Predicting Dairy Allergies -- With a Pendulum?

Some people are so many standard deviations removed from the norm that mockery is less the proper response than a simple dropping of the jaw in disbelief.

Take Betty Meyler, president of Ireland's UFO Society. While yesterday I noted that Allergy N I has established a clinic for allergies in Ireland, Meyler scoffs at such mainstream and scientific methods of gaining information.

In an interview with Matt Gregg of the University Observer, Meyler had this to say:

"Are you familiar with pendulums?" she suddenly interjected. ... "I have a rose quartz pendulum on a little silver chain," she continued. "For me, if I ask it a question and the answer’s 'yes', it will go round and round. If the answer’s 'no', it will go up and down. ... I can use it for anything," she explains, "from discovering if I had a milk allergy to predicting where the next UFO sighting would be. My source of information is wherever I wish it to come from. For example, if I’m doing UFO stuff, I’ll call on Commander Ashta. Commander Ashta is the commander-in-chief of the intergalactic forces."

Too bad the rest of the world didn't know about this sooner. Allergy N I could have been spared all that tiresome research. Instead we could watch the pendulum go round and round or up and down or over under sideways down.

Over under sideways down,
Backwards forwards square and round.
Over under sideways down,
Backwards forwards square and round.
When will it end, when will it end,
When will it end, when will it end.

When will it end? Please, could someone tell me?

Food Allergy Tests You Must Avoid

The Food Allergy Initiative has a page on Unproven Diagnostic Tests that includes some familiar targets of mine, such as Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET) and IgG Testing.

These tests should be avoided at all costs. Getting a false diagnosis, whether positive or negative, is bad enough. However, some of these tests involve eating the allergen itself and that can precipitate a reaction. As the page says, in bold face type:

None of these tests is recommended for the diagnosis of food allergies, and those that involve the ingestion or injection of allergens may increase the risk of a reaction.

The other tests they warn you about are:

Body Chemical Analysis
This type of test analyzes a sample of your hair, body fluids, or tissue to diagnose a mineral deficiency or confirm the presence of toxic substances. Either of these supposedly leads to food allergies or other diseases. Again, there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Cytotoxic Testing
In this test, the white blood cells are extracted from a sample of your blood. Then, samples of the white blood cells are applied to slides that contain dried extracts of suspect foods. A technician views the slides under a microscope and analyzes them for changes that supposedly indicate whether you are allergic to any of those foods. AAAAI has concluded that there is no scientific basis for this test.

ELISA/ACT
A sample of your blood is drawn and cultures of the white blood cells are analyzed for their reactions to up to 300 food allergens or other substances. Studies have shown that this test is not effective in diagnosing food or other allergies. Other questionable diagnostic methods that involve white blood cell analysis are the ALCAT and NuTron tests.

Electrodermal Diagnosis
This test uses a galvanometer (an instrument that detects and measures electric currents) to gauge your body’s resistance when you come in contact with a suspect food. Increased resistance to the electric current is supposed to indicate that you are allergic to the food being tested.

Provocation and Neutralization
These tests involve injecting a solution containing a suspect food under your skin or administering it sublingually (as drops under your tongue). Increasing amounts are given in an effort to provoke a reaction. When symptoms appear, you are given increasingly weaker doses of the solution until your symptoms disappear. The last and weakest dose, which supposedly eliminates your symptoms, is called the “neutralizing dose.” This solution may then be provided as a treatment for your food allergy. Provocation tests are not only ineffective, but increase the risk of an allergic reaction. There is no scientific proof that neutralization can prevent or control a reaction.

Pulse Testing
This test is based on the notion that, if you are allergic to a particular food, your pulse (the rate of your heartbeat) will go up after you eat that food. There is no scientific evidence to support this claim.

What's really scary is that each time I've written about NAET, about as pure quackery as exists in fake medicine today, somebody always comments approvingly.

If you have questions about these or other possibly questionable allergy tests, contact the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

Anti-Milk Nonsense: The Dumbth List

Although it's usually attributed to Mark Twain, it was really Charles Haddon Spurgeon who said "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."

I feel the same about the Internet and stupidity. Or Dumbth, as Steve Allen once called it. Just two weeks ago yet another deluded vegan made my blood pressure soar by posting - in a college newspaper, no less - that:

Humans are the only animals on the planet that drink another animal’s milk. Thus, by definition, drinking cows’ milk is extremely unnatural.

You can't approach that statement. It makes no sense from any direction. There are no foods that humans are designed to eat. Not one. They're omnivores, eating every digestible plant or animal part on the planet. And the list of what humans do that other animals don't would fill the Internet. Because it is the Internet.

How could you look yourself in the mirror after saying that? Isn't reason itself one of humanity's unique attributes?

Number two on the Dumbth list is harder to track. Here's my nominee for tonight, mostly because I just read it online and I haven't calmed down yet.

"Margarine is but one molecule from being plastic."

You need to know a little something to understand just how incredibly dumb that statement is. Not much. A grade schooler with a decent science teacher would make a face at an adult spouting that line. I could wish more decent science teachers existed in the world.

Margarine, of course, is a concoction. It's no more a single thing than butter is a single thing. Butter is mostly animal fat with a sprinkling of animal protein and sugar (our old friend lactose). Margarine imitates butter by substituting vegetable oil and water for the animal fat. The rest is a sprinkling of preservatives, stabilizers, and colorants. Nobody denies that margarine is artificial. But it's artificial in the same way a cake is artificial. Cakes don't grow. They are put together from a recipe.

The whole "one molecule away" business is just as bad. Lactose is made out of two simpler sugars, glucose and galactose. The chemical formula for glucose is C₆H₁₂O₆. The chemical formula for galactose is C₆H₁₂O₆. Yes, they are chemically identical. They are structured differently and that gives them different properties. The sugar called maltose is composed of a glucose plus a glucose. Starches are composed of strings of glucoses. Identical, but structured differently. Chemicals - and everything is a chemical or a conglomeration of chemicals - can vary tremendously even if their molecules or atoms are the same. Being one molecule away is meaningless. It's like saying that the U.S. is one ocean away from Europe.

Snopes.com traces the origin of this bit of idiocy back to a 1999 email. The line is too good to kept to only one food. They collected some of the variants.:

I was told that the difference between Cool Whip and Styrofoam is one molecule... is this true???

Is velveeta processed cheese food really one molecule different from plastic?

heard that Pam spray is 1 molecule away from plastic and is therefore dangerous??

I am tired of hearing my husband say that Cheez Whiz is only 2 ingredients different from garbage bags. Can you please help me set him straight?

Happy to set him straight, my dear.

If you have other examples of high-level dumbth about dairy, share them. Let's see if we can create a debunkers' top ten.

