MUSCLE TESTING FOR
ALLERGIES, Part 1
By Jimmy Scott,
Ph.D.
As published in Health
Freedom News, November
1985
Orthodox
allergy testing is not sufficiently accurate to identify
all allergies. In my previous article, “You May Have Hidden
Allergies” (Health Freedom News, December, 1984), I
discussed three of the reasons why allergies may be hidden:
(1) the symptoms may be masked to mucus produced by the
systems as a response to allergic substances; (2) the
symptoms may not be directly observable, as in the case of
an early arthritic joint, for example; (3) the symptoms may
not be recognized as allergic symptoms — for example, high
blood pressure or psychological
disturbances.
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Problems with Traditional Allergy
Testing
When we
examine the methods traditionally used to test for
allergies, it is easy to understand why they may not be
adequate to identify many allergies, particularly those
that are hidden for the reasons cited
above.
Medical
allergists commonly use a variety of skin tests for food and
other allergies. In these tests a very small amount of the
suspect substance is introduced into the person's skin through
a scratch of a small injection.  If there is no reaction at the
skin test site in a short period of time, the test is
considered negative, while if there is a local skin
reaction the test is considered positive. A negative test
does not necessarily mean that the person is not allergic
to the substance; it may be that the test solution was too
weak to produce a reaction.
Skin
testing is not very helpful in identifying allergies to
foods, which are an important cause of hidden
allergies. After all, it is not normal to inject
something like milk extract under a person's skin, and
it seems reasonable that there would be a reaction. It
has been recognized since the 1930s that skin testing
for food allergy is not reliable.
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Clinical
ecologists have developed a technique known as
sublingual testing, in which a tiny drop of an extract
is placed under the individual's tongue. If the test is
positive, symptoms may appear very rapidly, including
dramatic mental and behavioral reactions. In a matter
of moments after the substance is placed under the
tongue, the individual’s whole behavior may change —
smiling and happy at one moment, and tearful and
depressed at the next, as the allergic reaction
appears. Unfortunately, sublingual testing may miss
many kinds of allergic reactions which are not so
readily observable, such as an arthritic joint or
uterine fibroids.
Recently, many
nutritionally-oriented health professionals have been using
cytotoxic testing to identify allergies. In cytoxic
testing, an extract of the substance in question is mixed
with a sample of the person's blood,
which is then observed under a microscope for changes
in the white blood cells. Since foods (and other
substances) never actually get into the blood in this
manner, it should come as no surprise that such tests
may not be very accurate. One commercial laboratory
doing cytotoxic testing claims that its tests are “75
percent reproducible.” This is not an adequate
guarantee of accuracy, not only because it admits 25
percent error, but also because even the effects that
can be reproduced may not be a true indication of
allergy.
I have
observed that if cytotoxic testing is done with a food
which a person has not been eating recently, an allergy
to that food may not show up on the test, even if that
person is extremely allergic to that food. Therefore,
if you are scheduled to have cytotoxic testing, be sure
to expose yourself to as many different foods and other
substances as possible during the few days before the
test, in order to optimize the
results.
Cytotoxic
testing does seem to be a good way of determining
whether you are highly allergic in general. If you test
positive on only a few substances on cytotoxic testing,
you are probably not highly allergic to foods, whereas
if you have positive tests for many substances you are
probably generally very allergic.
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