After years of coaching people to heal their migraines through mineral balancing, I want to share with you some insights into mineral dynamics and patterns in people with different metabolisms. Let’s check out some HTMA reports in current and previous clients of mine and explore some of the most common mineral imbalances in migraine.
Overall Deficiency Pattern
This was my pattern, and it’s generally the easiest to correct – as long as the person hasn’t been in a deep deficiency pattern for too long. When that is the case, the adrenal glands tend to be very exhausted and the approach to healing is low and slow because healing the adrenal glands requires lifestyle change. When the adrenal glands are taxed, the steroid hormones that regulate the body’s ability to retain key minerals like sodium and potassium is weakened.
I’ve found that a client with potassium levels above 4 mg% can usually recover fairly easily by just getting more sodium and potassium from diet.
Here is one clients’ first HTMA results. You can see here that most of her nutritional elements are on the lower end, with sodium, potassium, and iron being quite low, but with potassium still above the 4mg% mark.
You can see on her second HTMA below that this client’s sodium and potassium levels have improved, as have many of her other values like iron, zinc and copper. Additionally, her body is now detoxing stored heavy metals now that it has the nutrients to do so.
This clients is now migraine free.
However, in severe deficiency states, once the potassium levels especially get as low as 1mg%, this reveals an extreme state of depletion that will require more than nutritional balancing to correct. Lifestyle change, stress management, and breathwork are needed in tandem to nourish the system.
An extreme deficiency pattern is very often seen in mothers, especially after birthing a few kids, and especially if the mother also has a career, or is in an upwardly-mobile social culture with a lot of high-pressure social obligations.
Elevated Calcium “Shell” Pattern
I see a lot of “calcium shells” in my coaching practice. While many people have elevated calcium, a calcium shell represents a major elevation in calcium around 150-200 mg%.
The dominant characteristic of this pattern is hypothyroidism, as the Ca/K ratio in HTMA is the Thyroid Ratio, and clients with elevated calcium will have the most imbalanced thyroid ratios. Thyroid hormones are intimately linked to migraine headache.
Calcification of soft tissues can lead to all sorts of problems, most notably calcification of the vascular tree which compromises blood flow to the head as blood vessels and capillaries become brittle. Calcium even has a seasonal fluctuation in our bodies.
Excess calcium makes it hard for the body to detoxify. It is common to see heavy metals emerge once the calcium shell starts to break down.
It is also common to see clients with Interstitial Cystitis and frequent urination from calcium oxalates built up in the bladder. Type two insomnia (inability to fall back asleep) is also common among those with elevated calcium.
Calcium can build up in the body as a means to buffer acidity from heavy metals or an acidic body pH. Or it can build up because of a deficiency in calcium antagonists, or from excessive vitamin D supplementation.
Below is one example of a client with elevated calcium. You can also see that her cobalt levels are very high. This indicates that she’s losing B12 (since cobalt is part of the cobalamin molecule), and needs to support her stomach acid. B12 and zinc are both needed for optimal stomach acid and conversely, both nutrients are lost in the presence of low stomach acid. Clients with high calcium often tend to have weak stomach acid because the calcium lowers the zinc needed to make sufficient acid.
This client’s elevated mercury is also depleting her zinc stores.
Copper Toxicity Pattern
Copper toxicity is the hardest mineral pattern to correct, if only because the copper dumping process is so uncomfortable and involves an exacerbation of symptoms. Clients can decide whether they want to dump copper overtly with the use of copper antagonists like manganese and zinc, and/or simply eat a low copper diet while making copper bioavailable.
Copper toxicity can be caused by hormonal birth control (the copper IUD or the birth control pill, which lowers zinc thus raising copper), copper in water from leaching pipes, and genetic factors can all play a role.
Below is one example of a copper toxicity pattern. This client, probably my most challenging case to date, has both copper toxicity AND elevated calcium. Below is her first test.
