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Many people suffer from distressing physical or mental symptoms for which they have not been able to obtain relief. When they go to a doctor, they may be told that their problems are all in their imagination. Or, they may be diagnosed as having a certain disease, but the prescribed treatment does nothing to help them.

For many of these people, the real problem is allergy. I have seen time and time again that when an underlying allergic problem is identified and eliminated, such illnesses simply go away. Unfortunately, many health care professionals do not look for allergy in such cases, and even if they do, they may not use the proper tools to analyze the situation. Thus, for a number of reasons, many of us suffer from unrecognized, “hidden” allergies.

Originally, the concept of allergy was limited to a small group of obvious symptoms, such as runny nose, red eyes, sneezing, or skin rash. Today, many physicians and alternative practitioners recognize that a much wider range of problems may sometimes be due to allergy. These can include:- digestive difficulties, headaches, muscular aches and pains, arthritis, inadequate blood sugar control, addictions, and psychological problems, among many others.

If allergy is suspected in such cases, a variety of tests may be used to try to identify the substances to which the individual is allergic. In my experience, most forms of allergy testing are not sufficiently accurate to identify most allergies, especially hidden allergies.

There are three main reasons why allergies may be hidden:

1. The symptoms may be masked by mucus in the system.
2. They may not be directly observable.
3. They may not be recognized as allergic symptoms.

Let’s look at each of these reasons in more detail.

Mucus Masks Allergic Symptoms

In recent years, we have been discovering that many physical and psychological problems may be due to food allergies. Besides the people with obvious symptoms, many others have food allergies without realizing it, because their symptoms are masked by mucus and other substances secreted by the body.
To understand how this mucus gets into the system, we need to understand how food allergies develop. A primary cause of food allergy is the over consumption of a food. Any food which is eaten every day, all year-round (especially if one feels one cannot live without it), is a strong candidate for causing an allergy.

This is especially true of foods which are nutritionally deficient. Unfortunately, many of the foods we eat today, such as white flour, white sugar, and processed fruits and vegetables, do not contain the nutrients our bodies require. Even fresh foods often are nutritionally deficient due to soil depletion, lengthy delay before eating, and improper preparation. When a person habitually eats nutritionally depleted foods, the body begins to deteriorate. The digestive system begins to malfunction, and because it cannot digest food properly, the undigested food particles get into areas of the digestive system where they should not be. In an attempt to protect itself from these irritating substances, the body secretes mucus. This intestinal coating of mucus reduces the absorption of allergic substances, protecting the person with hidden allergies from experiencing obvious allergic reactions.

As an analogy, think about what happens when you work in a garden. The tool handles irritate the skin of your hands, and so you get calluses to protect you from the irritation. Once you have the callus you do not notice the irritation anymore, but the skin is still being irritated or the callus would go away. In the same way, when you irritate the digestive system by eating allergy-causing food, the intestine secretes mucus to protect itself from absorbing the offending substance.

In the gardening analogy, the callus protects your skin, but you pay a price for this protection —your skin gets dry, cracked, rough, and less sensitive in the callused area. When you get an “intestinal callus,” or mucus, you pay an even bigger price. The “callus” may be preventing you from absorbing much of the substance to which you are allergic. You are also prevented from absorbing the nutrients from foods to which you are not sensitive. This means you are getting less of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that you need. As a result, you become more nutritionally deficient, more allergic, and develop a bigger intestinal “callus.” You are therefore absorbing even less of what you should be absorbing, and so on, in a vicious cycle.

An important part of my program for eliminating allergy is to clean out the system — to remove this coating of mucus, so that nutrients will be absorbed properly once again. But when the intestine is cleaned out, you may seem to become more allergic than previously, because you no longer have the “intestinal callus” to protect you. Your hidden allergies are now revealing themselves. It is important to totally eliminate all allergic foods while the body is repairing the allergy.

One way to clean out the system is through fasting. You have probably noticed that many fasting regimens include elaborate instructions on how to break the fast. One reason for this is that, with the protective mucus eliminated from the system, allergic reactions are liable to result when food is reintroduced. I have found that if your digestive system is up to par it is all right to eat a regular meal after a fast. Of course this is providing you do not eat anything to which you are allergic to! Unfortunately, hardly anyone’s digestive function fits this description, and many people do not know which foods they must avoid.

