Posts Tagged ‘Chemicals’

Conventional allergy treatment consists of two main approaches: symptom suppression and desensitization. Symptom suppression uses various medications to reduce the release of and/or the effects of circulating immune chemicals like histamine. Reduction of the amounts or effects of these chemicals reduces the severity of the body’s allergic reaction and things like congestion, irritated eyes, and skin reactions diminish. In severe allergies, steroids like cortisone may be used to drastically suppress the body’s inflammatory immune response.

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.

Although most people know that they can’t live without the liver, few are aware of the important role that this organ plays in weight loss. Your survival is dependent on the liver’s ability to detoxify various chemicals – the most familiar one being alcohol, but weight control is also dependent on a healthy liver. That’s because the liver either produces or activates ALL of the hormones in the body that are necessary for fat-burning. Without optimal liver function, natural weight loss becomes a very difficult goal to achieve.

Due to chronic abuse of the liver through things like heavy alcohol use, using medications and drugs, and bad eating habits, especially an overconsumption of fats and heavy animal-based proteins, the liver can become overloaded and irritation can result. This results in an inflammatory response in the abominal cavity, which results in an accumulation of fluid (called ascites). As the retained fluids collect in the stomach area, the stomach will often begin to protrude outward, producing the appearance that is sometimes called a “beer belly”. In women, the problem can get bad enough that the protruding belly makes them look pregnant when they are not. For people with this water weight deposition, weight loss can be frustrating because exercise will not “burn it off” – because it’s not fat. Since natural weight loss approaches fail to get results in these situations, some people resort to diet drugs, which may work at first, but ultimately harm the liver even more and create even more abdominal water retention.

Ironically, with water weight gain associated with liver dysfunction, some diet plans and weight loss products can actually make the situation worse and lead to even more fluid retention. The Atkin’s diet, because it is so high in protein and fat, tends to be hard on the liver and will often lead to even more retaining of fluid. Certain products sold to help with weight loss may have ingredients that further stress and irritate the liver and result in even more water retention in the long-run.

In addition to the water retention issue, good liver function is necessary for the proper production and/or activation of the hormones that stimulate fat burning. For instance, the liver is needed to convert the inactive form of thyroid hormone (T4) to the active form (T3). When the liver is overworked and cannot do the hormone conversions efficiently, the body cannot burn fat efficiently, no matter how much exercise you may do or what other natural weight loss steps you take.

In addition to activating fat-burning hormones as with thyroid hormone, the liver produces insulin-like growth factor (IGF), which is another fat-burning hormone. IGF controls blood sugar during the relatively long-period that you go without eating during sleep. When you are asleep at night, your blood sugar levels fall and the liver generates IGF to cause the fat tissues to burn fat to boost blood sugar. Again, if liver function is not as good as it should be, this hormone is not produced efficiently and you don’t burn as much fat. The other thing that occurs is that your blood sugar will go lower than it should and you wake up in the morning feeling very fatigued and irritable.

At this point you may be wondering what steps you need to take to help improve liver function to help alleviate abdominal water retention and to help better activate your fat burning hormones to stimulate natural weight loss? To begin with, it is important to reduce the detoxification load on the liver. Drastically reducing alcohol consumption and avoiding all but those medications that are absolutely necessary is an important step. If possible, I recommend avoiding alcohol and non-essential medications entirely for at least a few weeks to give the liver an opportunity to recover.

The next step is to clean up you diet to make things as easy as possible on the liver. Probably the simplest and most effective approach is to eat pretty much a vegetarian diet for 14 to 21 days, sticking to mostly fresh vegetables and fresh fruit and using beans, seeds, nuts, and nut and seed butters as your main protein sources. If you can’t do that, it is advisable to at least cut out fried and greasy foods and high-fat meats for a while. The better your diet, the faster you’ll lose the retained water in the abdomen and the faster you’ll make real progress on losing weight.

There are various “liver de-tox” products on the market that contain some combination of herbs and/or nutrients that are reputed to be beneficial for the liver. These can be useful in more extreme cases or for those who simply aren’t willing to take the dietary and other lifestyle measures just described. In my opinion, changing the diet and implementing the other natural weight loss lifestyle factors is a much more effective way to go, but using a liver detoxification product is probably better than doing nothing. Because some of these products contain herbs that can interact with certain prescription medications, it is strongly recommended that you consult with a physician or a pharmacist before using any of these products if you are on prescription drugs.

In addition to weight loss, as liver function improves, your skin usually becomes clearer and your mood and energy level will typically improve, especially in the morning. People with chronic headaches often notice that the headaches become less frequent and may go away altogether. In addition, pains in the right shoulder and shoulder blade area can be referred from the liver and some people experience relief of these pains as the health of the liver improves.

It should be noted that as the liver recovers and the body stops retaining water in the abdomen, you will typically lose weight very rapidly (it could be 5 pounds or more per day!) and you will need to urinate frequently (that’s how the body gets rid of the excess water). Once the extra water is gone, the weight loss will slow down. If you continue on a natural weight loss program, a reasonable expectation after you have lost the water weight is about 1 to 2 pounds per week.