"Food Detective" Home Allergy Test Flunks

Intolerances are not the same as allergies. Lactose intolerance is defined as having symptoms because of the body's inability to digest the lactose sugar in milk. A milk allergy is caused by antibodies that react to the proteins in dairy products. They are totally different. I know that. If you've been reading this blog from more than about five minutes you know that.

And the makers of the "Food Detective™, the world’s first food intolerance self test" kit know that. They have a whole page devoted to the difference.

And yet they keep calling the Food Detective a food intolerance kit. It isn't. It tests for protein antibody reactions. Not the same.

Why make a big deal of this? Many people, especially in the UK where the Food Detective is based, confuse the terms or even use them interchangeably. But I'm cynical. And as their own food intolerance page says, as many as 45% of the population of the UK may have food intolerances, but only 2.5% have food allergies. Now which set would you rather your marketing department pitch your product to?

And that's assuming that the product can possibly work as claimed. You take a mere pinprick of blood and put it into the tiny test tube in the kit. Pour on some developer and in 40 minutes you'll know if you have allergies to any of the following:

Cereals
Corn, Durum Wheat, Gluten, Oats, Rice, Rye, Wheat.

Nuts & Beans
Almond, Brazil Nut, Cashew, Cocoa Bean, Peanut, Legume Mix (pea, lentil, haricot),
Soya Bean, Walnut.

Meats
Beef, Chicken, Lamb, Pork.

Fish
Freshwater Fish Mix (salmon, trout), Shellfish Mix (shrimp, prawn, crab, lobster, mussel), Tuna, White Fish Mix (haddock, cod, plaice)

Vegetables
Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrot, Celery, Cucumber, Leek, Peppers (red, green, yellow), Potato.

Fruits
Apple, Blackcurrant, Grapefruit, Melon Mix (cantaloupe, water melon), Olive, Orange & Lemon, Strawberry, Tomato

Other
Egg (whole), Cow's Milk, Garlic, Ginger, Mushroom, Tea, Yeast

That's amazing. Too good to be true? Well, I'm always a skeptic.

You see, the makers of Food Detective are Cambridge Nutritional Sciences CNS), which has done this testing for several years if you mail them a sample of your blood. And the British newspapers have not been kind to CNS.

In You and Yours on Which? Investigation into Food Intolerance Tests, Dr. Mike Walker of CNS reveals that the tests don't test for IgE, the antibody that causes true allergies. It tests for IgG, an antibody which causes hypersensitivities. Some researchers do lump the various antibody reactions together as allergies, some don't. All, to my knowledge, agree that only IgE reactions cause the anaphylactic reactions that are the ones to take most seriously.

Tests on similar testing kits have a large fail sign pasted on them. As Jenny Hope reported in The Daily Mail:

The tests found a total of 183 intolerances, even though the researchers had just one medically confirmed allergy and one already recognized food intolerance between them.

Different test results were produced from identical blood and hair samples sent to the same company under different names. There was little or no overlap of test results from different companies for the same researcher.

A panel of medical specialists and a dietician concluded that none of the tests, which cost between £45 and £275, had ' diagnostic value' for genuine allergies or intolerances.

It's nice to think that one tiny pinprick of blood can tell you what foods not to eat. It's also too good to be true.

Gluten-Free, Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free, Caffeine-Free... Cookbook

At first glance, Cathy Torella's Gluten-Free, Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free, Caffeine-Free... Are You Kidding Me? cookbook looks like a great deal.

A brief article, more like an adapted press release, in the Barrie Examiner, said:

The book provides dozens of recipes for people living with various food allergies and sensitivities.

Torella wrote the cookbook after she discovered in 2004 that she had a number of food sensitivities.

"I have always had a keen interest in cooking, so I found it devastating to be told my regular eating habits had to change, but I was determined to feel well again and I would try anything to get there," she said.

"I started researching options and recipe ideas right away. I quickly found there were not many recipes available to accommodate all the sensitivities I had developed and thought there must be other people like me. I started experimenting with ingredients and recorded everything because if I liked the end result I wanted to be able to make it again."

It's a self-published 84 page paperback with a list price of $10.95. Many specialty books these days are self-published so that's not in and of itself a strike against it. Why do self-published books have a bad name? Because they have not been through the filter of having an outsider, an editor or publisher, separate the good from the bad. Of course many self-published books prove to be good. Others...

I don't know for sure whether Torella's book is good or bad. It has only a single review on Amazon and that's not enough to determine my opinion. That review is so devastating, though, that I feel compelled to share it with you.

Dr. Mary Traverse "allergy solutions teacher":

Yes, unfortunately, you are kidding me. This book is not what it represents itself to be. At least half the recipes have some form of either gluten, dairy, or sugar. It is a big disappointment, poorly researched, and assumes that "evaporated cane juice" is not sugar or Goat's milk is not a dairy food. My biggest objection, as a health professional, is that it is full of misleading and incorrect information (Ezekiel bread contains no wheat, for example.) It also makes little or no distinction as to which are the gluten or non-gluten grains. Definitely not what you are looking for if you are on a gluten-free, dairy-free, and/or sugar free diet.

That some of the recipes contain ingredients that some have to avoid doesn't bother me. Many multiple allergy cookbooks are written this way, since it's unlikely that all readers would share every single one of the allergies that the book addresses.

The other complaints are far more serious. I spend much time and effort trying to teach people that supposed "healthy" sugars are in fact essentially identical to the ordinary, everyday table sugar that they hate so much. And the idiotic notion that has infested the internet that goat's milk or milk from any other animal is not the same as ordinary, everyday cow's milk is an outrage, an indictment of our entire educational system and a symptom of the way that the internet spreads stupidity faster than any other medium in human history.

If Traverse's criticisms are correct then I would certainly urge that you avoid this book.

Who is Dr. Mary Traverse, though? Her doctorate is in Chiropractic and her website promotes her worldview, one that I don't share. She houses the Austin branch of the Crossroads Institute, started by ex-rocket scientist Curtis Cripe. And what has Cripe accomplished?

Curtis can now show definitively that every person who graduates from this program has between a ten and thirty point increase in IQ!!!

Sheer woo woo.

So I have someone I don't agree with correctly pointing out errors near and dear to my mission. I'm torn, but I always side with the facts. Traverse is right, Torella is wrong. That's true no matter what else Traverse says on other topics.

The facts always win, at least in my corner of the planet. Until proven otherwise, it's thumbs down on Torella's book.

Fuzzy-Brain Medicine

Beliefnet.net conglomerates a series of public blogs that anyone can post to, on a variety of subjects. "Fresh Living is a natural health and holistic blog for people like you, who care about what you eat, how you feel, and how to be more alive, connected, and in-the-moment. We wade through the latest in mind-body-spirit wellness and plumb ancient wisdom to bring you tools, tips, ideas, and inspiration. Plus, you get to hang out with us as we journey on our paths, one breath at a time."

