Basic tenants in Wholistic Kinesiology® Part 3

There is the other peril of the alternative health care practitioners. They are just as guilty of one size fits all treatment plans. They are also guilty of charlatanism. This discipline leaves itself open to bizarre health care practices and claims. So many supplements are available today and so many of them are useless and sometimes downright harmful. The regulation of dietary supplements is sketchy at best. What is scary is that it is left up to the manufacturers to police their own products. “Under the provisions of DSHEA, manufacturers of dietary supplements are not required to provide evidence of efficacy or safety prior to marketing the product. Moreover, except for a supplement that contains a "new dietary ingredient," dietary supplements are not required to have FDA approval or to be registered with the FDA before they are produced and marketed. Manufacturers are responsible for establishing their own manufacturing practice guidelines, because there are no FDA regulations to ensure the identity, purity, quality, composition, or strength of dietary supplements.1 “

The results are that we have so many products that make fantastic claims that contain virtually no active ingredients. Several studies were done recently and the results were very revealing. ”A survey of St John's Wort products purchased from Californian health food stores has found that the concentration of hypericin can vary from just 2.9 per cent of what is stated on the label to as much as 114 per cent. And sometimes the majority of the active ingredient is not hypericin itself but a close relative, pseudohypericin” (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.1598).

What we need is education and a standard by which we can measure truth in our own bodies. What if you had an alarm signal that beeped every time you tried a supplement or food that was bad for you? This would be very handy at directing you toward optimal health. The truth is that we do have this alarm. However, we have become so adept at ignoring it that we can no longer hear it. If we listened closely to the signals our body gave us we would have no problems. What about that fatigue after we eat something? Sleepiness, mental fog, aches and pains, slight headache, intestinal pain? These were all alarms that we have learned to ignore. Until we begin to listen to our bodies signals again, muscle testing allows us to tap into that information in a very graphic and gentle manner.

If we paid attention to what our bodies were trying to say and only did healthful practices the majority of the time, we would have radiant health way beyond the norm and be very resistant to disease processes. Because we believe in the inherent wisdom of the body, we try to get to the root of the health problem and prevent it before it becomes a bigger problem. This is the specialty of natural medicine. Modern medicine has nothing to offer in this regard except some vague advice about balanced diet, getting some exercise and avoiding stress (would that it was that easy!!) We can get very specific about what that means for you as an individual by using Wholistic Kinesiology.

Allopathic medicine believes in trying to outsmart the body. They believe that disease processes are a mistake that the body has made instead of a signal of imbalance. They go after the symptoms and try to make us comfortable while the disease process remains blazing out of control only to emerge later as a medical emergency. Their further belief in the germ theory makes hypochondriacs out of us. We are scared of the tiny little disease carrying bugs that threaten to get us at every turn. So we wash with antibacterial soaps, and scrub our bowls with scrubbing bubbles and clean ourselves with sometimes some very harmful substances. While I am not proposing that we do away with basic hygiene, I worry about the current trend of over concern with the small critters that surround us and are sometimes very beneficial. We tend to go overboard with antibiotics and antibacterial soaps in an effort to be sterile.

Antibacterial soaps were used mainly in clinical health care environments. Now, antibacterial soaps are a $16 billion-a-year industry. Many products now contain antibacterial agents in which the active ingredient is triclosan, an antibacterial agent that kills bacteria and inhibits bacterial growth; it also has been shown in a recent study to kill human calls. (Triclosan: cytotoxicity, mode of action, and induction of apoptosis in human gingival cells in vitro. Zuckerbraun HL, Babich H, May R, Sinensky MC. Department of Biology, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10016, USA.)

Triclosan was introduced into consumer products in 1995, and its use has spread rapidly.
Many scientists fear that the widespread use could lead to a strain of resistant bacteria, or “superbugs,” and cause the ingredients to lose effectiveness for the times when they really are necessary. In the study, published in the March 2, 2004 Journal Annals of Internal Medicine, people who used antibacterial soaps and cleansers developed cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever, vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms just as often as people who used products that did not contain antibacterial ingredients.

