrees F, the natural enzymes that help to digest the vegetables are destroyed; so eating raw vegetables would be better.  The scientific evidence on meat is to eat less and not more.

Finally, none of NB users give good scientific evidence that their therapeutic approach really works.  Furthermore, there is no international gold standard for using nutritional healing.  So now that Eck is not alive, the many self-professed experts are practicing healing without any licensing or standardized healing control.

Nutritional balancing [NB] science perceives the human body as a complex and precise machine and using nutrients to fine tune this machine.  On the other hand, this is not the view of medical science practicing drug therapy to relieve symptoms of diseases.  Both approaches have obvious flaws and have not been able to harness food as prevention or successfully treat chronic diseases and disorders like cancer, heart disorders, obesity and so on.

Bioavailability:  You cannot ingest orange juice or vitamin C or magnesium as supplements and expect that these will be absorbed from the digestive system into the body and transported [used] by somatic cells! Medical science can use a lab test to find out if a nutrient has been absorbed into the blood stream from the digestive system, but there is no test as yet to determine whether blood delivered the nutrients to the somatic cells in sufficient amount.  So fine tuning and balancing the exact ratio and level amount of nutrients for good health is still a controversial art and science.

Body systems: Doctors often talk about body systems, such as the digestive or cardiovascular system. However, most do not talk about the body and brain as one whole system. “Parts thinking” causes severe problems today in medical care.  For example, a doctor may recommend a remedy for pain such as Tylenol or acetaminophen. However, because the drug only helps with one part of the whole system, it causes problems elsewhere in the body referred to as side effects, such as stomach ulcers or kidney failure.  [ These can be serious problems with medications. ]

Progress is being made to some degree with healing practitioners working together.    For example, the medical establishment is slowly catching on to the whole body concept that NB has adopted.

Also, the art of delivering drugs to intended sites is making progress and may actually provide some light to help with nutritional balancing.  Recently, encapsulated Liposomes initially attracted medical scientists because they helped deliver drugs to targeted sites like cancer cells.  Due to their size and composition, liposomes are able to be passively absorbed through the intestinal wall and through cellular membranes.  Liposomes communicate with the outside cover of somatic cells.  Hence, liposome-encapsulated nutrients, like Vitamin C, achieve maximum-true  bioavailability in the cells, where they are needed most. LivOn: Bioavailability The liposomes not only protect the supplement from degrading conditions in the digestive environment, but will also deliver them safe and sound to "target" organs and structures of the body, including somatic cells. Since 2000 the liposome idea has been applied to a few nutritional supplements, like vitamin C, with some success.

Liposome-encapsulation is important because this approach adds more information about how the human body really works.  By itself, this information has made us aware about how delicate and precise the human machine is.  This leads us to the science of nutritional balancing.  Although nutritional balancing may be new information for most of us, it has been around since the late 1970's when Dr. Paul Ecks linked it to his medical practice and created his own hair testing laboratory.

But medical science, as of 2015, still ignores balancing nutrients.  Most medical schools do not offer any in depth nutrition classes.  Such an approach gives medical doctors the implication that nutrition and food are not important in the healing process.  Instead emphasis is placed on drug therapy, emergency medicine and surgery.

Human anatomy, physiology and chemistry focus on information relevant to the practice of medicine and not on health.  Well, there may be some health when the body systems work.

Making matters worse is our meager knowledge of how the human body really works in totality.  Almost no one realizes that the human body is a very precise and delicate machine.  Or that the body machine can be disrupted by a slightest imbalance of nutrients in precise ratio amounts and amount levels. 

New theory of well-being The illustration below displays a scenario when body and life are balanced ... a very rare occasion.  Food is at the top, symbolizing that nutrients are the most important of all co-factors in helping to balance the body.  The other factors [helpers] in this balancing scale have been identified as  immunity, balance of colon bacteria, balancing body pH, exercise, fine-tuning body enzymes and hormones, energy from sunshine, oxygen needs and sleep; not necessarily in that order and additional co-factors may have been left out.  When mineral ratios are altered even slightly, the balance of all the other cofactors or helpers is unbalanced [the body balance is tilted]  and visa versa.  It takes months and even years to restore this delicate balance. 

bodybalance

Survival health: An interesting, as yet unexplained phenomenon of the human machine, is that the human body is able to adapt in a mysterious way like homeostasis, with no present signs or symptoms of mineral or vitamin imbalance. The adaptation has utilized toxic metals, vitamins and other minerals to fill in the gaps. And probably borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, as robbing bones for calcium or/and magnesium! Adaptation will, in time, result in failed body systems. A person may go through his/her entire life nutritionally deficient or unbalanced and not know it; and, depending on the severity, may never become severely ill, while other factors are present that contribute to incubating the titter-totter stresses, environmental toxins, contaminated and processed food, and so on and balance these out with overall survival health.  The human body is a marvelous machine that compensates for man's indiscretions.