I care about how we eat and how we feel. As a historian I find it increasingly more urgent for us to know something about the context of our existence than on being "in-the-moment," but we can let that pass.

I put my foot down when it comes to placing history, medicine, dairy, and holistic sludge into a blunder and sipping from the result.

As Holly Leibowitz Rossi does in her post, Fuzzy Brain--Is Dairy at Fault?

I'm wondering if this complete brain-fuzz attack (there have been others so far today, but none as visible as the first) has something to do with dairy. Yes, dairy. Yesterday my acupuncturist told me to stay away from the milky stuff for awhile--and I ignored her because my id wanted a chocolate ice cream sandwich last night. Bad id!

The result was a weird night's sleep, not to mention the complete fuzzy brain situation. Chinese medicine practitioners would wag their needles at me because dairy in TCM is believed to cause "damp heat," which at this hot, humid time of year is bad news for chi flow, smooth thinking, and a well-behaved body.

I honestly don't know if TCM - Traditional Chinese Medicine - considers dairy to cause "damp heat." I do know, being a historian and having studied the subject, that the Chinese mix of cultures (except for the Mongolian) did not traditionally include dairy. This, as anthropologist Marvin Harris has shown, is largely due to the traditional farm unit in China not being friendly to large milkable domesticatable animals. Foods that are outside the norm in a culture are disposed to being cast either as exotic and luxurious, as dairy was for the privileged classes, or vile and injurious, as dairy became.

Who doesn't believe in dairy causing "damp heat," being bad for chi flow, and needing to be avoided? The Chinese, for a starter. They are adding huge quantities of milk to their diets, now that dairying herds have become common. Although most ethnic Chinese are genetically lactose intolerant, many can have small amounts of lactose without symptoms, as is true for most of the LI people in the world.

I'm sure some traditionalist Chinese still adhere to TCM beliefs about dairy. For a modern American to throw over all modern understanding of history, culture, medicine, and plain common sense to do so sends my senses to reeling. I now have a bad case of fuzzy brain as a result. But I won't be talking to acupuncturist to find out what to do about it.

Pseudoscience Has a Defender

I hope you all had a change to read my post on Nutripuncture - The Ultimate in Pseudoscience on Wednesday. I found the press release that was issued about the "treatment" to be both jaw-dropping and hilarious. If I ever start my own science fiction magazine, I couldn't do better than to title it "Oscillating Polymetallic Circuits."

The post almost immediately received a response from Dr. Meg Jordan of the California Institute of Integral Studies, the university where the demonstration took place. She defended Nutripuncture and alternative medicine in general. And she lifted my hopes only to see them dashed to the ground. She wrote:

Your copy is fun to read -- similar to other quick-witted bloggers who enjoy dishing out ridicule and heavy-handed opinion.

Quick-witted! Even though I'm sure she was being sarcastic, I'll take the compliment. I wonder if she'll let me use it as a blurb on a book.

The second half of the sentence is what buoyed my spirits. The implication is surely that some, many, scores and hordes of other bloggers have been similarly mocking the pseudoscience that is Nutripuncture.

Are you out there? Please, please let me know. I feel so lonely being the only one.

And the only one I appear to be. I searched for Nutripuncture. What I found was the following.

Nutripuncture class with Dr Veret.

I attended Dr. Veret's class last time he was in Austin and had some very interesting results.

Thirty years ago, I lost a child and often felt a deep sadness. In 45 minutes of needless acupuncture, I was able to release the emotional pain with no charge on it at all. I still remember my precious child and I am free of the sadness.

The protocol is called NUTRIPUNCTURE, needleless acupuncture and it can work on the physical, mental and emotional levels.

Heidi's Heart.

since last December, when I had my uterus scraped (a uterine oblation) because I was bleeding up to a pint a day, my psychic ability has diminished to nil. I hadn't made the connection before between the ground of my sexual being and psychic experiences. For example, I have not seen beings of light in my living room or out and about in the world for almost a year now, whereas I used to see them several times a day.

An intuitive healer recommended that I try nutripuncture, which is a blend of acupuncture theory and homeopathy. He prescribed yin-yang, uterine, and thyroid combinations for me, and I've been taking them for the past two weeks.

Immediately, my dreams became much more vibrant and real. And I am beginning to remember the messages upon waking, like the one this morning: "Things that you need to shout to the world, even though the world may not be listening."

I have also begun to see energy fields again, not yet full-blown beings of light, angels, some might call them, but at least energy fields. These vibrations are very clearly discernible against the backdrop of objects and persons in the "normal world."

innervoya.

I guess what I am finding is that Nutripuncture gives one an exciting definable experience. In my case, for example, after taking the oedipal sequences, my relationship with my parents improved dramatically and of course it took time and push-back and doing other things too but the Nutripuncture feels very solid in resolving many of my body's knee-jerk responses to them

Caught in the Illusion - Nutripuncture.

NUTRIPUNCTURE richly combines the elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine with breakthrough research in potentiating cellular membrane function and balancing and revitalizing the informational pathways of the body to provide rapid healing results without adding any additional disturbances to the body as many medicines and even natural remedies are well known to do.

Nutripuncture is based on the work Of Nicola Tesla and George Lakhowski on Cellular Oscillation and on the wok of Barbara Mc Clintock which earned her a Nobel Prize in 1983. This energetic form of acupuncture is able to locate and address disturbances in the vital currents. These disturbances are the root cause for pathologies in your body, mind and spirit.

lightbugirka.

Unbelievable - what I saw in the last month - one can do diagnosis of another person via voice (nutripuncture & our own Jean Loup at BM), via musical chetki (shamanic ceremony), via breathing (opencenter.org)... But it all an addition to a developed intuition and pereception and skills...

POWERFUL NRG.

He advised me to get off a prescription med which was just blocking my bodies natural instinct. He wisely gave me some all natural herbal supplements and added some NutriPuncture to my regular intake. Holy Shitballs!!! I FEEL FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. Back to the high energy I am used to having. My attitude is pumped again. I am back on track and ready to be a seriously productive, fun loving freak getting some shit done.

Holy Shitballs!!! indeed. Is there anything Nutripucture can't do? I'm so pumped on this.

But wait. What's this? A dissenting voice? True, it's now seven years old, but I'm sure Dr. Jordan has a better memory than I do. And unlike those posts from believers who would support anything alternative, this post - called, wonderfully, "A Higher Level of Nonsense" was made by Stephen Barrett, M.D., who is Board Chairman of Quackwatch, Inc., and Vice President of the National Council Against Health Fraud, before whom I bow down and proclaim "I'm not worthy."