Symptoms Not Readily Observable

A second reason why allergies may be hidden is that the symptoms they produce are not directly observable. The symptoms may not be typical of those normally evident on allergy testing, or they may be going on in parts of the body which cannot be observed directly. For example, the synovial membrane in an arthritic joint may be undergoing changes, due to allergy, without any reaction being felt. The arthritis may progress to crippling severity without the individual suspecting that it is due to allergy. I have seen clients transformed from prematurely aged, stooped, arthritis victims to healthy, active, happy humans through the elimination of underlying allergies and the proper nutritional program.

Uterine fibroids and fibrocystic breast disease are other worrisome problems which may be produced by allergy. Again, early fibroids or fibrocystic disease are symptoms which may not be readily observable and would not be recognized as a response to an allergic substance on conventional allergy testing. In my practice, I have found that a very large part of the basis for these problems and many others is allergic in nature. This means that a key element in overcoming them is to determine and eliminate the allergic reactions.

Of course, not every case of arthritis or fibrocystic disease may be allergic in nature. It is always important to identify allergy positively, rather than run the risk of missing the real source of the problems and the proper treatment.

Symptoms Not Recognized as Allergy

Other symptoms are more noticeable but may not be recognized as having been produced by allergy. For example, it may surprise you that high blood pressure frequently has an allergic basis. Blood pressure often drops dramatically immediately after eliminating certain foods from the diet. Other things besides food — such as inhaling pollens or chemicals — may also produce allergic high blood pressure reactions.

Muscle tension can also be an allergic problem. One of my clients had had muscle tension in her shoulders for years, so that she carried her shoulders unnaturally high, attributing the problem to “stress.” I ascertained that the tension in one shoulder was due to a legume allergy, when the allergy was eliminated, the shoulder on that side dropped an inch-and-a-half. The other shoulder turned out to be related to a chemical sensitivity, and when that was corrected, that shoulder, too, dropped!

Today, many physicians and alternative practitioners recognize that a much wider range of problems may sometimes be due to allergy. These include digestive difficulties, headaches, muscular aches and pains, arthritis, inadequate blood sugar control, addictions, and psychological problems, among many others.
One of the most important discoveries in the field of allergy has been the connection between food allergies and a wide range of mental and behavioral problems. It is quite common, for example, that when people go on a fast, their psychological symptoms clear up, along with other allergic symptoms. Over the past 25 years, the Russians have been doing very successful research with therapeutic fasts for mentally ill patients. As might be expected, the main problem is how to maintain these recoveries once the fast is over. Many people are likely to consume foods to which they are allergic, once they start eating again. I have observed spectacular changes in some people with severe mental problems when the foods to which they are allergic have been eliminated.
Emotional and behavioral problems caused by food allergies may manifest in many areas of our lives. It is now well recognized that hypreactivity, delinquency, and other behavioral problems in children are often due to allergies to foods and food additives. Everyday emotional conflicts may also have an allergic basis. A number of marriage counselors are now paying attention to the diet of their clients as an important key to resolving their relationship problems.

What You can do.

Do you have a problem for which no one has been able to help you? Perhaps your symptoms have been dismissed as “genetic” or “something you will have to learn to live with.” If you suspect that unidentified allergies may underline your problems, you will need to find a health professional who understands allergy. They must also use techniques which permit the identification of hidden allergies.

Simply because you have been told there is nothing wrong with you, it does not mean there really is nothing wrong! Also, if the treatment you are getting does not help, it does not mean there is no possible treatment. There is a solution for many supposedly “untreatable” or “nonexistent” problems. The answer often lies in the identification and correction of hidden allergies.

By Jimmy Scott, Ph.D. Founder of Health Kinesiology
As published in Health Freedom News, December 1984

How can you do so many bad things to yourself and still function: Your Body’s Metabolic Reserve and Priority Systems

Uncle Harry is no Excuse!

“Why should I be careful about what I eat? My Uncle Harry drank like a fish, smoked two packs a day, and ate a diet of potato chips and soft drinks. Yet he lived to be 9O years old!” Everyone seems to know an Uncle Harry who has broken every rule in the book, and survived to a ripe old age. We can’t deny the existence of the Uncle Harrys of the world, but you should not use them as an excuse for bad habits of your own! What you may not know about Uncle Harry is that he happened to be blessed with particularly good genes. He may have led a physically active life during all his ninety years; and he may have taken care of himself in other ways, such as handling stress very effectively.
Perhaps these weren’t as obvious as his eating and smoking habits, but they certainly are at least as important. Even if you’re not an Uncle Harry, you may feel that you are going “unpunished” for a host of dietary and lifestyle sins. Perhaps you drink too much coffee, or eat a lot of refined foods, or don’t get enough sleep or rest. Yet, in spite of these violations of common sense, you seem to be fairly healthy. How can you abuse your body as badly as you do, and still be able to function?