This new perception of health is very different from all the establishment theories [WHO] stating that health is a balance of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing and the absence of illness or disease.  These were general theories that overlooked the precision and delicate balance of nutrient fine tuning, resulting in optimal wellbeing. 

Even astute nutritionists fail to grasp that nutrients work as a whole with other co-factors or nutrient helpers. Medical doctors have been taught to fix a part of the body separately from the rest of the whole body. This would be an injustice to the patient recovering from surgery and on a hospital diet that especially lacks healing nutrients like organic sulfur, boron, magnesium, calcium, zinc, selenium as well as vitamins A, B-complex, C, D-3, E, K and other amino acids .... all that need to be fine tuned and essential to the healing process.

Body systems:  Eleven body systems are the basis of training that many medical doctors receive as specialists in each body specialty.  For example, the cardiologist, specializing in the cardiovascular system, receives training in heart disease, bypass surgery, high blood pressure, strokes and so on.  Most cardiologists heal their cardiovascular patients on the assumption that their therapy heals only the cardiovascular system independently from the other body systems.  Research points out that this approach is wrong, for when one body part heals, all the other body parts that may have problems also heal at the same time .... as a whole; that is, all body systems participate in the healing process. And for healing to take place, the body needs building materials to do so, like nutrition!  This is why many scientists now recognize that the human machine has the ability to heal itself. 

When an injured body part is healing, the effects upon other parts of the body are called “adverse effects” or “side effects”.  It is a fragmented approach, compared to whole system thinking. By contrast, whole system thinking does not cause side effects and is not about symptomatic remedies, which are “parts thinking”, not whole system thinking.

Pharmacists do balance drug dosage as part of the therapy. The big problem in prescribing medications to patients is that doctors have not had accurate laboratory tests to determine if the prescribed dose is actually delivered to the intended cells or organs. Such complete bioavailability - biochemical individuality is lacking!

However, medical science is making progress.  In 2013, researchers confirmed that specific nutrients and chemicals turn genes on and off, and affect genetic expression. Trafton: Controlling genes 2013

What available information about balancing minerals and nutrients tells us is that there is a lot more about nutrition and the human body than we have been lead to belief! The human system needs dozens of nutrients daily --- and two-thirds of those nutrients are minerals that function in a precise and balanced manner! Minerals participate in nearly every one of the thousands of biochemical processes that occur in our bodies.

Most persons eat food to their heart's content and assume that the food they are eating is good for them and that the amount  [serving portions] is also proper.  Nutritionists try to get more specific by recommending daily allowances for vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, proteins, carbohydrates and water. Medical doctors do not believe that food is our best medicine and hence, pay little if any attention to what their patients eat.  Almost everyone believes that they are experts when it comes to food, nutrition and their health, for they have been eating all their lives and they are still alive.  We have also been lead to believe that when we get sick, all we have to do is go to the doctor and the doctor will fix our health problem. But a few scientists, researchers and even medical doctors have been questioning how much we really know about nutrients, medicine and how the human body really functions to use food in the body.  Hence, controversy!

Nutritional Balancing means different things to different people.  At a basic level, its meaning in all instances has to do with providing the body with the nutrients it requires, in balanced ratios, in order to enable its optimal functioning.  We have been lead to believe that medical science has most of the answers to our personal health.  For one, we can ingest food and nutritional supplements, but we, in spite of being alive, really do not know whether these are doing us any good; for we lack the lab tests to prove that nutrients are delivered to somatic cells in adequate and proper amounts.

This author's experience in searching for the truth about nutritional balancing [NB] and hair laboratory testing was a nightmare.  The internet is full of self serving healers who have different versions of NB, and claim that their approach to healing the sick is the best approach. Many healers are not licensed medical doctors, and learned about NB from someone already in practice. 

The criticism of the NB and medicine by this author is not meant to discredit either of these practices.  But it sure would be wonderful if humans in general were able to attain optimal wellbeing with both, the NB and medicine factions working together. We need research .... more fine tuning of nutritional balancing, especially with mineral ratios and identifying co-factors and mineral ratios. 