He wrote:

Nutripuncture uses "homeopathic nutrient pills" that are said to work like acupuncture needles. Proponents claim that small tablets incorporated with tiny amounts of nutrients have "an immediate action on cellular levels of the body's organs" and "restore the information and the function of the organs and emotional blockages." (In other words, insignificant amounts of nutrients are swallowed to influence an imaginary body electrical system to "balance" imaginary body forces that supposedly are related to organ dysfunctions.)

A proponent Web site lists 38 nutrient products, 38 organs, 38 symptoms, and 38 psychological states -- all numbered to tell the practitioner which product should be used for which organ, symptom, or psychological state. There is no scientific evidence or reason to believe that large amounts of the listed nutrients can do what the proponents claim. But even if they could, the amounts contained in the nutripuncture products would be too small to have the same effect.

One seven year old post. Balanced against the ability to diagnose via voice!

Dr. Jordan you're winning the war against the war against ignorance. Ignorance is rampant across this country. And across France as well, judging by the number of blogs in French that I couldn't read. In the battle of quick wits against half-wits, I guess we know who's coming out ahead.

Essence of Unreality

To end the week's run on press releases you should ignore I go back to the old reliable, homeopathy. I did a warning about a homeopathic allergy medication that claimed to cure practically everything except the derivatives crisis back in March. But these claims never go away. They are evergreens in the deciduous world of pseudoscience.

ChiroEco.com, Your Online Chiropractic Community, has added a slew of articles touting homeopathic remedies. Yes, I do consider chiropractic practices to be among the pseudosciences and it's touting of homeopathy is one major reason why.

Specifically, a release by Frank J. King Jr., ND, DC, which should speak for itself.

LAW OF SIMILARS

It may be necessary to search out additional homeopathic formulas to address all underlying causes. Since homeopathy is based on the law of similars, look for formulas that relate to your patient’s symptomatic patterns, such as sinus, headache, skin irritations, asthma, snoring, etc.

There are homeopathic formulas for other specific allergies that can have a compounding effect with other allergies. There are homeopathic formulas for animals, dairy, dust, eggs, fragrances, fruits, grains, nightshades, nuts, and shellfish.

Other factors that can inflame seasonal and year-round allergies include toxicities. There are also homeopathic formulas designed to connect common toxicities, such as caffeine, cosmetics, household chemicals, outdoor air pollution, indoor air pollution, food additives and preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, and water chemicals.

Also to assist with toxicities are homeopathic formulas that activate the body’s natural detoxification mechanisms to work properly, such as blood, kidney, lymph, liver, and acid formulas.

There's some trouble in the Middle East as well. I recommend essence of gefilte fish.

Nutripuncture: The Ultimate in Pseudoscience

I thought it was satire. I assumed it was from The Onion or some other site using scientific-sounding words to mock the Examiner.com nimrods who post their total lack of understanding of nutrition.

I mean, look at this. Who could believe it's to be taken seriously?

When Anna walked into the university auditorium at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), she was limping in obvious pain, barely able to put weight on her left knee. "It's nothing but bone on bone; I need a knee replacement," she said.

But after a few brief moments of Nutripuncture delivered by French scientist and medical doctor Patrick Veret, Anna walked around in a circle, upright and spry, as if no surgery was needed. "I'm stunned. What just happened?" she asked.

The California Institute of Integral Studies? That's a made-up name, right?

Wrong. It's real, although reality is a loose concept from here on in. And Nutripuncture is "real" as well, even though it sounds like what it is, a ridiculous mishmosh of nutrition and acupuncture.

The nonsense stunning my system began when I read a press release titled Nutritional Acupuncture Restores Health in Stunning Demo.

Read this.

Dr. Veret is an expert in the science of Nutripuncture, a medical breakthrough developed in France based upon the original findings of scientist George Lakhovsky who worked with oscillating polymetallic circuits. Veret and his colleague Cristina Coumo, an Italian practitioner and movement therapist, offered two days of demonstrations before CIIS faculty and staff.

Oscillating polymetallic circuits? Remember that game of choosing one word from column A, one from column B, and one from column C and making them into an impressive-sounding but meaningless phrase? That's the kindest description I can give of oscillating polymetallic circuits. Nothing like that exists in science. It doesn't even exist in pseudoscience. A Google search for "Oscillating polymetallic circuits" returns only one hit: the press release.

It gets loonier the farther you read. Try this section:

according to Veret, Nutripuncture operates on additional dimensions, including psychological, spiritual, emotional, physical and an energetic plane that can only be described as pre-manifested or the process of incarnating into human flesh.

The more Veret tried to explain how Nutripuncture works, (in French with Cuomo's translations) the more the assembled parties wanted to see another demonstration. Soon people were asking for "whatever Anna got" No matter what physical complaint was presented to Veret, he began the same way. He asked the person "What is your name?" over and over. As the person responded, Veret listened carefully for the way the person embodied his or her identity, and from there, uncovered which lines of vital force in the body were laboring under miscommunication or sustained trauma or any number of breakdowns in energy flow. He then tested the muscle strength (applied kinesiology) while having the client chew a sequence of tiny mineral supplements—little chalky pills that contain trace amounts of substances such as calcium, zinc, and potassium, flavored with a little stevia and bound with "neutralized" lactose.

Ah, yes. "Neutralized" lactose. No wonder Anna's knee miraculously cured. If he used non-neutralized lactose, she might have exploded. Into rainbows and puppies.

You know that this is quackery, pure and simple. Nobody, not the deepest-dyed woo-woo among you, can take instant cures based on "oscillating polymetallic circuits" seriously.

But what about Patricia Biesen's Your dairy-free first aid kit from *shudder* examiner.com? Would you understand as quickly that it is just as meaningless?

Sometimes even with the best of intentions, you may have an “oops” moment. “Oh no there was sour cream in that?” Next, you wind up not feeling so good. Here comes your first aid kit to the rescue, what every lactose intolerant foodie should have on hand for “emergencies”: ...

Digestive or Swedish bitters. Can be taken as a liquid medicinal or capsule form. Swedish bitters are a traditional herbal tonic, composed of 11 herbs: aloe, myrrh, saffron, senna leaves, camphor, rhubarb roots, zedvoary roots, manna, theriac venezian, carline thistle roots and angelica roots in a base of water and alcohol.

Biesen also confused lactose intolerance with cow's milk protein allergies. And she shills for other "alternative" products like Natren’s Mega Dophilus, Unikey’s high potency Magnesium, and Neti pots, none of which will do the slightest bit of good for any LI individual who has ingested milk. None.

There are degrees of pseudoscience, but that's like saying that zero comes in flavors. Skip the woo-woo. Science ain't perfect but the alternative is just plain nuts.

Hooray for Newsweek!

