The other main conventional approach to treating allergies is gradual desensitization, which is done using allergy shots. Allergy shots deliver small amounts of the person’s allergens into the body on a regular basis. The concept here is that over time the body will grow accustomed to the allergen and stop reacting as strongly to it. Basically, the idea is that the body will get “tired” of producing an immune response to the allergen if it encounters it often enough. Allergy shots are effective at eliminating allergies in many cases, but it is a slow process. There is a new way of desensitizing the body to allergens that is much faster and does not require injections, as we’ll discuss shortly.

You’ll need a bit of background information before I begin discussing this new form of allergy treatment. This method of treatment is based on the concept of the energy field of the human body and it utilizes a system known as muscle testing or “applied kinesiology” to evaluate changes in energy flow. Acupuncture is a system of healing that has been around thousands of years. It is based on the flow and interaction of subtle forms of energy in the body. While this is still a new concept in Western medicine, energy healing is widely accepted in many parts of the world. Medical doctors often dismiss outright the concept of an energy field around the body, yet the existence of this field is easily demonstrated, as anyone who is “muscle-tested” will experience.

You may have heard of homeopathy. As with acupuncture, it is also based on the concept of energy fields, in the body, as well as in substances and organisms that may interact with the body. In essence, homeopathic remedies are energy “signatures” of substances not the actual substances themselves. Just as you can store electronic information on a computer disc, energy signatures can be imprinted on purified water and other substances. The stored energy signatures in the homeopathics can then be used to treat the body.

As mentioned above, the existence of the human energy field is easily demonstrated. One of the simplest and yet most effective means of assessing the flow of energy around and within the body is something called muscle testing. Every muscle in your body is controlled by nerves, which transmit electrical signals. If the body’s energy field is disrupted, the electrical signals of the nerves are interfered with, and so the muscles cannot function at full capacity. It’s sort of like a light on a dimmer switch. When the power to the light is flowing at full capacity, the light is bright. When the flow of electricity is interfered with (by means of the components of the dimmer switch), the light dims. If the nerve signals to your muscles are “dimmed”, the muscle appears weak. In muscle testing, we assess energy pathways by touching points on the body or by contacting the body with a substance to check the body’s reactivity to it. Although any muscle in the body can be used for testing, one of the most popular tests uses the deltoid muscles. The basic procdeure involves having the person being tested hold his or her arm straight out to the side at shoulder level and the person doing the testing pushes down on the arm at the wrist or forearm. When an energy reaction occurs, the person being tested will be unable to resist the downward push from the tester where they had been able to easily resist before.

There are many critics of muscle testing who claim that it is a hoax. I used to think that myself. Certainly there are ways to “cheat” the test to make it show what you want it to show. All of these tricks are easily detectable if you pay attention to what’s happening. Among the more common tricks to produce a weak response when the tester wants it are: the tester pushes harder or faster, the tester lifts up on the arm (triggering muscle relaxation) prior to pushing down, or the tester changes the angle, or shifts the leverage of the push. I myself have witnessed a lot of muscle testing where the outcome was controlled by the tester. Such experiences led me to conclude that muscle testing was a bunch of garbage. A few years ago, I attended a seminar that changed my mind. I came to understand the proper way to do muscle testing. Following that, I came to recognize what a valuable tool muscle testing actually was for assessing the body.

Allergy and Sensitivity Elimination and Reprogramming Technique (ASERT)is the newest method of dealing with allergy problems in the body. This is a method that uses muscle testing and homeopathic substances to evaluate the body and then uses a form of acupuncture point stimulation to reduce the body’s sensitivities to allergens. This is a relatively new technique that is an updated version of an older, but more widely-used method called NAET (Nambudripad Allergy Ellimination Technique).

NAET, like many remarkable discoveries, was stumbled upon by accident by Devi Nambudripad, a chiropractor and acupuncturist. She had suffered for years with numerous severe allergies and food sensitivities and she was on an extremely restricted diet because of her many food sensitivities. Supposedly, one evening she was preparing dinner for her husband and, without thinking, took a bite of carrot, which she was quite allergic to. Immediately, she started to have an allergic reaction and she decided to ride it out using some acupuncture to help her through it more easily. She placed acupuncture needles to stimulate all of the energy channels in the body and laid down to rest. When she awoke, she felt unusually good and noticed that in her haste, she had not washer her hands and still had some carrot on her skin. On a hunch, she ate a bite of carrot and found she did not react to it as before. She then tried using the same procedure for other foods she was allergic to and discovered that the acupuncture stimulation eliminated those reactions as well. From there the method has grown and there are various modifications and offshoots of it, including ASERT, the technique I use.

