7: Understanding HTMA Retesting and its Impact on Optimal Health

Understanding your body's mineral status is crucial for optimal health and hormonal balance. In this episode, I discuss the importance of HTMA retesting and why it should be a part of your health maintenance routine, as well as how often I recommend doing a retest. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Hey guys, I am sitting down to record this seventh episode of the podcast and I'm still. My throat is a little froggy. This week I've got some coughing going on, so you'll just have to excuse those things if they happen. I've also been sneezing some today. So, fair warning, you might hear those things in the middle of this podcast because, again, I'm not editing these. They just are what they are because that's real life. So bear with me. I've got my water here in case I need to take a drink and we'll just roll with it. So I was.

Speaker 1 0:33

I did something this past weekend that, as a parent, reflecting on it, I was like not proud of the way that I handled the situation, and this is kind of like a life update and a mindset thing all wrapped up into one and I wanted to share it because I just think it could be helpful for other people. So when I was growing up, at Christmas time my mom loves to decorate. Like she puts up multiple trees, she decorates the whole house. They decorate outside. It's beautiful, and one of my favorite things was the Christmas village that she would put up, and actually, when I was real young, my grandmother would also put up a huge Christmas village. It took up like her whole dining room table and I loved it. Like I just loved the little houses, the little people. I just think they're so pretty and so cute and dainty and I just I just love them and I enjoy putting one up at my house as well.

Speaker 1 1:35

But honestly, I didn't put one up last year because I haven't figured out a good spot to do it in our new house and of course, hollis was a year old last year. Like my kids are little and they're just kind of into everything and we still had my dog last year and so I was afraid to. I kind of want to put it on the floor and I'll kind of get to why in a minute. But I want to put it on the floor and I just like didn't have a good spot for it and I knew the dog might get into it. I just decided I just last year was not the year to do it. Honestly, this year might not be the year either, I don't know yet. No, I'm just gonna. I probably am gonna put it up this year, but anyway, saturday my mom and me and Kenley went to a craft show I couldn't think of the word a craft show and then we needed to go to Walmart to get some things.

Speaker 1 2:26

And when we were at Walmart we went in the Christmas section because my mom needed to get some Christmas lights and we were going through the aisles and Kenley, we needed to, like, look at the ornaments. Kenley picked out a few ornaments for her little tree and then we came down the aisle that had the Christmas village stuff and there was this really cute barn and all of these accessory animals to go with it. And Hollis is very into animals and barns and things right now and I saw it and I immediately wanted it and I thought this will be so cute to add our Christmas village, because I currently don't have anything like that. I have like regular houses and stuff, but I kind of try to get a new house each year. I have some houses that were passed down to me from someone that special to me and then I have some that I have bought throughout the years and I just kind of try to add to it as a go.

Speaker 1 3:21

And anyway I knew going into it like one of the things that my mom did that I can remember when we were little is that when no one was no one's my brother for those that don't know, I should have preface with that. But when he was young older than Hollis and Kenley, my kids are, but still young like elementary school age and he really liked to play with cars and stuff, my mom would put the Christmas village in the floor and he was allowed to play in it, and when people came over and saw that or saw him in it, they were like oh like, are you supposed to be touching that? Is that allowed? Is that okay? Because, yeah, these things are breakable. But my mom's philosophy on it kind of was like I decorate for us to all be able to enjoy it and I want them to be able to enjoy this and he enjoys playing with it and I'm going to allow him to do that, and if it means that something gets broken, then we'll just deal with that when it happens. Like she had taught him and me to like be gentle with them, but you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 4:23

And so I kind of had that in my mind when I bought this and I was like this is just something I'm purchasing from Walmart, it's not expensive, it's not like a family piece that's been passed down to me or anything. I'm just gonna buy it and I'm gonna let them play with it and if it breaks, it breaks no big deal. So we get it home and in my mind originally I was like I'll hang on to this and Get it out when I put the rest of my Christmas village out and then this will be like their special part of it they can play with and interact with. And I got home and the kids seen it and they were super excited. I was like, whatever, we'll just get it out now. It's no big deal. I'm not decorating for a few more days. So we get it out. And not that day, but Sunday afternoon we had been at my mom's all day because we had done Thanksgiving there.

Speaker 1 5:11

And we get home and first of all, the barn part of it plugs into the wall, has light in it, and Hollis started messing with that and I told him. I said if you you know mommy's the only one that can touch this if you mess with this again, I'm gonna have to put it up because it's not safe for you to touch that. Well, of course you know he's too. He has no impulse control. So he tries to mess with it again and I remove the barn, just the barn. I leave all the little figurines, the animals, the people for them to be able to play with, and I take it over and I put it up in a place where he can't reach it. And then in a few minutes Kenley brings this handful. She's got her little arms as full as she can get with all of the people and the animals and the figurines and she's carrying them over to the kitchen to me and I'm like Kenley, mom didn't take those away, it's okay to still play with those. Why do you have them all in your hands? Why are you bringing them to me?