Newsweek decided a couple of weeks ago to drop the "news" part of the week. Apparently conceding that it could no longer compete with Internet swiftness, the editors rejiggered the magazine to contain mostly opinion and interpretation of issues in the news rather than breaking news stories. It's, at best, a work in progress still. Magazine columnists work best as spice in the meal, not the main dish.

Each week also features a major cover story that they intend to function part as think piece, part as background for the educated reader. These have also been uneven, both in length and depth. They've interviewed Obama (yawn) and examined the "real" Iran (worthy yawn). In need of something to stop the yawning they pulled out the newsmagazine equivalent of a bunker buster. They dissed Oprah.

Specifically, Live Your Best Life Ever! by Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert smashes into tiny smithereens the lack of science and sense in the crackpots and quacks that dispense fraudulent medical advice on her show. Yes, that means you Jenny McCarthy and your anecdotes about autism that substitute for research and how the CFGF diet is an autism cure. And yes that means The Secret which, as I wrote two years ago in It's No Secret. You're a Moron, was actively dangerous in its proposition that positive thinking could beat cancer. The Secret's advice was so incredibly stupid that Oprah had to bring on a woman who was planning on using The Secret to conquer her own cancer to tell her to listen to her doctors instead. And Oprah went on to a year's worth of medical ills and weight gain right after that program, which in a rational world would turn viewers away from Oprah's medical advice. We do not live in a rational world.

The authors of the Newsweek piece do acknowledge that:

she gives excellent diet and fitness tips. Two of her longest-serving resident experts, Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Bob Greene, routinely offer sound, high-quality advice to Oprah and her audience on how to lose weight and improve overall health.

That's not enough.

Bloggers and commentators all over the world have been overjoyed by the audacity and scientific sensibility of the article, as Kate Dailey wrote on the Newsweek blog. They are even harder on Oprah than I've been.

The article really struck a nerve with Dr. Dave Gorski, a blogger at Science-Based Medicine (bookmark it: the site is a great source of thorough, critical reviews of both the latest research and medical fads). ...

No one, and I mean no one, brings pseudoscience, quackery, and antivaccine madness to more people than Oprah Winfrey does every week...Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that’s why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the “Oprah-fication” of medicine.

The article even resonated across the pond: Alex Massie at The Spectator ...

it's worth being reminded that Oprah peddles the anti-MMR nonsense that, if its supporters have their way, is much more likely to harm many more children than would be affected even if their crackpottery were based on a sound evaluation of the risks of immunisation. Which, as best I can tell, it isn't.

And of course, those kids at Gawker chimed in as well:

This lengthy article is actually far too kind (and brief) to baby-killing nut Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine crusade, and yet it still manages to be a very damning indictment of how Oprah is trying to kill your poor mother.

I apologize that others have been more condemning of Oprah's pet quacks than I have. I'll try to do better - or is it worse? - in the future. Especially since I'm sure that we will now be treated to the crocodile tears of this poor maltreated billionaire with only an entire magazine, network, and top-rated talk show to fall back on crying bitterly of how badly she, who wants only good things for people, has been maligned with no opportunity to respond.

Tell her it's hogwash. She brought this down on herself. Send the message loud and clear. No more quacks. Get them off the air. Then we can strive to get them out of the pages of the women's and "health" magazines, and then maybe even off the Internet itself.

I know. I can dream, can't I?

Reason 12,765,876,761 to Avoid Chiropractors

I know some of you out there believe in chiropractic medicine. I have friends who swear that a chiropractor has helped relieve their pain. It's high on the list of alternative medicines.

It's nuttier than a gluten-free non-dairy fruitcake.

Take this article by Stephanie Sandoval, who does the Your Health column for ABC15 News in Phoenix. Sandoval of course has no health credentials of any kind.

She interviewed Dr. Tony Rodriguez of the Infinite Healing Center, someone who insists that chiropractic "adjustments" can help with digestive diseases and allergies.

Digestion problems
In the case of digestive disorders such as acid reflux, stomach ulcers and constipation there can be a direct link to a spinal problem as the cause.

Dr. Rodriguez says in the mid back the 5th thoracic vertebra relays information to the stomach.

Adjusting a fixed or subluxated vertebra in this area can directly improve symptoms.

Additionally, the 1st lumbar vertebra connects to the large intestine, which if irritated can create diarrhea or constipation.

A second and just as important cause of digestive problems is reaction to irritants and foods.

This inflammation of the gut can lead to a whole host of problems stemming from poor gut function.

Improper digestion and absorption of food can lead to bacterial overgrowth and an inability for the gut lining to keep out bad guys.

A chiropractor can order tests that can point out irritants in foods and bacterial imbalance that may be a part of the problem.

Allergies
Allergies are estimated to affect 30 million Americans. An allergic response is an over protective response from the immune system to an allergen: pollen, dust, milk, dog or cat dander.

For most, these allergens don't create a negative response. But, for many of those that do suffer from allergies, the reaction may not directly be related to the offending allergen.

Dr. Rodriguez says in the spine, the 3rd cervical vertebra directly correlates with the sinuses.

Relieving pressure in the neck can help clear sinuses and reduce allergy symptoms. He adds, food is one of the most common types of allergies.

The guts inability to filter can create fatigue, congestion and outright allergic reactions.

This is not medicine. This is not science. Nothing in medical literature supports this.

What it is is quackery. Gibberish. Moonshine.

Alternative medicine? The alternative to medicine is crackpottery. Don't go there.

Detox, Shmeetox

If you need something a bit lighter to tamp down your anger from yesterday's junk science post, I found it in a Time magazine article by Alice Park, Detox, Shmeetox.

The subject is still pseudoscientific nonsense designed to do nothing to your body except to make your wallet lighter. But Park has the right idea. Most of the time the proper medicine to use on the woo-woos and nutcases is ridicule.

Those commercials you see for foot pads that suck toxins out of your body?

But it turns out that detoxing does very little de-anything. The brown color on those foot pads? That comes from chemicals in the pads that change color whenever they get wet--even if the moisture comes from something as toxin-free as distilled water. "There is no science behind these detoxification services," says Dr. Christine Laine, deputy editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Says Dr. Bennett Roth, chief of gastroenterology at UCLA: "This is the 2009 version of the snake-oil salesman."

Colon cleansing? Crap, and not the good kind. Oh yeah, and a badly done colonic can "result in punctures in the intestinal wall."

Is there any science at all behind this nonsense? None. If you catch them off guard on a good day, they'll admit it themselves.

Even detox practitioners acknowledge that there is little evidence of the effectiveness of their work. "We would love to have that kind of good research, but that takes time and money, " says Mark Toomey, director of the Raj spa in Fairfield, Iowa, which offers cleansing oil-based massages, enemas and diets.

It's snake oil. Ridicule them off the face of the earth. When the gullible suggest it to you laugh in their faces. Wave around the money you save by not giving it to the quacks.