With ASERT, I use muscle testing to test for reactions to various allergens and then desensitize the body to any allergens I find using laser acupuncture. The laser is particularly good for this technique because it is completely noninvasive and painless and can go right through most clothing, negating the need for the patient to disrobe. In using this technique the last few years, I have discovered some additional tricks to make it even more effective. For most cases, significant reduction in all types of allergies and sensitivities can be achieved in 1 to 10 visits. This treatment is long lasting (it usually “holds” for at least several months) and is often permanent. A few interfering factors can come into play with the effects of treatment, such as heavy metal toxicity or particularly heavy exposure to the desensitized allergens, but these are rare.

Although they are a bit difficult to believe at first, ASERT and NAET are both highly effective in the majority of cases. They are gaining popularity and practitioners of these techniques can usually be located in most major cities.

It appears that heavy metals cause confusion in the body’s immune system, and predispose the body to developing allergies. I have observed that the patients who show up as having heavy metal toxicity also are usually reactive to many more allergens that those patients who are free of heavy metals. By far the most common heavy metals that are problematic are mercury and lead, but cadmium, thallium, and a host of other metals can show up as well.

Mercury toxicity appears to most commonly be related to amalgam dental fillings, exposure to thimersol (a preserving agent used in vaccines and various liquid solutions used in medicine), and industrial mercury exposure. Although there has been much concern in recent years regarding mercury contamination of seafood, I have not found seafood consumption to be related to mercury toxicity in my patients. It is my belief that the majority of people probably do not consume an amount of mercury contaminated seafood for it to create a toxicity concern.

In my experience, amalgam dental fillings are probably the most common source by far of mercury toxicity. Even so, I usually do not recommend replacement of amalgam fillings unless there is an indication of major leakage of mercury into the body, because the removal process can release such large doses of mercury into the blood and it is usually safer to leve the fillings in place and simply de-tox the mercury accumulation from time to time.

Lead toxicity is most commonly seen in people who were exposed to lead-based paint (and possibly ingested lead paint flakes during childhood). Lead toxicity can also be acquired from occupational sources, such as in electricians who can get it from stripping wiring insulation with their teeth (the insulation often contains lead). Another occupational source of lead exposure is seen in military personnel and police officers who, during training, handled large amounts of lead slugs (I have heard that a common “punishment” in such training is for recruits to have to go gather up lead slugs from the firing range to collect a pre-determined large amount of lead).

No matter what type of heavy metal is producing the toxic effects, there are a variety of ways to test for heavy metals, as well as a variety of ways to treat the toxicity. Testing can be done by conventional blood and tissue tox-screens, by hair analysis, and by muscle reflex testing (”applied kinesiology”). Of the three, I prefer muscle reflex testing even though it is a bit esoteric, because it is simple to do, inexpensive, and if there are multiple heavy metals present it tells me which metal is causing the biggest problem (allowing me to prioritize treatment).

Chelation therapy is the conventional medical treatment of choice for heavy metal toxicity. Chelation therapy injects various binding agents into the bloodstream to pull the heavy metals out of solution so they can be eliminated from the body by the liver and kidneys. Similarly, chlorella (a type of algae) and/or cilantro extract can be used to bind heavy metals making them easier to eliminate from the body. Another method, that is still somewhat controversial even among “alternative” practitioners is the use of special foot baths that utilize a very low-level electrical current to draw out heavy metals and other toxins through the skin of the feet.

The method of detoxification that I prefer is the use of metal-specific homeopathic remedies to assist the body in eliminating the particular metal that is causing the problem. If a patient presents with multiple toxicities, I will usually begin with the chlorella and cilantro approach to start the process and then eventually use homoepathics to eliminate the specific metals. The homeopathic de-tox approach usually takes 2 to 4 weeks to sufficiently reduce the toxicity so that allergy desensitization can be effective.

Once the patient has de-toxed the heavy metal sufficiently, allergy desensitization can be performed effectively. If using conventional allergy shots, the desensitization will take place over a period of months to a few years. If using “energy medicine” techniques, it has been my experience that most people can have the majority of their allergic sensitivities eliminated within a few weeks. Because of the remarkable efficiency of the energy medicine techniques, I favor them over conventional allergy treatment, but to be fair the techniques I use are quite strange to most people and they can be a bit hard to believe. Many people simply cannot believe that these strange methods of treatment work, so they will stick with conventional allergy treatment, which is quite effective in the long-run once any interfering heavy metal toxicities have been handled.