A craving gets talked about as though it were a character reference. The chocolate at three in the afternoon, the salt shaker that comes out before anyone tastes anything, the pull toward fruit juice — people describe these as things they failed to resist, and they describe them apologetically. I have been reading hair mineral charts since 2010, and that framing has never once matched what I see on the paper.
What does show up, over and over, is stranger and far more useful: two people can be short of the very same mineral and want completely different foods because of it. One cannot get enough steak. The other cannot look at it. That sounds like a contradiction until you know which element is competing underneath — and then it stops being mysterious and becomes something you can actually work with.
A Craving Is a Request, Not a Verdict on Your Character
My years as a nuclear power quality engineer left me with one instinct I have never managed to switch off: an alarm is information. You do not scold the alarm or tape over the light. You trace it back until you find what is actually failing, because a symptom you silence is a failure you have merely rescheduled.
The mineral literature I trained in says something remarkably similar about appetite. People tend to crave the foods highest in the very minerals they cannot use — not the ones they never ate, but the ones sitting in their tissue in a form the body cannot get at. Read that way, a craving is a request from a system that knows something is missing, even when the pantry is full and the diet looks reasonable on paper.
Two Ways to Be Short of the Same Mineral
The distinction that makes the rest of this make sense comes from Dr. David Watts, who founded the laboratory I send hair samples to. He separates an absolute shortfall from a relative one, and they behave nothing alike.
An absolute shortfall is the obvious kind: the element reads frankly low, absorption is poor, losses are high. A relative shortfall is far sneakier. The element sits comfortably inside the normal range, yet it is low against whatever competes with it. Nothing was excreted; it was simply displaced out of the tissue where it belongs, and a single-number reading will pronounce it fine.
Now watch what that does to appetite. Zinc is the cleanest example. With an absolute zinc shortfall, the reported pattern is a greater desire for protein — the body goes hunting for the richest source of zinc there is, which is red meat. With a relative zinc shortfall, where zinc reads normal but copper is crowding it, the reported pattern is the reverse: altered taste and smell, and an aversion to protein.
Same mineral running short. Opposite behavior at the dinner table. There is a cruel elegance to it, because zinc is required for taste and smell in the first place, so a shortfall can disable the very sense that would have steered someone toward the food that would help. That is the heart of why cravings differ between people who look, on paper, like the same case.
When the Mineral Is There and the Body Still Cannot Use It
Copper shows the pattern most vividly. Copper only works when it is bound to a transport protein, and the main one is ceruloplasmin, made in the liver under a signal from the adrenal glands. When the adrenals have been running close to empty for years, the liver under-produces it. Copper that has nowhere to bind accumulates in tissue, while the enzymes that depend on copper go unserved.
The result is a genuine oddity: more copper in the body than there should be, and a functional shortage of it at the same moment. Intake can be more than adequate and the person still behaves as though copper-starved. So the craving arrives pointing straight at high-copper food — chocolate at the top of the list, the cardinal craving in this literature, with avocado not far behind.
What catches people off guard about copper is that both ends of the reading point the same direction. A high result and a very low one are each read as copper the body is not handling, the low one usually meaning copper is locked away in storage and never reaching the hair at all. Which is why I weigh zinc and copper against each other rather than trusting either number on its own. A high reading and a very low one are each read as copper the body is not handling, the low one usually meaning copper is locked in storage and never reaching the hair at all. Which is why I weigh zinc against copper as a ratio rather than trusting either number alone.
Which Competitor Is in Play Decides the Fork
The teaching example in the older literature is deliberately uncomfortable, and it is a pattern rather than two clients anyone met. Two people arrive at the same tired place with manganese running low. One reaches for chocolate, because the copper lift feels like being handed a few good hours. The other reaches for cigarettes, because the cadmium in the smoke can stand in for zinc. Copper produces a floating, detached feeling; cadmium produces a grounded, in-control one. Which of those a person goes for tracks temperament as much as chemistry.
I keep that example because the second choice is a terrible bargain and the request underneath it was still legitimate. Cadmium displaces zinc in more than seventy enzyme systems, settles in the kidneys and on the bone surface, and carries a half-life measured in decades. The body asked for a lift and paid for it for thirty years.
The same fork shows up in gentler places. A salt craving is frequently a signal from adrenal glands that are not holding onto sodium, and sometimes a manganese signal instead. A pull toward fruit and juice often tracks potassium. Sugar cravings often track chromium, and the calcium-to-magnesium relationship behind blood sugar patterns usually belongs in that picture too. Four foods, four requests, and no way on earth to tell them apart by willpower.
Why I Read the Chart Instead of Guessing
I began with hair analysis in 2010 under ARNP Julie Walker, here in Kennewick, Washington, then went to the source: I worked directly with Analytical Research Labs testing family and friends, listened to every cassette Dr. Paul Eck recorded, and read every newsletter the lab published. I signed up with Dr. Larry Wilson in August 2011 and have practiced independently since the autumn of 2017. All of it has made me less willing to guess a mineral picture from symptoms alone.
A hair tissue mineral analysis is a screening tool for nutritional and toxic element status. It is not a diagnostic test, it does not diagnose anything, and it does not predict. What it shows is levels and the ratios between them, which is where the information lives. The sample has to be run unwashed. Washing at the laboratory strips out sodium and potassium, two of the readings I most need, and once they are gone the chart can no longer tell me what I came to it for.
I retest every three to four months, because chemistry shifts as things improve and some patterns surface only on a later chart. My Pattern Report tracks that progression across retests, which is often when the fork in someone’s cravings finally explains itself. The beginner’s version is in my free guide to what hair can reveal about your health, and the stress stage a chart is sitting in is worth understanding before you order anything.
The Kinder Reading
Here is what I want someone to take from this. The body does not ask for what will rebuild it. It asks for what will lift it now. Chocolate delivers a few hours and then the request comes back, which is why a craving feels bottomless and trying harder feels like failing at something simple. That is not a defect of character. It is a control system doing what it was built to do with the information it has.
Two people, one shortfall, two cravings — the difference is which element is competing, and whether the mineral is genuinely low or merely displaced. You cannot read that off a symptom, and certainly not off how disciplined someone feels. You read it off a chart, which is why I start with a hair analysis rather than the story alone, and a large part of how I came to this work. A craving read correctly stops being something to apologize for and becomes the most honest piece of information in the room.
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This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
