HTMA & Long Covid
How Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis Can Help Identify Post-COVID-19 Syndrome
What is Long Covid?
“Long COVID”, also known as post-COVID-19 syndrome or chronic COVID, refers to various new, recurrent, or ongoing symptoms experienced more than four weeks after contracting COVID-19. For some people, post-COVID-19 syndrome can linger for months or even years and may cause significant disability.
How Common is Long Covid?
According to the CDC, nearly 20% of adults in the U.S. currently (as of September 2022) have symptoms of long COVID, and this syndrome is especially prevalent among younger adults and women. Long COVID rates are nearly three times as high for adults ages 50–59 than for adults 80 and older. The rate of long COVID among women in the U.S. is currently 9.4%, compared to 5.5% for men. Approximately 16 million Americans aged 18–65 have long COVID today.
Long COVID can impact people in a wide variety of ways. Many of the most common symptoms are neurological, such as brain fog, headaches, depression, anxiety, dizziness, and neuromuscular disorders. Other common symptoms include fatigue, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, insomnia, coughing, heart palpitations, changes in taste or smell, digestive issues, skin conditions, joint or muscle pain, and changes in menstrual cycles. COVID can also cause long-term and significant inflammation throughout the body and mitochondrial damage.
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis to Help Identify Long COVID:
Utilized extensively by OHN clients, Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) is a very informative health screening tool. HTMA measures your body’s mineral and heavy metal levels by testing your hair. The results include the raw levels of these minerals and metals, as well as important ratios between certain minerals.
Certain patterns in HTMA are associated with viral susceptibility and can be influenced or changed by viruses in the body. A common pattern seen in patients with ongoing or past viral conditions such as long COVID is high concentrations of copper and calcium and a low zinc-to-copper ratio, often indicating a zinc deficiency.
Mineral and heavy metal levels in the body also relate to and impact common long COVID symptoms such as fatigue, joint and muscle aches, sleep issues, and brain fog, and there may be additional health issues that need the support of an HTMA in order to heal, such as dysregulation in the endocrine system that could be causing adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism, or increased parathyroid activity.
HTMA is an indispensable tool for guiding treatment of many health issues, including long COVID and the similar chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
In the sample data shown in Figure 1, it would be recommended to take zinc to help reduce excess copper levels in the body and support the immune system. The elevated Ca/Mg ratio indicates a need for magnesium supplementation, and it would be recommended to avoid foods that are high in calcium or copper.
Additional dietary and supplementation recommendations would be made based on the other health concerns of the patient. (Supplement recommendations would vary for each patient depending on the hair analysis results.)
Summary:
Recent research has shown that the effects of COVID-19 on the brain, nervous system, and body as a whole can be serious and long-lasting. HTMA data may be able to identify patterns that reflect past and current viral conditions in the body, and in turn indicate ways to balance the body’s mineral and heavy metal levels through nutrition and supplementation. If you are suffering from long COVID, an HTMA would be helpful to the healing process.