Many traditional medical authorities now accept the hygiene hypothesis, which proposes the idea that children need to be exposed to some bacteria in early childhood in order to strengthen their immune systems. Children who are not exposed to common bacteria, which are wiped out by antibacterial soap, may be more prone to immune problems such as asthma and allergies.

This is just one illustration of the thinking that bugs cause disease. If this were so, why was it that Mother Theresa could go to disease infested areas and never become ill? Why aren’t doctors the sickest of all, they are exposed day in and day out with all kinds of germs from patients. Clearly there is something else going on here. Louis Pasture even admitted his error on his death bed. He stated that it truly was the terrain not the bugs that was the cause of disease processes. Getting rid of all the bugs is impossible and not even a good idea. So many species live in and on us and are there for our mutual benefit. Keeping the body in homeostasis is the only route to true health. When we get off balance we are then susceptible to infections with the bugs that we live with and are exposed to daily. Wholistic Kinesiology can help us maintain that equilibrium.

Dr J A Dunn
Wholistic Kinesiology Institute

1. Leisman, G., Shambaugh, P., Ferentz, A. Somatosensory Evoked Potential Changes During Muscle Testing. International Journal of Neuroscience. 1989; 45:143-151.

Basic Tenants in Wholistic Kinesiology® Part 2

So, how is modern medicine doing in this fight to right the damage that we have done to ourselves?? So poorly in fact, that doctors are now the third leading cause of death in the industrialized countries according to a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 284 July26, 2001). There are over 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic (doctor induced) causes. These numbers include unnecessary surgeries, medication and other errors in hospitals, infections in hospitals, and negative effects of drugs. Despite the new technologic advances in our country, we are still second to last in overall health indicators including low birth weight, neonatal mortality and infant mortality, and overall life expectancy.

The following is a quote from Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief on the New England Journal of Medicine

“The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 (35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all of the other 490 businesses put together (33.7 billion). Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers and the medical profession itself”.

The poor performance of the United States was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study, which ranked the US as 15th among 25 industrialized countries. While there is the perception that the American public behaves badly by smoking, drinking, and perpetuating violence, the data does not support this view. Female Americans smoke less than the Danes but more than the Japanese, males smoke way less than the Japanese. Yet the Japanese are the healthiest according to this study. The US ranks fifth best for alcoholic consumption. We consume less fat than most industrialized nations and our cholesterol levels are third among the industrialized countries.

Drugs, surgery and hospitals are rarely the answer to chronic health problems. Enhancing the healing capacity of the body is the key. Improving the diet, exercise and lifestyle are the building blocks. A new paradigm of health is needed. Now as never before, people are starting to question the traditional medical paradigm of healing. Kinesiology is a modality whose time has come. We are confident that this modality can help restore proper function to the individual by devising an individual approach to restoring balance. One size fits all diets and supplement routines are also an area where one can get lost. So many folks read the latest diet or health book, they buy the diet program and or supplements recommended and find out months later that it did nothing to help them. Of course this dietary advice is good. It must have helped someone, or else the book wouldn’t have been written. How will you find the exact diet and supplement program for you in a book written about someone else?

Only the body can give you feedback about what it needs. It can do that in a very elegant and consistent way. With this knowledge it is possible to monitor how things are going internally and adjust according to needs of the body. Homeostasis is achieved in this way and health can be restored. We all have very different needs. We have different genetic makeup, different diets, different lifestyles and stress levels and so therefore, it stands to reason that our nutrient needs would vary.

Medical Doctors are beginning to respond to the demands of consumers for more natural health care solutions. Nutrition has in the past been strictly an elective course for MD’s. Not much was taught to them in Medical school. This subject had to be studied outside of the medical education. Once a Doctor gets out of school he/she is often too busy trying to pay back student loans and start a practice that they often don’t have the time or energy to stay current with nutritional knowledge.