Speaker 1 6:07

And about that time she drops, like something happens and they just start falling and of course their glass, they're other. I don't even know what that's called. I mean it is glass, but y'all know what I mean. It's like sir, ceramic Maybe I don't know, but they start to break and little like cow feet and cow heads and pig parts, like stuff's going everywhere. And in that moment I'm so Frustrated and I'm like fussing at her and I'm kind of yelling at her and she's just looking at me like oh my gosh, I realized like I should have done that. Now you're yelling at me and I don't know what to do and she's like getting smaller and smaller and she's just kind of like walking away for me and I'm like go sit on the couch until I can clean this up, because of course, I don't want anybody to get hurt Either on these things that have just fallen in the floor and broken and are potentially sharp. And so I Immediately felt bad.

Speaker 1 7:02

I was like I literally bought this thing. I stood in Walmart, I chose to buy this thing and I said to myself at the top if they break all of it, it really doesn't matter, it's fine, I want them to enjoy it. And then here I am, when it's gotten broken, and I'm fussing at her and I'm, you know, like not only just fussing, but like I've yelled at her and I really, like took a few minutes to take some deep breaths and be like why am I? I don't really care that they've gotten broken, it's not about that. So why am I reacting this way? And this is something that I've been working on the past few months, specifically with the kids and with discipline and when I'm like there is something coming up that I'm fussing at them for, like, is my reaction the way that I want it to be? And if it's not, then what were the contributing factors around that? That calls me to react to the way that I did and now I'm not proud of it and I just did some reflecting, like we had been gone from home all day long, which so, like the kids retired, I tried to get them to nap before we went.

Speaker 1 8:10

They wouldn't take a nap, so they were kind of fussy and testy. It was close to bedtime. I knew that we were kind of like in a rush to get home, get everybody settled, give them time to unwind, get their Jamie's on, get them in the bed so we could be ready for Monday. I had a bunch of stuff that I had carried in for my mom's house, that I had, like I had taken food and stuff and I was trying to get things put away in the refrigerator. And it's like one of those moments where you're like can things just like be fine for a minute, like I just need five minutes to get this stuff put away and not have to deal with something else going wrong or cleaning up another mess. Like I was already in the middle of cleaning up this food stuff and it just, it just frustrates you. You know and you know that stuff is gonna happen.

Speaker 1 8:56

But my point in sharing this is that I have gotten to the point where I will be able to like not stop myself in the moment, but as soon as it happened I was like why did you do that? And kind of asking myself those questions and identifying what the contributing factors were for me, kind of like losing my cool about what had happened, and then taking it a step further and going back to Kenley and having a conversation with her and saying I'm sorry that mom yelled about that. I shouldn't have yelled. I know that it was just an accident. Accidents happen. This is why mommy had said you know, we have to be gentle with these. This was not a good choice for you to make to like pick all of these up and carry them across the room, because this is what happened.

The Importance of HTMA Retesting

Speaker 1 9:47

Like I still wanted her to know that, like she hadn't made the best choice, but that I was apologizing for my reaction because it wasn't the best either, and that has been a growth thing for me this year and something that I have tried to be more intentional about apologizing to them when my reaction is over the top or more than it should be, because I don't feel like that is something that our parents did with us, and sometimes in my family we have a tendency to like if there is a disagreement or an argument or something, it just happens and then nobody like apologizes or like talks about it afterwards Like then everybody just kind of picks up and acts like it didn't happen. And I don't really want to don't really want to like pass that pattern on to my kids. I guess I want them to be in the practice of like apologizing when they need to or when something they react in a poor way, and I'm not sharing any of that to like make you feel bad if that's not how you currently handle things or if that doesn't feel like the right way to handle things in in your family. Or I'm not sharing it to like down the way that I was raised, because I was, I had great parents and I was raised really well. But I'm just sharing it because it's just part of parenting and it's it falls into this mindset category of things that you guys seem to be really interested in or asking me a lot of questions about, and I just thought. I just thought of a chair and that's. I have talked about that way longer than I anticipated.

