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Muscle testing: 7 big things to know

Muscle testing sounds pretty easy.

First, test to see if a food or supplement agrees with you. Then, if your body responds positively, pop that thing in your mouth.

Well, not so fast.

I’ve done muscle testing roughly a thousand times over the past few years and I’ve found it’s a bit more complicated than that. Every muscle test is a snapshot of a moment in time. What your body says yes to this morning, it may say no to this afternoon.

This post isn’t about which muscle testing method to use. I’ve tried several, and it’s a matter of finding out which one works best for you.

And since muscle testing isn’t mainstream, here’s a brief explanation. When you test a substance such as a food or supplement, you’re looking to see if that substance makes you a bit weaker or a bit stronger. Strong is a positive result. Weak is a negative.

The most common muscle test is done by chiropractors and other alternative practitioners. You hold the substance in one hand and you hold your arm out sideways. Before you pick the thing up, the practitioner pulls down on your arm to gauge its strength. Then when you’re holding the substance, he pushes down again. If your arm is weaker this time, that means the substance made you weaker.

There are several other methods and several machines that measure the body’s response. Frankly, I like the machines better because it lessens human error, but, again, that’s another story.

A lot of people think muscle testing is quackery, but as you may have guessed, I disagree. Results of my own testing haven’t been 100 per cent accurate, but in most cases they’ve provided valuable information that’s helped me better decide which foods and supplements to consume.

Now, on to the 7 big things:

1. Don’t rely on a single test: The human body is an amazingly complex organism. Countless adjustments are going on over the course of any given day. Maybe in the morning taking a whack of zinc might throw your body out of balance and you don’t want it. But an hour later, you come into contact with a flu virus and your body says, “Gimme that.”

I like to test a few times to determine whether or not something agrees with me. That may be a bit much. Two probably would be sufficient.

2. Time of day matters: I like numbers, so you’re going to see a bit of math, based on a study I did of about 700 recent tests. I’m 74 per cent likely to test positive to a substance in the morning and 63 per cent likely to test positive in the afternoon. I’m guessing this is because I tire as the day goes along and I’m less likely to want to deal with one more thing.

3. Some days you’re more receptive than others: A few days ago I tested five things and wanted all of them. Today I tested four and didn’t want any. This happens regularly. I don’t bother asking why. My body is smarter than I am. I trust it.

4. Some weeks are better than others: Stat time again. The first week of this year, I only wanted 42 per cent of the things I tested. The second week, I wanted 74 per cent of them. I felt the same both weeks. Go figure.

5. Some seasons you want it, some seasons you don’t: I tested more than 100 substances. In the fall, Vitamin D had one of the worst results. Since winter started, it’s had one of the best. Easily explainable this time. Vitamin D levels tend to drop with the reduction in warm sunshine that comes with winter.

6. Make food thy medicine: This applies to me, maybe not to you. I was positive for 98 per cent of the foods and beverages I tested, and 65 per cent for supplements. The foods also usually had much stronger positive results.

7. Keep track of test results: If you do a fair bit of muscle testing, you can learn a lot from keeping score. I’ve discovered that I like some brands much better than other brands, that I prefer tinctured herbs to capsules and tablets, and that I’m more likely to react positively to minerals than I am to vitamins.

So, you see, muscle testing isn’t all that simple. But it is helpful, as long as you use your brain and not just your body to make decisions on how to apply test results.

Photo: Linelle Photography

Cutting the cost of Lyme

I’ve always been pretty good at finding ways to keep my wallet stuck inside my pocket, but since getting Lyme disease I’ve been forced to further refine the art of not spending money.

Make no mistake, getting well from Lyme can be very costly. There are often physician visits, antibiotics, lab tests, supplements, sometimes top-quality herbs, etcetera, etcetera. So I’ve found that creativity is needed to save some of those ever-shrinking funds.

You can always cut out frills, but you have to eat. When I first got sick, I had to change my diet and it was strange and difficult. But once I made the paradigm shift, I found the new normal to be far superior, and cheaper.

Successfully making these changes required seeing through a couple of food myths. The first: Vegetables and fruit are expensive. The second: Going gluten free is really expensive.

Eating lots of vegetables, health experts agree, promotes better health. And while some veggies are costly, many of the ones most helpful for people with Lyme are cheap, such as garlic, onions, leeks, cabbage, parsley, and carrots.

When I go to my fruit and vegetable store (a much better option than the supermarket) I aim at 30 cents per serving of veggies, and I easily meet that goal. And if you want to spice things up, you’ll find that spices are often the cheapest foods you can find.