Save your anger for the quacks who misuse science to scare parents. And kill children.

Junk Science Exposed Too Late for Some

The MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) triple vaccine does not cause autism.

That's not a terribly original or controversial statement. The consensus of virtually all mainstream doctors was that vaccination was critical for children and that no link could be found between MMR and autism.

The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) said so as far back in 2001 when they published AAP panel finds no link between ASD, MMR vaccine.

The report concludes, "The available evidence does not support the hypothesis that MMR vaccine causes autism or associated disorders or IBD" (Pediatrics. 2001;107:e84). It also says pediatricians need to work with families to ensure children are protected from these preventable diseases.

"Pediatricians should feel comfortable using MMR vaccine and recommending it for their patients," said Neal A. Halsey, M.D., FAAP, co-chair of the panel that wrote the 64-page report.

With all the available medical evidence om one side, you wouldn't think this would become a major issue. Yet it's not merely major but tragic.

It all stems from an article in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet.

Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis,
and pervasive developmental disorder in children
A J Wakefield, S H Murch, A Anthony, J Linnell, D M Casson, M Malik, M Berelowitz, A P Dhillon,
M A Thomson, P Harvey, A Valentine, S E Davies, J A Walker-Smith
The Lancet, Volume 351, Number 9103 28 February 1998

Summary
Background We investigated a consecutive series of children with chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder.

Methods 12 children (mean age 6 years [range 3-10], 11 boys) were referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of normal development followed by loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Children underwent gastroenterological, neurological, and developmental assessment and review of developmental records. Ileocolonoscopy and biopsy sampling, magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and lumbar puncture were done under sedation. Barium follow-through radiography was done where possible. Biochemical, haematological, and immunological profiles were examined.

Findings Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children, with measles infection in one child, and otitis media in another. All 12 children had intestinal abnormalities, ranging from lymphoid nodular hyperplasia to aphthoid ulceration. Histology showed patchy chronic inflammation in the colon in 11 children and reactive ileal lymphoid hyperplasia in seven, but no granulomas. Behavioural disorders included autism (nine), disintegrative psychosis (one), and possible postviral or vaccinal encephalitis (two). There were no focal neurological abnormalities and MRI and EEG tests were normal. Abnormal laboratory results were significantly raised urinary methylmalonic acid compared with age-matched controls (p=0·003), low haemoglobin in four children, and a low serum IgA in four children.

Interpretation We identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of previously normal children, which was generally associated in time with possible environmental triggers.

Discussion
We describe a pattern of colitis and ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia in children with developmental disorders. Intestinal and behavioural pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting a selection bias in a self-referred group; however, the uniformity of the intestinal pathological changes and the fact that previous studies have found intestinal dysfunction in children with autistic-spectrum disorders, suggests that the connection is real and reflects a unique disease process.

We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.

If there is a causal link between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and this syndrome, a rising incidence might be anticipated after the introduction of this vaccine in the UK in 1988. Published evidence is inadequate to show whether there is a change in incidence or a link with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

Doesn't sound like much, does it? A study of a mere dozen children. Carefully worded findings. No evidence of a connection. More study is needed.

Yet, this study by itself caused the hysteria over vaccination over the past decade. Even though no link was made between MMR and autism, use of the MMR vaccine declined sharply, especially in Britain, and even the single disease vaccines that showed no connection whatsoever dropped in popularity.

The result is predictable and inevitable. Children died.

After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%. Populations acquire "herd immunity" from measles when more than 95% of people have been vaccinated.

Last week official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year, compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.

That's from an article by Brian Ross of The Times of London. His actual accusations are much worse than causing hysteria. He says that the original article was fraudulent.

It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

To be fair, here is a .pdf of Dr. Wakefield's response.

Wakefield has been practically elevated into a god by the fringe nutgroups that regularly attack all mainstream medicine. The leader of the nut groups is Age of Autism, who awarded Wakefield their first, and I believe only, Galileo Award as a persecuted Man of Science. You won't be too surprised that autism diet-fad activist Jenny McCarthy and her husband Jim Carrey were Age of Autism's 2008 Couple of the Year.

The fact that many autism activists advocate a casein-free, gluten-free diet for their children, despite the lack of any solid medical evidence for its effectiveness, gives me the tie to write about this autism junk science. In truth, I would have written about it anyway. It displays, in unmistakable, deadly terms, the dangers of junk science, pseudoscience, and the war against mainsteam science that I have to write about all too often.

My lessons are simple. Science and medicine are consensus disciplines. One paper - especially a paper with a small number of subjects, without double-blind testing, without confirmation - is not science. Even if it makes newspaper headlines, one paper means nothing by itself. That's true for all science, all medicine, all nutrition. In a few, rare instances a huge, multi-year, carefully monitored study may reveal a danger that is so severe that you need to change your life in response. An after-the-fact study of a dozen people that states in so many words that no link was made is not one of these instances.

Wakefield was not ignored, or ridiculed, or prosecuted or persecuted by other doctors. The medical community checked out his claim and found there was nothing to it. That should have buried his work, like a thousand other preliminary articles that never get confirmation. The British government and its medical arms, along with the British press, apparently botched the response. The American press hasn't been much better. They reported the controversy rather than the science.

That's not good enough. Controversy sells, but conspiracies of the entire medical community don't exist. (The conspiracies are usually on the other side. Wakefield has been accused of taking large sums of money from lawyers who wanted to sue the vaccine manufacturers.)

The medical community is not always right. There are huge amounts we don't know yet. Those daring mavericks and loners who are opposed to the consensus? They're almost always wrong. They're almost always out to take your money. Some of them are real medical doctors. More have no expertise at all except for their ability to scare you and fool you.

This is why I do this blog. I hope that by reading it you can look at the fraudsters and tell them to go to hell at first sight, before they can do their damage.

Children are dying of measles in the U.K. They are dying because of ignorance and fear. While cases of measles have shown a slight rise in the U.S. because of parents not vaccinating their children, deaths are still rare. Worldwide, however, measles is still deadly, killing an estimated 197,000 children in 2007. Massive as that number is, it's still a 74% decline from 2000. Why? More vaccinations. Measles vaccinations worldwide pushed over 80% in 2007. That's right. There are now more parents vaccinations their children in the third world than in Britain.

The junk science brigade is trying to turn Britain into a third world country. Maybe now they have less chance to succeed. Let's hope more children don't have to die to prove them wrong.

UPDATE: News broke today that U.S. courts will deny accusations that the MMR vaccine caused autism.

A special U.S. court ruled against three families on Thursday who claimed vaccines caused their children's autism.

The Vaccine Court Omnibus Autism Proceeding ruled against the parents of Michelle Cedillo, Colten Snyder and William Yates Hazlehurst, who had claimed that a measles, mumps and rubella vaccines had combined with other vaccine ingredients to damage the three children.

