I searched the forums and there’s a 4 page thread from back in '08 but I"m not seeing much more.
So… is analysis just mineral analysis or can it include other nutritional deficiencies? Anyone seen behavioral/ physical results/ improvement that have solved all problems by following the analysis results?
There’s apparently a large bunch of folks who think it’s hogwash as well.
Discuss. Please.
Given that there’s no standard by which to judge results, and there is nothing standardized across labs, it really is mostly hogwash.
You can test for heavy metals and drugs, but there’s nothing reliable about testing for vitamins and minerals. Test the blood for what you can. Test the forage for some other things.
Are you asking for any particular reason?
Here’s just one reason why this is considered hogwash - it’s not just opinion 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24141206
I am a big believer. A blood test is a moment in time while hair analysis is a 3 month picture. My horse was very sick and took her to several vets and hospitals. No one knew what was wrong. I did a hair analysis and she she had toxins and so much was out of whack with minerals, electrolites etc. I have been doing Chelation therapy and after about 1 month of treatment my horse greatly improved and has not been sick since. That was 3 years ago. Other people that had the same symptoms as my horse all had there horses die with in a year or 2. This DR. is fantastic and very reasonable priced. If you want more info just contact me.
https://www.depaoloequineconcepts.co…-hair-analysis
DePaolo should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt. Much of what he says is laughably incorrect or, at best, not even proven.
What “toxins” did your mare have? What is her story? Hair IS good for detecting heavy metals. There is too much that can go “wrong” with hair, as per the link above, not to mention color makes a difference, cleanliness makes a difference (and there are no standards on how to make the hair perfectly clean), and more.
I’m with JB. I spoke with my vet about this and he basically suggested we take a sample of my own hair to send in and see if they could tell the difference.
Current literature suggests the results tend to be inconsistent and unreliable for determining nutritional status.
My horse had digestive issues and could only eat small meals or she would look miserable. Her stomach was SO loud you could hear it rumble from 20 feet away, After about a month or so on treatment her stomach got quiet and she didn’t look miserable. She had many things out of whack like electrolytes and minerals. Some I had suspected and did blood test for. I had taken her to many vets and well recognized hospitals with no diagnoses.
If and when someone has the need then they can decide for themselves. I will say I have had 3-4 test done on one horse over a 3 year period and they have changed consistently and no alarm bells that would make you think they are inaccurate. I have much respect for DR. DePaolo, he is a Vet of regular modern medicine and a holistic vet. He is all about the horse and not about the $$. He also sells supplements that are not synthetic and is a weakth of knowledge. He goes all obver the country and helps people and horses.
Chelation has helped many people and many Doctors use it. I know people that have used chelation for health reasons. Just like in the US we put people under to operate while in China they sedate you with acupuncture and do major surgery. We don’t know everything and to call something hogwash that I doubt you know anything about seems ridiculous.
Adding pic for beauty.
Why do you doubt I know anything about this? Just because I personally haven’t done hair analysis? I wouldn’t do it - it’s not a controlled or reliable science, that’s proven. That also does not mean I don’t disbelieve anything that’s not controlled, since I do know there are some/many things that work without a real explanation. Ghazzu is a vet and agrees with my comments, which are based on studies that HAVE been done to look into the validity of what hair analysis can actually do.
I’m not saying that you CAN’T look at certain things in hair, but as stated above, the variances on what’s considered “standard”, the location of the hair taken, the color of the hair, how much dirt is on the hair, all that makes its way into the results, and as such, it’s not possible to state with certainty that “this horse has too much calcium and not enough potassium”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12117220
Several elements that were reviewed, including arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, germanium, lead, lithium, manganese, mercury, nickel, and thallium, showed relationships between body burden, dosage, and exposure or toxicity. Evidence of toxicity could not be found by measuring hair aluminum or vanadium. Chromium, selenium, and zinc seemed to have nutritional value. Ratios of hair elements with clinical importance could not be found.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582931/
Results
All the laboratories used identical methods for quantitative analysis, and they generated consistent numerical results according to Friedman analysis of variance. However, the normal reference ranges of each laboratory varied. As such, each laboratory interpreted the patient’s health differently. On intra-laboratory data, Wilcoxon analysis suggested they generated relatively coherent data, but laboratory B could not in one element, so its reliability was doubtful. In comparison with the blood test, laboratory C generated identical results, but not laboratory A and B.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11150111
Laboratory differences in highest and lowest reported mineral concentrations for the split sample exceeded 10-fold for 12 minerals, and statistically significant (P<.05) extreme values were reported for 14 of the 31 minerals that were analyzed by 3 or more laboratories. Variations also were found in laboratory sample preparation methods and calibration standards. Laboratory designations of normal reference ranges varied greatly, resulting in conflicting classifications (high, normal, or low) of nearly all analyzed minerals. Laboratories also provided conflicting dietary and nutritional supplement recommendations based on their results.
I went back through many of the hair analysis threads here, and there was a pretty common thread: horses were high in aluminum, low to almost non-existent in most electrolytes and in copper. How would a horse be functioning if he was that low in e-lytes?
Wouldn’t it strike you odd that was a common thread? Many different soils have high aluminum content - again, they’re testing the sample, what’s in and on it, and what’s on it isn’t distinguished from what’s in i.