Many schools now are including an integrative medical program in the schools. This is a positive trend in some ways. A little knowledge can be dangerous however. Witness the trend of MD’s to recommend 1200-1400 mg of Calcium to their patients. Not taking into account the type and quality of supplement they may get, nor their current consumption in the diet. In addition, often the patient’s absorptive ability is completely ignored. Too much calcium can lead to accumulation in the joints, kidney stones and various other problems. If calcium carbonate is consumed, the digestive system is impaired because of the pH imbalance of the carbonate form of calcium. So you see a little bit of knowledge can be detrimental. This information generally comes from your family doctor in whom you have confidence because he has so much schooling and knowledge and he wears that white coat. We assume a confidence that can be perilous at times. More and more physicians are attending nutritional conferences and overall this is an exciting development. I recently attended a seminar on “Functional Medicine” in Vancouver BC where over 600 doctors were in attendance. The majority were MD’s. I was encouraged.

Dr J A Dunn
WholisticKinesiologyInstitute.com

Basic Tenants in Wholistic Kinesiology® Part 1

Basic tenants in Wholistic Kinesiology® are these:

1. The body has an amazing ability to be well if it’s given the right tools. The power that made the body can heal the body.
2. The body can tell you through muscle testing where imbalances are.
3. The body runs on food, (carbohydrates, proteins, fats), vitamins and minerals and if it gets the proper amounts of these and the proper kinds of these, it will run smoothly and you will be healthy. If you ignore any of these elements, it will begin to malfunction and disease processes begin.
4. Lack of the above nutrients can come from variety of sources: Lack of nutrients in our diets, improper supplementation, excess stress (emotional, physical and chemical), active disease processes, (parasites, yeast or fungal infections, viruses) and hereditary factors.
5. The body can tell you what it needs through muscle testing and how much it needs in a very accurate way.

I know that this must sound a little too simple and easy. It is! I have seen these techniques work their miracles over and over again in the many years that I have been using Kinesiology. The power and beauty of the human body still constantly amaze me. It is truly a miraculous system. And I am amazed at how well these techniques work at helping to restore the body back to balance and health. I see people get their lives back daily.

The time has come for us to reclaim our power in the health care field. There is an explosion in the medical field of new scientific advances and technology. This takes us even further from the way nature intended our bodies to work. We need to go back to the beginning, and understand how our bodies work.

The basic requirements have not changed for eons. We still require good food, with proper nutrients for our bodies to function properly. We will never be able to replace that basic concept. To deviate from this is disaster. Technology would have us believe that we can create the stuff of life in the laboratory. We constantly try to achieve bigger and better yields from our crops by bioengineering with less and less nutritional components in the food we are eating. How can we have healthy bodies at this time? It is very difficult to achieve. We are also bombarded daily with pollutants and challenges that we are as yet unable to adapt to. Witness the explosion of cancerous conditions. Cancer threatens to overcome heart disease soon as the number one killer. Where is this coming from? A breakdown in our basic nutrition coupled with exposures to foreign substances that are wreaking havoc on our immune systems. Because we ignore the basic needs for clean air, pure water, and basic nutrients, vitamins, minerals. We expect our bodies to put up with incredible amounts of abuse and still keep performing. We fill our bodies with junk, take drugs, travel miles to get to work in polluted environments, don’t replenish our nutrients and then wonder what happened when we suddenly get sick. We then expect to go to the doctor and take more chemicals in the hope of curing us. We have so overlooked the obvious answer. Back to the basics!! Let’s treat our bodies right and then we have the right to expect good health. Modern science will never replace this concept.

The modern method of medicine is not that old. We have a relatively short history with allopathic medicine, but it has so invaded our consciousness that we can’t even think about how it may have been in the past. We think of the past of medicine as the dark ages. What did People do when they had cavities, heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer. The fact is these diseases are of modern origin also. None of this existed before the advent of modern nutritional practices. Our technology has been our demise and now we expect technology to come to our rescue. But believe me, headaches never have been and never will be an aspirin deficiency.

Dr J A Dunn

Wholistic Kinesiology Institute