"I conclude that the petitioners have not demonstrated that they are entitled to an award on Michelle's behalf," Special Master George Hastings, a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice, wrote in the Cedillo ruling.

They also declared that the vaccines with the mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal did not cause autism symptms.

Food Faddist Nonsense Redux

"Dairy products are thought to put extra pressure on the liver."

That bit of total absolute idiocy, the most flagrant food faddist nonsense I've seen in many a moon, comes to you courtesy of FemaleFirst.co.uk. The UK. I should have known. Is there anyone in the country dispensing food advice that isn't a crackpot? Females, please put this site last.

Once they scraped me off the ceiling I put iron bands around my stomach to keep my gorge from rising and set off to investigate how such a loony tunes notion could come into being.

The clue came from the article's title, "Christmas Countdown: Festive Detoxes." I've railed against detox diets before, in Detox Your Brain, Not Your Diet.

Somehow the detox numbskulls and the "milk is poison" dimwits have met head on, presumably crushing the one brain cell left between the groups. Take a look at the nonsense packed into The Problem of Meat and Dairy Products, a page that is the equivalent of an internet black hole because when you get that much fraudulence packed into that small a space, no intelligence can escape.

Meat is harder to digest than plant foods and continues to putrefy in the digestive tract, taking about 4 to 4 1/12 hours to be absorbed in the intestines versus 2 to 2 1/2 for grains and vegetables. Purification produces toxins and amines that accumulate in the ,liver, ...

That's cut and paste from the site, BTW.

Look, meat does not putrefy in your intestines. Colon cleansing is a scam. Milk does not affect the liver. You can't detox the body because there is nothing to detox.

Don't get taken in by these quacks and fraudsters. Don't even listen to them. Don't allow them to poison the inside of your brain. Take a stand now.

Nutritionists Blast Nonsense

Sometimes people are so stupid they make my teeth ache.

Nancy Coale Zippe's "What's Cooking" column from August 8 on DelawareOnline.com had the promising title of "Omitting wheat and dairy products improved health." Little did I know the depths the column would sink to.

Apparently, Zippe had been a long-time sufferer of adult-onset asthma. She wanted to get off the regimen of shots and medications because "I should not have to infuse my body with chemicals to breathe. That should be a natural birthright." This should be a clue to anyone with a lick of sense that nonsense is on its way. Unfortunately, the word "natural" is now used by people to mean anti-science, as I showed recently in my post on Mike Adams, It's No Secret. You're A Moron.

You body can go wrong completely "naturally" in any of a thousand different ways. "Chemicals" have nothing to do with it. All food is made of chemicals.

Primed and ready for nonsense to cloud her already murky thoughts, the stars misaligned in a cosmic coincidence of catastrophe. Zippe was assigned to a lecture by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, author of Eat Right 4 Your Type. Your blood type, that is.

This hilarious bit of quackery began in Japan in 1979 with the publication of what became in English, You Are Your Blood Type, by Toshitaka Nomi and Alexander Besher. Adamo, who is a naturopathic physician, not an M.D., appears to be one of Nomi's major disciples. Needless to say, no reputable mainstream physician gives a corpuscle's amount of credence to this notion.

His beliefs, well, I should let Zippe fill you in:

Anyone with kitchen experience knows that combining flour with liquid makes paste. That happens in your digestive tract as well, "gunking up" the walls of your intestines, and prohibiting much of the good nutrition from being assimilated into the body. That's why we need fiber to scrape off the mess, or we'd become totally blocked.

Dairy products tend to act as glue and do their own clogging, affecting breathing and blood flow. Our choir director always warned against any dairy items before singing. And I can't help but wonder if my dear uncle's congestive heart failure was attributed to the fact that he owned a cheese shop and ate huge quantities of cheese.

Yes, that's exactly what fiber does. Swallowing paint scrapers is probably even better for you, given this view of our intestines.

Fortunately, I don't need to rail at this nonsense all by myself. The letters to the editor page on August 11 contained a pair of outraged missives from outraged nutritionists.

[P]lease be aware that you do your readers a disservice by printing information derived from nonprofessional individuals who purport to know effective treatments for complex diseases.

Nutrition is biochemistry, and so is medicine. Recommending a diet not proven to be effective is a form of malpractice, and there are laws regarding who can and cannot practice as a licensed dietitian/nutritionist in Delaware.

Dr. Adamo's Blood Type Diet is about as far from what we call "evidence-based" medicine as it gets -- a form of dietary snake oil. -- Rick Weissinger, MS, RD.



[T]here is absolutely no evidence that the "Eat Right 4 Your Type Diet," a weight-loss program developed over a decade ago, benefits allergy and asthma sufferers.

The author's premise that blood-type populations have specific problematic foods in common has no scientific basis or associated research.

Zippe's statement that dairy products cause mucous, "clog" our systems, and affect breathing and blood flow is erroneous.

Before making drastic dietary changes, readers are encouraged to seek the advice of state-certified nutritionists or registered dietitians. -- Marianne Carter, MS, RD, Delaware Dietetic Association

Thank you both.

It's No Secret. You're A Moron.

Now that The Secret has been Oprahcized, millions of people around the world are using the power of nonsense to cure them of their ills until the next quack bestseller comes along.

Nonsense? Quack? How dare he?

Heck, I don't have to say anything. I can let the believers damn themselves with their own words.

Case in point, Mike Adams, who has a line of books of his own that he's trying to push. (Most of them have the word "natural" in the title, always a red warning flag to those who believe in, you know, science and medicine.)

You can find the line of hooey he spouts on NewsTarget.com, a site in which Adams spouts so much quackery that feathers come out of the screen. This one is particularly despicable:

The bottom line is that conventional cancer treatments are a sham and they do nothing to help the patient overcome the causes of cancer.

He suggests cleansing your liver with Amazon Herbs, which he also recommends that you become a pusher of yourself, in what he admits is a "network marketing model" or in more common terms, the dread multi-level marketing (MLM) scam.

So what does Mike Adams have to say about the secret behind The Secret? Let's select his comment on dairy, since that's our subject.

Vegetarian foods: Avoiding the consumption of meat and dairy products is also an important way to keep your system clear and lend power to your intention. Meat and dairy products stagnate the flow of energy throughout your mind and body, blocking the intention. To get the best results, go completely dairy free (except for raw, unprocessed milk, which qualifies as a raw food) and meat free.

Standard-class hooey, nothing new or different, except for the now faddish insistence that raw milk somehow behaves differently in the body than does pasteurized milk. (Well, yes, it does: it doesn't give you essential vitamin D, which is added to all processed milks. But I don't think that's what Adams means.)