As you can see, her copper and calcium have both gone down on the retest (below) after months of nutritional balancing. As her calcium has gone down, heavy metals that were hidden in her system have started to be mobilized out (her arsenic, mercury, and aluminum levels have all gone up). This is a good sign that her body is less calcified and can now move unwanted toxicities out. This client still has quite a ways to go to get her calcium and copper levels lower, and is utilizing other natural tools to mitigate her migraines while she continues to gently balance her minerals according to her tolerance.
Metal Toxicity Pattern
Most modern humans have some level of metal toxicity in their system. In most cases this doesn’t get in the way of their ability to heal their migraine headaches with help from nutritional balancing even without any heavy metal detox. This is because the body knows how to detox naturally when the other nutritional elements are in place. I see most people’s low-level heavy metals go down in the course of a basic nutritional balancing plan.
But some clients have more extreme metal toxicities at play in their systems.
Here’s a client I’m working with who has metal toxicity in the form of a nutritional element, manganese. She was most likely poisoned from manganese as a child living in a mining town through contaminated drinking water. She also had an incident as a child where she was rubbed down with gasoline (which is high in manganese) to remove paint that had gotten all over her body. The manganese seems to have lodged in her heart, and she is doing low and gentle manganese detox with manganese antagonists in food.
In cases of extreme metal toxicity, I usually either work with the client to nourish their stores of nutritional elements so that they are better resourced going into heavy metal detox, or I refer them out directly for support from an expert in heavy metal detox.
Here’s an example of a client who opted for the HTMA + Coursework Bundle. Her HTMA revealed extreme cadmium toxicity from years of dyeing fibers. This woman is a weaver, and the HTMA was the missing piece after many years of seeking an explanation for her migraine headaches that gave her the insight into the underlying issue at play in her system.
Mineral Loss as Excretion Pattern
The hair is a tissue of excretion. Unlike blood, which is a tissue of transport, the hair excretes on a cellular level what is in the body. Therefore, sometimes when we see an elevation of a nutritional element, we interpret it as a cellular loss. An excretion means that while the person may be getting sufficient of the nutrient in their diet, their cells are not able to hold on to that mineral and it gets dumped into the blood and picked up in the hair. This is something we look out for mostly with the intracellular minerals potassium and magnesium, but sometimes other factors like heavy metal toxicity or medications can cause excretions or losses in other minerals showing up as an elevation on an HTMA.
The client below is a good example of this. She has very high mercury levels, and probably even more not yet mobilized in her system. As you can see, it also looks like she has elevations in zinc and sodium and chromium, but instead, the mercury is causing a loss of these elements from her system.
A practitioner untrained in HTMA would take these excretions at face value. Indicators in the intake process, such as low blood pressure, can give us clues as to whether an elevation is expressing a loss or a toxicity.
Most migraineurs have very low blood pressure and feel better with more salt/sodium. Therefore it is not that difficult to interpret an excretion correctly given these other factors. Below is an example of a client whose thyroid meds lowered her calcium and caused a sodium loss in the process.
Summary
As you can see, there are many divers mineral imbalances in migraine. While there are some general guidelines that apply to most every migraineur in terms of lifestyle and diet choices that can help to heal the gut and liver, an individualized mineral balancing plan based off of an HTMA test is the most direct way to gain insight, clarity, and strategy to heal a person’s unique pattern and imbalances.
In my coaching practice, I first work to help balance the person’s major electrolytes – calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium. The major electrolytes are macronutrients – that means they can be taken in fairly large quantities with a larger margin of error as these nutrients are needed in higher levels by the body to function.
A plan to balance your major electrolytes is offered in an HTMA report, and can be started by the client without the need for coaching. If you’re interested in getting your own HTMA done, this is offered along with the Cleanse & Nourish Your Migraines Away beginners package.
The second stage of mineral balancing is to balance copper, zinc, and manganese and help remove some toxic metals. Copper, zinc, and manganese are powerful micronutrients needed by the body in the right ratios for hormonal balance,and can cause serious problems if supplemented incorrectly, so this step is always done within the coaching relationship.
HTMA is an amazing tool for revealing mineral imbalances in migraine and developing a plan to bring them back into harmony.
