What Is Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) and What Does It Actually Show?
If you’ve been told your blood tests are “normal” but you still feel exhausted, foggy, anxious, or like your body just isn’t responding anymore, it’s reasonable to wonder what’s being missed. Hair tissue mineral analysis, often shortened to HTMA, is one key tool that can help make sense of that gap.
What is hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA)?
Hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) is a functional test that measures mineral levels and ratios in hair tissue to reflect longer-term patterns of mineral use and stress adaptation in the body. Unlike blood tests, which show what is tightly regulated in circulation at one moment in time, HTMA offers insight into how minerals are being handled at a tissue level over weeks to months.
What HTMA is actually measuring
HTMA looks at minerals such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, zinc, copper, and others, not just in isolation, but in relation to each other. These relationships matter because minerals work as teams, not solo players.
In menopause, those relationships are often under pressure due to:
long-term stress and burnout
changing hormone signalling
blood sugar instability
poor recovery capacity
years of compensating rather than restoring
HTMA doesn’t diagnose disease. It doesn’t replace blood tests. What it does is show patterns of adaptation and imbalance that often sit underneath symptoms that don’t show up clearly elsewhere.
Why HTMA can be helpful in perimenopause and postmenopause
During perimenopause and postmenopause, the body becomes less tolerant of inefficiency.
Things you used to “get away with” stop working. Recovery slows. Stress hits harder.
Because blood is so tightly regulated, it can look reassuring on paper even when tissues are struggling. HTMA can help highlight:
patterns linked to poor stress tolerance
mineral imbalances associated with fatigue and low resilience
signs of long-term depletion or compensation
why energy, mood, sleep, or metabolism feel fragile
For many women, this explains why symptoms feel real and persistent despite being told everything looks fine.
What HTMA does not do
HTMA:
does not diagnose menopause, adrenal fatigue, or thyroid disease
does not replace blood tests or medical assessment
does not give instant answers in isolation
The value of HTMA lies in context and interpretation, not the test itself. Results need to be understood alongside symptoms, history, and other data. This is where many people go wrong when they try to DIY it.
Many women first encounter HTMA after being told their blood tests are “normal” despite persistent symptoms. This is explained in more detail in Why Blood Tests Can Look Normal While Menopause Symptoms Persist.
Who HTMA is most useful for
Hair tissue mineral analysis can be useful for people of all ages and all genders, as mineral balance underpins basic functions such as energy production, stress response, metabolic efficiency, and nervous system regulation. It is used across a wide range of contexts, from chronic fatigue and metabolic issues to stress-related symptoms and performance support.
In my clinical work, HTMA is most often applied to women in latter stages of perimenopause and postmenopause, where long-standing mineral imbalances and stress adaptations commonly become more apparent and less well tolerated. This is where many women notice that symptoms persist despite “normal” blood tests and conventional approaches.
It’s particularly helpful when symptoms are complex or long-standing rather than new or mild.
Why interpretation matters more than the test
Two people can have the same mineral level on paper and very different physiology underneath. That’s why ratios, patterns, and contradictions matter more than single numbers.
In my work interpreting hundreds of HTMA results in peri- and postmenopausal women, the biggest issue I see isn’t lack of testing, it’s oversimplification. Context is everything.
A final thought
HTMA isn’t a magic fix. It’s a lens. For the right person, at the right time, it can provide clarity when nothing else has quite explained what’s going on.
If you’ve felt dismissed, confused, or like your body is no longer behaving by the old rules, that clarity alone can be a relief.
If you’re wondering whether mineral testing is relevant for you, the best place to start is with a short explanation of what standard tests often miss and how HTMA fits into the picture.
I’ve put together a 15-minute video that walks through this in plain language.
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