My intention is pretty obvious. I intend to stand up for science and medicine whenever possible (and chastise them for any lapses of integrity or clarity) while simultaneously blasting those whose notions of "natural" include magic and nonsense.

I do that pretty well for someone who eats cooked meat. And has the occasional dairy product. And never, ever, ever buys any of the products recommended by the like of the Mike Adamses of the world. I intend to keep doing so for a long, long time.

And that's no secret.

Attention Edina, MN: Potential Scam Warning

Personally, I run the other way while holding tight to my wallet when I hear the words Holistic Health Fair.

But the one to be held in Edina, MN on June 2 sends chills down my spine.

According to their press release:

Wilson Chiropractic Center, in business for 43 years, offers family healthcare and specializes in allergy elimination. Using a method called Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique, or NAET, the doctors at Wilson Chiropractic Center are able to treat chronic allergic reactions, including severe environmental allergies and peanut allergies, even lactose intolerance and pet allergies. Allergic reactions occur when our immune systems are exposed to allergens and then become over-reactive to them. "We utilize chiropractic care and a form of acupuncture to -- in essence -- rewire the nervous system so that the immune system can properly handle allergens the way it was meant to," Dr. Burke said. "It's important to understand that antihistamines and other allergy medications just suppress the symptoms rather than treating the underlying cause of the reaction." He added that antihistamines can also lead to digestive problems and other serious side effects.

If that paragraph wasn't enough warning that standard medical science is on holiday, perhaps an earlier post of mine will shake some sense into you: Beware Allergy Scam - Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET).

In it I quoted from Quackwatch:

NAET is a bizarre system of diagnosis and treatment based on the notion that allergies are caused by "energy blockage" that can be diagnosed with muscle-testing and permanently cured with acupressure and/or acupuncture treatments. Its developer, Devi S. Nambudripad, DC, LAc, RN, PhD, is described on her Web site as an acupuncturist, chiropractor, kinesiologist, and registered nurse who practices in Buena Park, California. [my note: since this was written she also claims an M.D. from an Antigua diploma mill]

...

The Bottom Line
NAET clashes with the concepts of anatomy, physiology, pathology, physics, and allergy accepted by the scientific community. The story of its "discovery" is highly implausible. Its core diagnostic approach -- muscle testing for "allergies" -- is senseless and is virtually certain to diagnose nonexistent problems. Its recommendations for dietary restrictions based on nonexistent food allergies are likely to place the patient at great risk for nutrient deficiency, and, in the case of children, at risk for social problems and the development of eating disorders. I believe that practitioners who use NAET have such poor judgment that they should not be permitted to remain licensed. If you encounter a practitioner who relies on the strategies described in this article, please ask the state attorney general to investigate.

Not even other chiropractors are willing to put their faith in this "technique."

I found the following on the website of American Specialty Health, which bills itself as:
The nation’s leading provider of:
Chiropractic • Acupuncture • Naturopathy
Dietetics • Fitness Clubs • Personal Trainers
Massage Therapy • Vitamins and Minerals
Tobacco Cessation • Weight Management

Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET) is considered to be scientifically implausible, does not meet professionally accepted standards, and lacks research and literature for efficacy and/or utility. Use of this technique/procedure shall be cause for failure to meet ASHA criteria for network participation.

A belief, theory, or mechanism of health and disease is said to be implausible if it requires the existence of forces, mechanisms, or biological processes that are not known to exist within the existing framework of scientific knowledge.

...

Evidence and Research:
Based on the review conducted, ASHA is unaware of any published studies on the efficacy of this specific treatment.

Non-specific harm (labeling). Harm caused to a patient by the transmittal of false or misleading information that may cause emotional harm, a false sense of security, a false sense of vulnerability, dependency, or otherwise create in the patient a set of beliefs about their health that is manifestly untrue.

Indirect harm (substitution). Harm caused to a patient by substituting a specific diagnostic or therapeutic procedure whose safety, therapeutic effectiveness, or diagnostic utility is either unknown or is known to be unsafe, ineffective, of no diagnostic utility, for a diagnostic or therapeutic procedure of known safety, effectiveness, or diagnostic utility.

Don't put your allergies - or, heaven forfend, your children's allergies! - into the care of those who invent their own worlds of medicine.

UPDATE: December 2008
ASHA has changed its link and the document contained in that link. They have sanitized the language used. It now reads:

POLICY
ASHA clinical committees have determined that Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET®) is not established as clinically effective, is not professionally recognized, poses a health and safety risk through Substitution Harm and Labeling Effects, and is considered to be scientifically implausible. ...

Evidence and Research:
Based on the review conducted, ASHA is unaware of any published studies on the efficacy of this specific treatment.

Here's a scientific view from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA): Unorthodox Techniques for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Allergy, Asthma and Immune Disorders:

Allergy elimination techniques (also known as advanced allergy elimination and Nambudripad's allergy elimination in some countries)
Use: Treatment of food, inhalant and chemical sensitivity / allergy.

Method: This treatment is based on the concept that “allergen” is perceived by the brain as a threat to the body’s well being. Exposure to allergen disrupts the flow of nervous energies from the brain to the body via “meridians”, resulting in symptoms. The technique seeks to “re-programme” the brain by applying acupressure applied to both sides of the spinal column (where energy flowing along meridians intersects with nerve roots) while the patient is in direct contact or close proximity to purported allergen.

Evidence: No evidence

Comment: This technique combines concepts of kinesiology, reflexology, acupuncture and radionics. Proponents claim to be able to cure almost any allergy or sensitivity. This approach lacks scientific rationale or published evidence of efficacy. It is also a potentially dangerous technique if used for to treat dangerous food, drug or venom allergy. The only proven “allergy elimination” techniques are those of conventional injectable (add WEB LINK) and sublingual/oral immunotherapy (add WEB LINK) for treatment of allergic respiratory disease and stinging insect allergy. At this point in time, proven standardised methods for curing food allergy have not been established, but research is ongoing.

And on another site I find this:

Others in the medical community state it has placebo effects at best. A recent review: Teuber, Suzanne S.; Porch-Curren, Cristina (2003). "Unproved diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to food allergy and intolerance." Current Opinion in Allergy & Clinical Immunology. 3 (3): 217–221.  concludes that “there have been no studies supporting the use of these techniques, and several have refuted their utility. A beneficial placebo effect may be responsible for the perceived clinical effectiveness in many cases of food intolerance.” There is a distinct lack of studies of NAET, another review of complementary allergy tests: Morris, A. (2006). "COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE ALLERGY TESTS". Current Allergy & Clinical Immunology 19 (1).  goes so far as to state that "NAET has to be the most unsubstantiated allergy treatment proposed to date."

The most unsubstantiated allergy treatment proposed to date. Consider that the next time somebody proposes anecdotal evidence in its favor.