There are infinite ways that minerals can get into your body and in or on your hair – from local dust particles in the air from fuel combustion, to minerals slowly getting into your bodily tissues and organs through dental amalgams and even porcelain fillings.
Since you can’t really do much about these factors (at least not in the few months leading up to doing a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, aka HTMA), today I just want to focus on one of the biggest environmental factors for mineral exposure (besides food of course) that you CAN control: the water you drink and the piping or filters it runs through.
Municipal & Rural Water Supplies
Water in different municipalities comes from a wide variety of sources and therefore expresses unique mineral compositions, but all towns and cities have to test and treat water to make sure it doesn’t exceed allowable levels of certain minerals and pollutants. So, if you live in a city or town, it is unlikely that your water source will be a huge influence on your mineral status and HTMA levels.
Recently, I’ve had a few clients who live in rural areas on wells, so I want to address this issue here. I live on a rural homestead in the Cascades, and our house is also on a well. So we have a lot of iron, manganese, and copper in our well water, which also fluctuates with seasonal changes in water levels. That’s why we filter the iron from our well into our house – and collect local spring water for drinking.
Aside from the issue of how unfiltered well water could get inside your body, well water high in minerals can accumulate on the shaft of the hair. That’s why I suggest people who have wells wash their hair with spring water or filtered water purchased from a store before submitting their HTMA.
Most people living on a well will have that water tested for nitrates and bacteria as required by local county health authorities, but they don’t always test it for minerals. Some of the most important minerals to test for in water are: iron, copper, manganese, and arsenic. The presence of calcium and magnesium in well water is less concerning.
Water softeners contain potassium salts, so if your house is on a potassium-based water softener this is also an important consideration in your overall mineral status and for correctly interpreting an HTMA lab result.
Copper Piping & Acidic Water
Even if you live on a municipal water supply, if you are in an older building that has copper pipes or pipes soldered with lead, this can impact your health, contribute to migraines, and show up in your hair on an HTMA.
I currently have a client in Ireland who was perplexed that she would get a headache after drinking water first thing in the morning. I asked her to see if there were any green stains on the porcelain of her sink, and she came back with the photo here. It’s great when one major factor in migraine symptoms can be identified and addressed so easily (well, relatively – she has to buy spring water to drink now).
The cause of copper exposures from drinking water piped through copper is affected by the acidity level of the water. More acidic water causes more copper particulates to get into the water you drink. These pipes can be replaced and this factor can be eliminated as one potential root cause of your migraines.
Here are a few ideas for how to remove copper from your water: replace pipes, utilize a carbon filter that removes copper, run water for 15 minutes before drinking to flush out copper buildup, and neutralize acidic water.
To Summarize
Your tendency to have migraines is affected by many environmental factors besides what you eat. Take the time to investigate the presence of metal exposures from water sources and piping if you want to examine all contributing factors.
