Guest guest Posted December 29, 2001 Report Share Posted December 29, 2001 Sally, The hair is an excretory tissue, and so may need to be interpreted more like urine than blood. I'm not aware of any studies showing high or low sulfur in hair to be related to systemic levels. Loss or thinning hair can be seen in sulfur deficiency, and that is probably because the very formation of hair requires a lot of sulfate. Chondroitin sulfate particularly has a role in the hair cycle in animals who have a hair growth season, and a season when that growth stops. The growth occurs when the papilla is rich with chondroitin sulfate, and stops when that cycles out. Areas of selective hair loss, alopecia, have abnormal sulfation going on in the follicles that are affected, and minoxidil, the drug used for baldness, upregulates sulfated GAGs, and this is apparently how it helps induce hair growth. Another interesting issue is that chondroitin can be sulfated in different positions depending upon which sulfotransferase is acting upon it. These sulfotransferases have different affinity for both sulfate and for the GAG chain they modify, so it makes sense that if sulfation is reduced, that the relative effects on these enzymes would produce changes in the ratios of chondroitin which is sulfated at one position vs. the other. Sulfation at the four position produces a molecule that binds certain cations better, but it would be reduced during sulfur deficiency. It would be interesting to know if this would change the proportion of the different cations that end up in hair...not because there is more or less of these cations in the cells that make hair, but because the affinity for the GAGs might have changed because the sulfated GAGs themselves changed. I don't know that this has ever been properly investigated. At 04:27 AM 12/29/2001 +0000, you wrote: >Hello, > >My son's hair analysis (from Great Smokies) showed low copper and >high zinc. I am assuming that this means what it says - he has low >copper and high zinc. Is this correct? Does this mean I should not >supplement zinc during chelation? I get the impression that most >children's copper/zinc ratio is the other way around. Is it very >abnormal for autistic children to show low copper, high zinc? > >Also, ds' sulphur on the hair test was off the charts. Can I assume >from this that he is already high in sulphur, or do we need to do a >plasma cisteine test? Our dr. seemed to think he was storing sulphur >in his hair, but was still low in his body (or something like that). >Does this make any sense? > >Thanks for any insight. > >God Bless, > >Sally > > > >======================================================= > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 29, 2001 Report Share Posted December 29, 2001 > -----Original Message----- > From: Owens [mailto:lwo@...] > Loss or > thinning hair can > be seen in sulfur deficiency, and that is probably because the very > formation of hair requires a lot of sulfate. > > Chondroitin sulfate particularly has a role in the hair cycle in animals > who have a hair growth season, and a season when that growth stops. The > growth occurs when the papilla is rich with chondroitin sulfate, > and stops > when that cycles out. > , My daughter did not show any improvement, nor problems with Epsom salt baths when I tried them about a year to a year and a half ago, so I just didn't continue with them. At that time, and since she was a baby, she had a lot of hair growth. In the last 6 months or so her hair growth has slowed down quite a bit. Would this show that she has developed a sulfate problem whereas she had not had one before? Thanks, Tana Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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