Speaker 1 11:42

So, moving on, my real purpose in today's episode, and like the content that I wanted to get to, was about htma retesting and luckily this is something that I can cover quick, pretty quickly. It's it's not lengthy, but people will come to me to get htma testing. And for those of you guys that don't know or may not know what htma testing is, first of all it stands for hair tissue mineral analysis, but that's a mouthful, so we just call it htma testing. This is a test where someone is taking a very small sample of their hair and they are sending it off to a lab and they are examining, within the hair, your mineral status and the excretion of heavy metals. And what's really nice about this test is that we're not looking at one single point in time the way that we are with, say, blood work this, since it's using hair and like, if you don't know, our hair is made up of dead cells. So that is where we're getting insight.

Speaker 1 12:52

We're looking at these mineral levels inside the cells, which is also not something that we get to look at on blood work. With blood work, you are looking outside the cell more in, like the serum of the blood, and with the htma testing we can actually get insight into what is going on inside the cell. So really valuable information. And one other key component to it, or key advantage of it, is that it is looking at three to four months of time. Instead of, like with blood work, you only look at one single point in time, like that instant that the blood work was drawn in most cases. There's some. There's some exceptions there, but we're not going to get into that.

Speaker 1 13:35

So I use the information that we get from the lab report to determine what your mineral status is, determine how your body is utilizing minerals, how your body is handling stress, how easily it is for nutrients and minerals and things like your hormones like a specific example would be thyroid hormone how easy is it for those things to get inside your cells and do their job? That's where they have to be to really like, function in and do their job, and we need to know how well that system is working. And htma testing gives us that insight and we can create a plan based off of those results. Sorry, I had to get a drink. We can create a plan based on those results that you can then take and implement.

Speaker 1 14:26

But the question that comes up and something that I really work with my clients on is them understanding the importance of, and timing of, html retesting. I feel like I have somewhat of a unique perspective on this compared to maybe some of my colleagues, other people in this space that do HTML testing, because some people will tell you that you need to do HTML testing every three to four months because that's the measure of time that you're looking at with an HTML test. But I've kind of experimented with this with my own results and then with some of my clients' results, and what I have found to be kind of the sweet spot is testing at six months after you have started a new protocol or new plan, maybe new supplements, whatever it might be that changed based on your last results, because you want to give your body time to adapt to whatever changes it is that you've made or whatever supplements that you're now starting to incorporate. You want to give your body enough time to acclimate. And then you definitely want new data that you're looking at on your next hair test. If you tested too soon especially if you're someone that your hair grows really slow you could potentially, if you test too quickly, be looking at some of the same data in that hair sample, and you don't want that. You want enough time to have passed that.

Speaker 1 15:59

When you retest your HTML, you are looking at new data, you're seeing the effect of the new changes that you have made and then you're able to make decisions and move forward accordingly. So one of the main reasons that you retest your HTML is to see what's working, what areas do we need to continue to focus on and how do we need to tweak your plan, your protocol, your supplements to continue to support the body. Because if you just test one time and then you never test again, you're not really going to know if what you're doing is truly working. Like, yes, absolutely, you can look at your symptoms, look at the way you feel, and those are really really important components. But it's also valuable to get the data again and look at a new HTML test and see what adjustments might need to be made.

Speaker 1 16:59

And so then people ask me okay, I have this initial test and then I retest in six months, but then what? And that answer is going to be a little bit different for everybody and it kind of depends on how depleted you are, how much work you have to do, what your just overall status is like is there a life event that's happening in there, like a pregnancy or breastfeeding or something like that? It's going to be different for everybody, but kind of like general rule of thumb is, if you can afford it and accommodate testing every six months, that's great. If you can't and you can only do it once a year, then we work with that and we incorporate that. I do think that there is value in testing every six months until you get to a point that your minerals are pretty much optimal levels. You're feeling really good Like. Once you get to that point, unless you notice a big shift in symptoms, then there's really no reason to test, but like once a year to just kind of keep a pulse on things. So I hope that that helps answer some of those like really common questions about HTML retesting.

Speaker 1 18:11

If you have other questions, find me on Instagram, connect with me there, happy to answer any questions that you have. You can find me at wellness with Banda on Instagram, and then you guys have access to like my email too in the show notes. If you don't do Instagram, Okay for today's mindset minute, I want to. This might get kind of lengthy too. I'll try to keep it short. I feel like there was a lot of mindset content in this episode, but I want to share a mindset shift that I had just yesterday. So I attended a class that Lindsey Chambers if you guys don't follow her, she is at Lindsey's lifestyle and she spells Lindsey with a Y on Instagram and she is a mindset coach. She posts a lot of great content. I recommend you guys to follow her. But I attended a class that she had and it was talking about boundaries and one of the things that we were talking about.

