to get back with you. It's been a rather hectic week at work and home.
Anyway, I really like how you can access lab reports at this site. That is cool.
Do you have a password? I can't gain access without it. Sorry. I've posted the "Counting Rules". Maybe they will help you.
"The Counting Rules"
Written by Andy Cutler
INTRODUCTION: WHY HAVE "COUNTING RULES"
Mercury is taken up by the body tissues and held for longer or shorter times. The blood holds on to it for a few months, the brain forever, and the rest of the tissues are in between.
Thus in chronic poisoning, or long after an exposure (such as from vaccines) some tissues have very little mercury in them. Other tissues may still have plenty and be well poisoned.
Unfortunately, most medical tests sample tissues that don't hold on to mercury very long. Because of this, measuring mercury in blood, urine, hair or feces is often not helpful in determining whether a person is poisoned.
The way to tell if a person is poisoned when mercury doesn't show up in the readily accessible things people will let the doc have some of is to test those accessible tissues for the biochemical abberations mercury causes. Since mercury impairs mineral transport, examining hair for the level of many essential elements lets us determine if mercury has left its signature in the hair's biochemistry even if the mercury itself doesn't show up.
ABOUT TEST RESULTS, IN GENERAL
Medical laboratory tests are standardized by testing a bunch of normal, healthy people and determining "normal ranges" where 1 person in 40, on average, is above them and 1 in 40 below, for a total of 2 in 40 or 1 in 20 who do not fall "within normal limits."
Of course, with this statistical definition, this means that if you do eight gazillion tests in some mondo test panel, some of them are expected to randomly be out of range. The Doctor's Data hair element analysis is in effect one of those mondo test panels, like a "chem 25" blood test panel. While it is extremely difficult to go look at the myriad interrelationships of all the things on these panels (and in practice nobody does it), it is possible to use statistical methods to turn the whole panel into "one test" that is either "within normal limits" or "abnormal." I have done this and generated the following rules to interpret the DDI "essential and other" elements portion of their test which includes 23 elements. For tests including a number of elements different than 23, the rules have to be rederived.
HOW TO READ A HAIR TEST FROM DDI
If any of the following rules are met, the test is "abnormal" for mineral transport and suggests heavy metal toxicity. These rules are ONLY for the Doctor's Data test - tests by other companies need different rules. I highly recommend using the DDI test.
Count the number of results that are above "average," that is above the 50th percentile line in the middle of the page and the bar extends to the right instead of to the left.
Count the number of results that are all the way to either edge of the page, "very elevated" or "very low."
Count the number of results that are in the middle band of the page, with a short bar, and are neither "elevated" nor "low."
The result is abnormal and suggests heavy metal intoxication if any of the following criteria are met:
The number of essential elements "very elevated" and "very low" is 4 or more.
The number of essential elements entirely inside the middle band is 14 or less.
The number of essential elements above average is EITHER 5 or less OR it is 18 or more.
If any ONE of these criteria is met, the test result is abnormal.
If any one (or more) of these criteria are met, there is a 1 in 44 chance that it happened randomly and a 43 in 44 chance that something is wrong. Of course, the chances that it is random diminish rapidly as the deviation departs from the minimum listed number, just as the chance that a result on a blood test, say for the liver enzyme ALT means something if it is 300 points above normal instead of 3 points above normal. (since you can't count, say, 5 and a half tests out of 23 doing it this way I couldn't make it exactly 1 in 40 so I made it as close as I could).
ADDITIONAL PATTERNS WHICH ARE CHARACTERISTIC OF MERCURY TOXICITY
There are some characteristic nonstatistical findings, too, in mercury toxic people that I thought I would mention. These are probably caused by more heavy metals than just mercury, but are NOT caused by COPPER toxicity - copper toxic people with nothing else going on have very normal looking hair analyses except for very elevated copper. Not everyone has these but they are reasonably common:
Typically, the calcium is vastly elevated. Usually the lithium is very low, too.
Sometimes there is a really characteristic pattern of Ca and Mg very high with Na and K very low. This isn't present in many cases but is common enough to mention since it is strongly diagnostic.
The most important finding is a bit difficult to describe, but if you look at the hair analyses of some "normal" people it is quite obvious by eye - mercury toxic people have their essential elements much more scattered than well people. Lots of highs and lows.
HOW TO READ A HAIR TEST FROM GREAT SMOKIES
The GSDL hair element analysis is interpreted by counting the number of "abnormal" highs and lows (way at the edges of the little bell curves on the test result sheet) for the nutrient elements + the additional elements. This gives 21 elements considered.
The number of results above "average" is also counted by drawing a line down the middle of the column with a ruler since there is no appropriate marking on the page. Do this carefully.
If the number of abnormal highs plus abnormal lows is 3 or more the test result is overall abnormal for mineral transport (and positive for mercury or other poisoning).
If the number of elements that are above average (above the line you drew down the middle) is not between 6 and 15 (that is, if it is either less than 6 or greater than 15) then the test result is overall abnormal for mineral transport (and positive for mercury or other poisoning).
This information is provided so you can interpret the GSDL hair test if you happened to get one. If you are considering getting a test the Doctor's Data test is presented in such a way that it is more useful, and it is also less expensive. Thus the DDI test is a better choice if you are offered one. But if you already had the test, or don't have a choice this is how to interpret the GSDL hair elements test.
APPENDIX
For those who like numbers and equations, the way I did this is pretty simple.
The probability of a given number of event "A" and event "B" where "B" is "not A" out of n tries is:
Pa ^ Na * Pb ^ Nb * 23CNb
(23CNa = 23CNb since Na + Nb = 23)
where Na is the number of events A and Nb is the number of events B, and Pa and Pb are the probabilities of events A and B. Pa + Pb = 1.
So I could calculate this for all Na and sum the probabilities up from, say, zero to some number. What I did was calculate probabilities and add them up so the total probability of satisfying the counting rules given above is 0.023 (2.3%) and all the the 3 different things I check have similar probabilities of occurrence.
The probability, Pa, of something being "very elevated" or "very low" is defined by the "normal limits" of a medical test as 0.05.
The probability, Pa, of something being within one standard deviation of average (in the middle band on the DDI test report) is defined by statistics as 2/3.
The probability, Pa, of something being greater than average, is of course 0.5 or 50%.