A Lesson from the Mariners of Old

A clue to the answer comes from the experience of the mariners on the sailing ships of two centuries ago. As we all have heard, during their voyages, these sailors’ diets were often critically deficient in vitamin C. Many developed symptoms of severe scurvy, particularly in some extreme cases where ships had been damaged in storms or were caught in the doldrums for weeks on end. One of these severe symptoms was very peculiar. A wound which might have been completely healed for the past twenty years would reopen again, just like a fresh wound! How could this happen? Well, scar tissue is made up primarily of a connective tissue protein called collagen. The production of collagen requires certain nutrients, especially vitamin C. When the body is extremely deficient in vitamin C, it is able to withdraw it from storage in the body, utilizing it in areas that are critical for sustaining life. In the case of the unfortunate mariners, their wounds opened up because the scar tissue was dissolved by the body in order to release the vitamin C it contained. The vitamin C from the scar tissue was transferred by the body to the heart, lungs, brain, or other more vital spots.

Metabolic Reserve

Your entire body is a warehouse that stores nutrients and other vital substances. If you miss a few meals or suffer some other stress, your tissues are not immediately affected because your body can draw from its reserves. Now, if your metabolic reserves aren’t one hundred percent to begin with, you are at greater risk of having nothing to draw on in case of an emergency. When your body’s reserves get all the way down to zero, then your body will either not be able to perform a given job, or it will have to begin tearing down other tissues to get the material to carry out that function. When the mariners’ vitamin C reserves dropped to zero, their bodies broke down old scar tissue to obtain some vitamin C for vital bodily functions.
This is why we can go on for so long without noticing the harm we are doing to ourselves through improper diet. Our body has some reserves, which we can draw on when we are not taking in the proper nutrients. Although we may think we are fairly normal, we may actually be functioning at a less than optimal level. We tend to dismiss many minor symptoms that are actually signs that tissue is deteriorating from lack of nutritional substances. We ignore our body’s warning messages until finally it reaches the breaking point, and then “suddenly” develop a serious disease. I have seen many clients who expressed puzzlement at getting sick some time long after a very stressful period in their lives, rather than getting sick during the stressful time. The reason, of course, is that their reserves held them during the stressful time and they had not done what was necessary to rebuild those reserves afterwards. If their nutrition level was marginal or deficient, then the slightest further decrease would cause some physical problem. For any given nutrient, the nutrition level must be 100% before any reserves can be stored away.

Which organ system breaks down depends on which nutrients are in short supply. For example, suppose that you have a long-standing zinc deficiency. As your deficiency develops, you may notice increased acne, slow healing of wounds, a change in your body odor, a decrease in your vision, or a reduced sense of smell.

What you may not realize is that these problems are all related to zinc.

Finally, if you are a man, you may notice pain in the prostate, or have difficulty urinating. These prostate-related problems, also perhaps due to the zinc deficiency, may finally drive you to the medical doctor where the problem is “identified.” But all your earlier symptoms were also early warnings that your zinc reserves had been depleted. Many chronic diseases begin during periods of nutritional deficiencies. Arthritis, for example, is closely related to deficiencies in the metabolism of potassium (especially in the proper organic form), among other substances.
Similarly, the prevalence of heart disease in our society is evidence that our nutritional and metabolic needs are not being met. By the time the cardiovascular system has begun to deteriorate, many other problems have already developed. People may ignore all these other problems, and the end result is heart disease. By believing that “common every day aches and pains” are normal, we more easily lull ourselves into believing that we are healthy and that “disease” is for other people.

How Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergectic Physiology™ Measures Your Metabolic Reserve.

The stores of nutrients and other vital substances in your body are known as your metabolic reserve. Your metabolic reserve is an indication of your overall level of health and proper nutrition. The muscle testing techniques of Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergetic Physiology™, some of which I have described in previous articles, provide an extremely accurate way of measuring this reserve. After using Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergetic Physiology™ techniques to determine your body’s nutritional needs, we can begin to restore proper nutritional balance through adequate diet and a nutritional supplement program.
Your supplement requirements will probably be quite high at first, to allow for immediate repair work such as cleaning out the mucus produced by allergic reactions, improving digestion, and so on. After your body’s toxicity has been reduced, supplements will be needed to provide the raw materials required for the repair of damaged tissues. Only after that is done can nutrients be stored in your body’s metabolic reserve. Using Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergetic Physiology™ techniques — we can monitor this process, constantly evaluating your progress and determining where your supplements are being used.
As each stage of the repair process occurs and you become healthier and healthier, your supplement requirements will drop. As reserves of a given substance are built up in the body, that supplement requirement may be completely eliminated. Certain supplements, however, will probably never drop completely because these substances are so widely deficient in our diet – for example, vitamins A and C, or minerals such as calcium, manganese.

