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.