Identifying Allergies Through Muscle Testing

By Laurie Teitelbaum

I perform applied kinesiology (AK), also called muscle testing, to determine food sensitivities in our office. I understand that there are quite a few skeptics who doubt the reliability of muscle testing and the few studies that have been done on it have had contradictory results. However, there is a study that was published in the International Journal of Neuroscience in 1998 that showed that the results of applied kinesiology for food sensitivities closely correlated with the RAST test and immune complex test for IgE and IgG. (See abstract below.) 

The way muscle testing has proven itself to me has not been through studies but through my practice with it. I have seen the reliability of muscle testing in a few ways.

First, I have seen that the results I get from muscle testing often correlate with what the patient knows, but that I do not yet know. For instance muscle testing often detects food sensitivities a patient is aware of that I am not. Another example is that it is quite common that as I assess the organs that are in need of support with muscle testing, the patient surprisingly states that the ones I found are also the exact organs he or she is having a problem with.

Second, with the treatment of sensitivities with NAET our goal is to make a previously weak muscle (in the presence of the sensitivity source) strong. When a weak muscle test is finally revealed to be strong, the sensitivity to that substance is also gone and the symptoms go away.

We see clearly:

• weak muscle = symptoms
• strong muscle = no symptoms

If the strength of the muscle upon being in contact with the sensitivity source has no relationship to sensitivities, the symptoms would not go away after we make a weak muscle test strong.

Third, I have had the pleasure of working with a very sensitive 10 year old girl. When I began muscle testing her, her arm would drop every time I pressed on it and therefore it was not a good indicator. When a patient does not have an arm suitable for muscle testing I often call in a surrogate muscle tester. A surrogate muscle tester is a person who touches the skin of the person we want to test and instead of pressing down on the patient’s arm we press down on the arm of the surrogate. If you have not heard of this before I suspect you may be dubious of this procedure. I was also dubious when I was introduced to it, but I have since seen that it works. This technique has verified itself to me with testing when I see the tests reproduce themselves from the patients arm to the surrogates arm. For instance if I muscle test a list of substances using the patient’s arm, the test will come out the same as when testing the same list of substances with the surrogate’s arm. When you see something enough times, you don’t doubt it so much.

Something very interesting with this 10 yr old girl is that she is so sensitive that when we put the vial of an unknown substance in her hand, she can tell me whether she is sensitive or not sensitive to the substance by the way the vial feels in her hand. If she is sensitive she tells me that the vial is hurting her hand. When she is not sensitive she feels nothing. Meanwhile, it happens repeatedly that when the child says that her hand is hurting, her mother’s arm (as the surrogate) goes weak. I have tested perhaps 250 substances in the hand of this child and only two times that I know of did the muscle test (which is often blinded to the child) not match the times the child said her hand hurt. In other words, when the child says that the vial is hurting her hand, the mother’s arm is also going weak with the muscle test. Needless to say, the child and her mother are now as convinced that muscle testing works as I am.

Study Abstract

Correlation of applied kinesiology muscle testing findings with serum immunoglobulin levels for food sensitivities

International Journal of Neuroscience. 1998. Schmitt WH, Leisman G.

This pilot study attempted to determine whether subjective muscle testing employed by Applied Kinesiology (AK) practitioners, prospectively determines those individuals with specific hyperallergenic responses. 17 subjects were found positive on AK muscle testing screening procedures indicating food hypersensitivity (allergy) reactions. Each subject showed muscle weakening reactions to oral provocative testing for a total of 21 positive food reactions. Tests for a hypersensitivity reaction of the serum were performed using both a radio-allergosorbent test (RAST) and immune complex test for IgE and IgG against all 21 of the foods that tested positive with AK. These serum tests confirmed 19 of the 21 food allergies (90.5%) suspected based on AK screening. This study offers a basis to examine further a means by which to predict t he clinical utility of a given substance for a given patient, based on the patterns of neuromuscular response elicited from the patient, representing a conceptual expansion of the standard neurological examination process.