Your Body’s Priority System

Your body has a system of priorities that determine where your nutritional intake and metabolic reserve are to be used. As we saw in the example of scurvy above, the body will tear down tissue to meet its immediate nutrient needs when the metabolic reserve has been depleted. One reason why the body is seemingly able to handle nutritional abuse so well is that it is able to shuffle substances around. This allows the body to keep the most vital organs functioning at the expense of the less important ones. This is governed by your body’s priority system. Less important tissues might include your teeth, or your joints. You may experience problems in these areas as your body “borrows” needed nutrients to keep more important organs, such as your brain, your heart, and your lungs, functioning properly. Various peripheral symptoms indicate this process is occurring.

Degenerative, non-infectious diseases have been increasing rapidly throughout this century, because our bodies are not being supplied with enough of the nutrients they require. An arthritic joint isn’t as life threatening as an unreliably functioning heart, and so people may develop arthritis as their bodies assign priorities to the nutrients that are in short supply.

This is why heart disease responds so spectacularly to proper nutritional programs. The body assigns very high priority to cardiovascular functioning, and so as soon as you begin supplying proper nutrients to the body, they are used where they are most critically needed, and the heart problem may be repaired very quickly.

How Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergetic Physiology™ Determines Your Body’s Priorities

One of the great powers of the muscle testing techniques of Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergectic Physiology™ or Applied Kinesiology, is that they allow us to utilize the body’s own priority system to optimize what we do for the body. We can determine what is the single most important thing that the body requires right now, what is the second most important thing, and so on. By this means, we can always give the body what it wants most at any given time in order to meet its most immediate needs. This helps to account for the phenomenal results that can be achieved by using these energy techniques.

As an example, suppose you go to a chiropractor for an adjustment, but after a while your problem returns. You may go back and get it corrected again, and then again. The reason that the adjustment doesn’t hold is that your body has a higher priority need which must be met before your joint problem can be corrected. We can determine through muscle testing what your most immediate priority need is. Once that need is determined and the proper correction given, your problem can stay fixed. For example, if the knee alignment is the real cause of a back problem, no amount of back adjustment will permanently correct the problem. Only when the knee is corrected will the compensations from the back be correctable. When problems are corrected within your body’s own priority system, they will stay fixed unless the unbalancing situation re-occurs. Eventually, you may reach the point where even in the face of this unbalancing event you will be able to stay balanced. For example, as we have shown in a previous article, through Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergetic Physiology™ techniques we can retune your body’s energy so that it is no longer disturbed when exposed to formerly allergic foods.

Using Health Kinesiology to Distinguish Trouble – Some Influences

It is not only physical factors that can unbalance your body’s energy. Muscle testing techniques enable us to identify disturbing influences that are both physical and nonphysical, and to determine which of these areas represents your body’s highest priority at any given time.

I have identified a number of categories of physical factors where problems can occur. These include (a partial list):-

1. exercise and rest;
2. structural problems;
3. proper nutrition and diet;
4. allergy / intolerance;
5. body position memory (a tendency for problems such as injuries to recur when your body is in a particular position);
6. miscellaneous factors such as the electrical currents produced by metal fillings in the teeth.

I have also identified many different psychological factors which work within your body’s priority system. Briefly, these factors include emotional, mental, behavioral, spiritual, intellectual, and psycho-physiological functions. All these categories have precise definitions which are beyond the scope of this article.

A final category of problems which I call Energy Blockages, cuts across some of the other categories, and is related to the flow of energy through the body’s tissues. A whole range of problems may result from blockages of this energy as this blockage interferes with the metabolism of specific nutrients within specific tissues. Allergy is actually a special form of energy blockage. Many times when an injury fails to properly heal, even after years, it is due to this type of energy blockage. Pain, phantom limb sensations, many toxic chemicals, and the like are also included here. By using Health Kinesiology™ / BioEnergectic Physiology™ techniques, I am able to determine which of these possible problem areas represents your body’s most immediate priority need. For example, we may determine that it is now time to figure out how much exercise is proper for you, and next we may need to work on an emotional energy disturbance. Then it may be time for a chiropractor to adjust your back, and time to determine your optimum diet.
Everything is done in order of priority, and in the sequence in which the body is best able to benefit from these corrections. Using your body’s own energy system to determine its immediate needs, we are able to get the energy flowing properly and in balance, so that you become integrated and can function at your highest level of capability.