Speaker 1 19:11

That has been an issue for me, and I'm sure lots of you guys that are parents can relate to this is your kids going somewhere and people feeding them food that you would not normally feed them, and I feel like typically, this is like sugar and coax and candy and stuff. There might be other examples, but that's been the issue for me. So when my kids go to my grandma's house, it is like a free for all with the sugar and the candy and now, as of this week, even coax, and I am not super rigid with my kids that I never allow them to have those things Like we absolutely indulge in those things on a regular basis, but it just we take it and at times, like the timing of it is really important for my kids. I have learned that the timing of it is really important for my kids Because, like, if they do it too close to bedtime, then their sleep is impacted. They have a hard time falling asleep, anthony especially, and his sleep is already a struggle, and like, if it's, you know, it kind of depends on, like what it is that they're having to, because it affects them in different ways and it also has to do with, like, the dyes that are in some of these products.

Speaker 1 20:33

And you know, my grandparents are 80 and nearly 80 years old and they just don't have a lot of knowledge about the way that sugar impacts people in general, but especially these kids dies. Like they just don't, or my grandparents don't anyway, they're not interested in that. My mamma thinks it's like crazy. When I try to talk to her about it, she's just like well, we've been eating this way for 77 years and we're fine. I don't know what you're worried about. I fed you all of this stuff when you were a kid and you know it was never an issue then. Why is it an issue now?

Speaker 1 21:15

And you know, to a certain extent I've just kind of like tried to let things go, because I'm like these are my grandparents, my kids' great-grandparents, and they're not gonna be here forever and I want them to be able to like enjoy time together because they're not always gonna be here and I don't want to put a damper on that. But it also is frustrating for me when I feel like I'm making a really reasonable request, like just, can you feed my kids something else? Like you wanna feed them, that's fine, but can we make some healthier choices? Can we get some fruit? Can we get, like, a peanut butter sandwich? Can we get, maybe, peanut butter and crackers Drinks? Like, can we they really they like water? Can we just have water? And I don't feel like I am asking too much, but my grandma does and like sometimes it's not worth a fight. Other times, you know, if I really think it's gonna impact our day or our night, I will put my foot down and say like we cannot have all the things unlimited. Today we can have this one treat and then nothing else. And sometimes she still overrides me and gives them like 50 things. But it is what it is.

Respecting Boundaries as a Parent

Speaker 1 22:32

But so anyway, the mindset shift that I've had around this from something that Lindsey said to me was that she's not doing this thing, she's not feeding my kids junk to annoy me. And she was like maybe her love language is caring for people in this way and like feeding people is part of her love language and how she is like sharing her or showing her care and her love for them. And I had never thought about that before. I don't know why, but I just I mean nobody had said it to me, there's nobody. I had nothing had prompted me to ever have that thought before. And I thought about it and I was like that is 1000% it. Like my grandma has been a homemaker her whole life. That was her job to take care of my dad and my papal and she has cooked all of their meals and prepares their lunches and like that is her life and that is what she, that's what she does for people. And I'm like that's it. And I just kind of like reflected on that after she said that and I realized that she's not doing it to annoy me, she's not doing like.

Speaker 1 23:57

I kept feeling like when I would leave from there. I kept leaving feeling like why can she not just respect me enough to respect my wishes. And that's what was frustrating me about it was that I felt like I was not being respected in my role as a parent, in my authority to make those types of decisions for my kids. And after Lindsay said that and I was thinking about it, I was like this is really not about me at all, which, like what a thing to you know what a realization to have anyway, like it's actually not about you, but that just kind of gave me some like I don't know peace, comfort, just made it okay in my head more.

Speaker 1 24:43

I guess that like she does this kind of knowing and examining, like why she's doing it and where it's coming from, that she does it and I'm like, okay, well, that's just how she's showing her love to my kids and I'm just gonna let it go and be what it's gonna be, unless it's like a specific situation that I truly do need to put my foot down and say no, and in which case I will set that boundary and enforce it and try to have like a conversation with her to explain why we can't have ice cream and candy and cookies and a Coke today, you know.

Speaker 1 25:20

So I don't know if that's a common thing that you guys encounter with your families, and specifically maybe grandparents and great grandparents, but it certainly is something that we deal with on the regular in my family and that just kind of helped shift my mindset around it. And anytime that I can find something, have a mindset shift around something that's like I no longer have to worry about that, I don't really have to stress about it anymore, I can just let it go and let it be, then I think that's a positive because I think you know, as I have shared here before, at the root of most hormone imbalances and imbalances within the body with our minerals and stuff is stress and all of these little things are stressors that add up over time. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I know it was probably longer. I don't know how long I've been talking, but I feel like it's been for a long time. So I'm gonna leave you with that for today.