So my real question is - if controlled studies cannot find any reliability between labs, some of the results varying significantly, how can it be taken seriously?
I wish I could find the post from several years ago - someone said they sent in samples from the same horse, under 2 different horse names, to the same lab, and got different results. So…
For anyone who wants to read some more
http://www.acsh.org/news/2001/03/01/hairy-pseudoscience-are-profferers-of-hair-analysis-shafting-consumers
Consider that:
Tightly bound elements in hair, not extractable in aqueous solutions, may be related to the metabolic control of these respective elements in the biologically active hair tissue. The hair concentrations of these elements may be influenced by many factors, including dietary intake, overall nutritional status, endocrine and metabolic function, age, sex, general health status, and other sociologic factors. Reduced or elevated concentrations of an element in human hair should not, therefore, be interpreted to necessarily indicate a respective nutritional deficiency or excess. . . .
Given the rapidity with which electrolyte levels in particular can change, I find the idea of using hair analysis to evaluate them an odd idea, to say the least.
Looking for heavy metal toxicity might have some credibility.
Did anyone else notice that the ‘report’ quoted above (in post # 9) was published in March of 2001?
Anyone else notice it was written by un-named 'staff ’ who worked for that organization?
Anyone else question the wisdom of quoting a 16 year old opinion piece as a source of quality scientific research?
Did anyone else look thru the other articles headlined under Popular Content on that page?
Did anyone else get the impression that source is as political as it is scientific?
Just my observations.
@Sansena if you wish to have a hair analysis done, it would be wise to wash the horse’s mane/tail with a soap that will not leave a residue prior to collecting the sample.
If you can afford to do so divide the sample you collect and send portions to 2 or 3 labs. That way you can see if the results are similar.
The results will never be exactly the same.
https://uckele.com/horse-hair-mineral-analysis.html
I personally feel I can spend $150 in more effective ways, but YMMV.
@JB Quoted this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582931/ Pub. Feb. 2013
Results
All the laboratories used identical methods for quantitative analysis and they generated consistent numerical results according to Friedman analysis of variance.
If you read further the wheels come off when human beings interpret those results as normal on not.
The proven accuracy of the tests are why hair mineral analysis has been entered in evidence in legal proceedings.
It’s about there being no standardized range which would be considered normal for hair analysis. Each lab has their normal reference range. How that range was determined, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because that’s a normal range for horses they test in that general area. And that alone invalids things for horses from other areas, and that implies there are differences based on localities, which means the “standards” for different labs are meaningless in determining health.
The proven accuracy of the tests are why hair mineral analysis has been entered in evidence in legal proceedings.
For the presence of drugs. I have never discounted that, and in fact, I have said they have validity to that. Drugs, and heavy metals to at least some degree.
Note also
But you can’t know precisely the dose or even the exact date of exposure, since you don’t know the growth parameters of the hair you are analyzing.
So absolutely you can use hair analysis to say that the defendant used heroine (or whatever, I don’t know the restrictions of what drugs you can find in hair), but you can’t say when, or how much was used. Only that it was used. It certainly can’t prove someone was high on that drug last week or even last month, because there’s no correlation between what’s currently in the hair, to what was in the body at any given time in the past. That’s where all of this falls apart.
And that has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of nutritional analysis of vitamins and minerals, which have never proven to be reliable, and which have only ever proven to be unreliable for lots of reasons, as listed above.
Do you wonder why there aren’t more recent studies? Perhaps because nobody has figured out a way to make any analysis more reliable and standardized, therefore there’s nothing more recent to test?
As soon as someone comes up with a way to use the same hair sample across every lab’s testing standards and come up to a statistically significant similarity, AND that reference range has proven to correlate to X level of Y nutrient in the body at Z point in time, I will be all for it.
But that doesn’t exist. Not even close.
Hair analysis is used in legal proceedings to document things other than drugs.
The hair analysis test are quite accurate, the issue is agreeing on ‘normal’ ranges for all horses, everywhere,
And finding a way to collect the samples sans contamination of any kind.
What sort of nutritional analysis is allowed in legal proceedings, and why? I can find that it’s allowed for drug presence (note, not amount, not when, just presence). I can find that it’s allowed for “characteristics” which is being seriously questioned since there’s no population-based database to compare to (so essentially they’re guessing) but that’s using physical characteristics, not internal, not nutrients. It can tell you if the hair is animal or human. Certainly it’s allowed for DNA evidence.
I find a LOT of information stating that hair analysis presented as evidence later proved to be inaccurate.
Having hair analysed in different labs to produce the same results only means they saw the same thing. As per the previously mentioned issues (and really, it’s not just me) that has no correlation to what the horse’s actual status is, just like it doesn’t with drugs.
It doesn’t - it can’t - tell you how much calcium is in the horse’s body, not how much was there last week or last month or last year, and how much is in the hair is irrelevant to the function of the body.
Let’s not forget:
Laboratory differences in highest and lowest reported mineral concentrations for the split sample exceeded 10-fold for 12 minerals, and statistically significant (P<.05) extreme values were reported for 14 of the 31 minerals that were analyzed by 3 or more laboratories.
That’s not exactly “quite accurate”.
If Ghazzo agrees with you it must be laughable. LOL Not that there was ever in competent vet. Said no one.
I did not bother reading it because I am not going to change any ones mind. But thank you for pointing this out. Its very entertaining.
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