And interestingly, although science tells us that food is medicine, and that our health depends on what we eat and how nutritionally balanced our body may be, many people still seem to find it difficult, if not inconceivable, to believe that something so basic like food, can be so great a delicate and precise determiner of our health

NB blonde-thinking-about-healthy-vs-unhealthy-food This article should be a wake up call! So.... what should you do?  Give up eating?  Take supplements? We really do not have a good, quick lab test to tell us if the supplements we take are really doing any good!  We also lack good information about mineral ratios and cofactors or nutrient helpers helping each other to work properly.

 Ofcourse you need to hopefully eat a balanced nutritious diet.  The antiquainted approach is to eat a balance of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, water and fiber. Obviously, we people do not have as yet, but desperately need, nutritional balancing of mineral ratios. If you do not get sick after several months eating, you may be doing okay.  Doing okay means that your body is coping the best it can with the foods you gulp down, compensating for the junk foods like sugar sweet doughnuts, French fries and processed foods in hidden and silent ways.  You do not know whether your body's compensation is, as you get past 65 years of age in the years ahead, incubating some chronic diseases, or  or nurturing optimal health and longevity.   So you be the judge of what you want your destiny to be!

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References:

Ahmad Ghorbani, Hasan Darmani Kuhl and Ardeshir Mohit, "A review hair tissue analysis: An analytical method for determining essential elements, toxic elements, hormones and drug use and abuse," International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 2013, vol 4(11), 3675-3688.   Ahmad: Review hair analysis 2013

Ahmad Ghorbani, Hasan Darmani Kuhl and Ardeshir Mohit, "HTMA as an analytical method," Nutritional Balancing.org. , 2016.  Ahmad: HTMA method 2016

Beach Rex, "Senate Document #264," Better health Through research, June, 1036.   Beach: Senate Document #264 1936

Daniel Kaayla, "Hair Apparent: The Case of the Quackbuster," Weston A. Price Foundation, July 22, 2011.   Daniel: Rebuttal to hair quackery 2011

DaVinci College of Natural Medicine, "Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis - Lesson 1 - What is Tissue Hair Mineral Analysis (THMA)?"   DaVinci College of Natural Medicine Hair Analysis

Deatly Anne, "What is optimal health?"   Deatly: what is health

Galch James F. and Phyllis A. Balch, "Prescription for Nutritional Healing," Perfect Balance, 2016.   Galch: Nutrtional healing 2016

Ikerd John, "Healthy Soils, Healthy People:� The Legacy of William Albrecht,"   Ikerd: Albrecht linking soil & health

Trace Elements Lab, "Nutritional Interrelationships," Trace Elements - a certified clinical laboratory.   Trace elements: mineral wheels & cofactors

[ Trace Elements, Incorporated. 4501 Sunbelt Drive, Addison, Texas 75001 USA; Toll Free 1 (800) 824-2314 Phone: (972) 250-6410 Fax: (972) 248-4896 ]

Trace Elements Lab, "References."  Trace Elements: mineral wheels references

Trafton Ann, "An easier way to control genes," MIT News, September 3, 2013. Trafton: Controlling genes 2013   [New method for turning genes on and off could enable more complex synthetic biology circuits.]

Watts David L., "HTMA Mineral Ratios - A brief discussion of their importance," Trace Elements Newsletter, November 2010. volume 21.  Watts: Mineral ratio importance 2010

Watts David L., "The Nutritional Relationships of Copper," Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 4, No. 2, 1989.  Watts: Cu wheel 1989

Watts David L., "The Nutritional Relationships of Magnesium," Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 3. No. 4, 1988.  Watts: Mg wheel 1988

Wilson Lawrence, "Comparing programs," Monthly Archives, July 2016.   Wilson: comparing NB programs 2016

Wilson Lawrence, "Nutritional balancing science. " Wilson: Nutritional balancing science

Wilson Lawrence, "Find a helper program," October 11, 2016.  Wilson: Find helper 2016

Wilson Lawrence, "Nutritional balancing, an introduction," L.D. Wilson Consultants, Inc., April 2016.  Wilson: Introduction to NB 2016

Wilson Lawrence, "The balance concept in healing," January 2016.  Wilson: Balance concept of healing 2016

Wilson Lawrence, "Unknown Concepts," June 2016.  Wilson: Concepts of NB 2016

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