http://www.faiusa.org/?page=Unproven_Diagnostic_Tests
Provided here as a public service, also so I can point and laugh.
I like the one where they measure changes in your muscle strength when you hold (not eat) the food you might be allergic to. Who makes this stuff up?
Ha! That reminds me of the time we took my son to a nearby clinic, and the doctor ‘confirmed’ the dairy allergy we already knew about by having my son stick his arms out to the side, and trying to hold them up while the doctor pressed down at the same time as he said, “milk.” My son’s arms went down, thus confirming he was allergic to milk. The doctor also "discovered’ that my son was allergic to soy and a couple other things I can’t remember via this highly accurate test.
My husband and I were completely speechless. We were in a regular walk-in clinic, the doctor was a GP with a proper medical degree, and the whole thing was absolutely astonishing.
Only semi-related, my wife went to a chiropractor for some back problems when she was a teenager. He diagnosed one of her ovaries as not working by having her hold something under her tongue and then measuring the strength in her arms.
I dated a woman who did that to me! She called it “energy testing”. She had me hold a food item in my left hand close to my chest and stick my right arm straight out, perpendicular to my body. Then she would press down on my right hand and I wasn’t supposed to actively resist. The harder it was for her to press down, the better the food’s energy flowed with my personal energy. Water was her control.
I remember it was shortly after Easter that she did it because I really pissed her off when I tested significantly better with Cadbury Cream Eggs than I did with fish oil supplements. I wasn’t conscious of leaning one way or another with the test, I just wanted to humor her for a bit and move on to other, more enjoyable activities.
Yeah, she was a bit crazy…
This is called, Applied Kinesiology. Here is more information about it:
http://www.skepdic.com/akinesiology.html
Totally crazy stuff. I have a friend who actually believed in and paid for NAET treatments for her three month old baby. She was told her baby was allergic to not dairy but calcium, you know that little mineral you body has to have to even keep your heart beating much less have your bones grow. That and a whole list as long as your arm of necessary vitamins and minerals that the body can not function without.
She believed the guy and went back for more quackery. I let the friendship cool a bit after that. It’s really hard to be friends with someone when you don’t respect them.
A friend of mine is into this, and actually pays her “nutrition counselor” to test her for various things.
Right now she’s pretty much been reduced to eating lentils and caribou. With curry, at least.
I stay out of it, there’s no percentage in getting into arguments I can’t win. Fortunately she doesn’t proselytize.
It occurred to me after having reread this, that it is possible that the sarcasm in it may not have been quite obvious enough. I’d hate to think that anyone who read it thought we actually believed in this nonsense.
Gah, my brother, with whom I share genetic material, raves about how his doctor used this method to discover all sorts of food allergies my brother didn’t even know he had!
I tried to explain that the most likely reason he didn’t know he had those allergies (despite, you know, living on this planet and eating and enjoying those foods for many years) is because he doesn’t have those allergies.
He patiently explained to me that I shouldn’t be so negative.
Then my head exploded so I don’t really know what else he had to say about it.
This one drives me crazy. My kid is allergic to a bunch of things, and I recently read a book about parenting kids with allergies. The book had lots of useful information (though really it was aimed at parents dealing with a newly-diagnosed toddler, so I didn’t learn as much as I hoped). But it was “nonjudgemental” about treatments, so it had anecdotes about kinesiology and a bunch of other things. I wanted to strangle the parents who had ‘diagnosed’ their children this way. :smack:
Ever since, I’ve been kind of meaning to hand my kid a jar of peanut butter next time we’re at the grocery store and see what happens. Maybe close her eyes and put jam in one hand and PB in the other. But wouldn’t that mean that she’s allergic to glass or plastic or something? Then I would videotape it and put it up on youtube as evidence.
Tests which are of no use for diagnosing a particular condition (including those using flawed methodology) are on the other hand, highly useful in enabling quackery.
Running laboratories to which practitioners of various types of alternative medicine can send samples is apparently very lucrative.
A whole cottage industry has, for example, grown up around the efforts of parents with autistic children to find a treatable cause for their children’s condition.
The end result is false hope and wasted money.
Any time you have a chronic condition for which medical science has imperfect answers, the likelihood is that someone has dreamed up a way to make money from tests that “reveal” some illusory toxic substance or organism that’s allegedly responsible.
Skeptical participants in this thread need to watch Nutritionist Clinic.