By Jimmy Scott, Ph.D. Founder of Health Kinesiology
As published in Health Freedom News, Vol 12, Nr. 2, February 1993

No one argues that everyone needs to take in nutrients; they only disagree about which nutrients and how much! Since every individual has a different nutritional requirement there can be no rigid statement about what and how much you should eat, in spite of the “authority’s” demands to the contrary. There are, however, some general nutritional principles which do apply to everyone–actually every living thing.
In my Health Kinesiology™, HK nutrition work we can actually determine, energetically, a person’s nutritional needs, and we use these general principles to guide us.

First of all we measure the person’s Diet Quotient. A perfect diet for that person is an index of 100. In our polluted, soil-nutrient-deficient, everything-needs-to-be-processed, crop-spraying-world a DQ of 100 is nearly impossible. If you Iive far from “civilization”, grow your own food, and eat it freshly preprared by yourself, then maybe you can achieve that. For most of us, no way. However, almost anyone can achieve an index above 90. This is established predominantly by avoiding the wrong foods, including junk and the foods to which you are allergic / sensitive, and by eating more of the especially nutritious foods. I find that the typical hospital food index is an amazingly low 20 or so. Even eating at fast food restaurants is better!

We can determine how nutritionally deficient a person is by checking their “Nutrient Level”, using an Index of 0 to 100. A “0″ nutrient level is, or course, impossible. An index of 100 is perfect. An Index of 99.9999% is a failing grade, because the person does not have in their body sufficient levels of at least one nutrient to fully supply all the tissues. This is because 100% Nutrient Level is defined as the person having in their body 100% of every nutrient their tissues need to function optimally. Anything less than 100% means that some tissue does not have all the raw materials to function optimally. Something has got to give, and no tissue can be perfect unless it has ALL the required raw materials it requires.

Even this concept is not enough, however, because even though the nutrients are in the body does not mean that they are available to all the tissues. Various things can block the cells from absorbing or utilizing the nutrients even though they are available. What can do this? Various toxins, drugs, vaccines, fluoride in the water, chlorine in the water, and so on. In Health Kinesiology, however, we have methods to release the toxins so the body can dispose of them.

As some nutrients reach the 100% tissue nutrient level the body can store them away as a “Metabolic Reserve”. At exactly 100% Nutrient Level the Metabolic Reserve Index is 0%. The reserve level can climb to 100%, meaning that the body has stored away all of that nutrient that it can. Developing a high metabolic reserve is vital. Any type of stress will cause the body to work harder, to cope with the added stress. As your body is stressed, as long as there is some metabolic reserve to be used the tissues will not be harmed. In other words, as long as your metabolic reserve can supply your body with the required nutrients everything will continue to operate normally. As soon as any nutrient drops below the 0% Metabolic Reserve level (less than 100% Nutrient Level) some tissue cannot function properly, and you will suffer the consequences. The more nutrients and the greater the nutrient drop the more severe the tissue dysfunction.

The above actually describes three concepts:

• Meeting the Ongoing Nutritional Need (for daily activities)
• Ingesting “extra amounts” to Rebuild Nutritional Deficiencies.
• Ingesting still more additional amounts to Build Metabolic Reserves.

There is a Fourth concept, however, which is also very important: Nutritional Abundance.
What this means is that there is a high abundance of nutrients “just floating around”. The body can grab what it needs without finding it in storage and taking it out then transporting it to wherever it is needed. This improves efficiency and uses less energy. Suppose in your home you have only one of some frequently used item, say a water glass. That glass might be used in different rooms by different family members. If you need a glass of water you would have to go all around the house looking for that single glass. On the other hand, if you have different water glasses all over the house you can more easily grab and use the most nearby one, saving a lot of running around.

When there is not enough nutrition available in the food you need to supplement the food with the appropriate nutrients. That is why they are called Nutritional Supplements! They are to supplement the food, not replace it. This topic will occupy some posts on this site in due time. Meanwhile, note that many, probably most, nutritional  supplements on the market are rather poor.

Posted by Jimmy Scott PhD
Founder of Health Kinesiology
Jun 11, 2010