Staying within that price range with fruit is tricky, often requiring buying sale items. I also buy the smallest pieces of fruit available, as this reduces both cost and sugar intake.

It’s not a myth that organic produce is expensive. If you can afford it, great, but even if you think you can’t, sometimes you can. My store sometimes has specials where the organic version of a veggie is cheaper than the conventional one.

I find it difficult convincing people that gluten free doesn’t have to mean breaking the bank. If you can’t imagine a world without packaged food, then gluten-free prices are ridiculous. But if you shift to eating fresh veggies, fruit, eggs, nuts, seeds, non-gluten grains like brown rice, quinoa and buckwheat, and moderate amounts of meat and fish, you’ll be off gluten with substantially reduced cost.

I’ve also learned that I can save a lot by eating prebiotic and probiotic foods. There are dozens of them, usually common everyday items, and you can find their names with a quick web search.

This reduces my need for expensive probiotic supplements. And some experts, like Dr. David Perlmutter, author of the bestsellers Brain Maker and Grain Brain, and Jeff Leach, author of Rewild, say that while bottled probiotics are good, eating a wide variety of probiotic and prebiotic foods is also important for gut health.

I’ve found several other areas besides food where I can fight Lyme inexpensively or without cost.

Lyme patients must handle exercise cautiously. If your body is exhausted, it’s foolhardy to do anything but light stretching. But for many, exercise can produce significant health gains. Dr. Joseph Burrascano, a leading Lyme physician, is among those who advocate substantial regular exercise for Lyme patients.

Fortunately, I can exercise, but I can’t afford gym memberships. So instead of paying hundreds of dollars, I bought a $10 book off Amazon outlining dozens of body weight exercises. These exercises use your body’s natural resistance as weights. Push-ups are one example.

Making this approach more valuable is the option to do it outside – in your backyard, at a park, or best yet at the beach or ocean. I’m allergic to mold and several other things, and the breeze coming off the water clears away a lot of the allergens.

That brings me to two of my favorite free Lyme helpers – fresh air and prayer.

No one would dispute fresh air’s benefits. Studies suggest outdoor air is generally much cleaner than indoor air, so I get outside as much as I can – of course guarding carefully against further tick bites. I also open my windows as much as possible, as long as there are no allergens around and as long as it doesn’t put me in the way of a draft.

Prayer, on the other hand, has its believers and its doubters. I’m a believer. Some studies say prayer promotes healing; others say it doesn’t. But in my experience, I feel I’ve seen important benefits.

The act of prayer itself usually promotes a state of calm, similar to what would happen in meditation, and being in a peaceful state helps everyone. And meditation, of course, can be free too. One method is a simple breath meditation, where you still yourself and follow your breathing.

Healing prayer with laying on of hands has many skeptics, but I feel I have received a considerable health boost as a result of it, and it hasn’t cost me a cent. If interested, you could find out about this option by asking around at local churches or by checking the web. Healing prayer by phone is also offered through many sources, one of which is well-known Lyme author Connie Strasheim, who has regular prayer calls. Information can be found at her website – www.conniestrasheim.com.

Perhaps the widest variety of useful, free resources can be found at the local library. I can get not only free printed books, ebooks, and audiobooks, but also free movies and music and free computer and internet access.

An ongoing battle with Lyme means that you never know when you can use that extra cash you kept in your bank account. Maybe you can try a new treatment that shows promise, or travel to see a top-notch physician. And while holding on to money may not be as much fun as spending it, I think I’m one of many people who derive no small amount of joy from finding new ways to save the stuff.

Tasting your way to better health

Hmm. I can barely taste that zinc tablet when I suck on it. And the vitamin C crystals sure seem a lot less tangy today. Uh oh, something is thinking of zapping me with a cold.

We’ve all heard the phrase “salt to taste”. But one thing I’ve found on my journey to health is that you can also “magnesium to taste” and “calcium to taste” and “copper to taste”. Etcetera, etcetera.

Our bodies are really smart. They are always trying to help us if only we would pay attention. Take the taste buds for example. There are scores of things the body loves to give us feedback on that we generally don’t consider.

I use a powdered probiotic every morning. Some mornings it tastes really strong, other mornings not so strong, and other mornings downright weak. In the middle is what puts a smile on my face, really strong just means back off a bit tomorrow, and weak concerns me. That means something might be wrong in my gut, so I’ll toss a bit more in my glass and hope for the best.

The general rule is if tastes weak, my body could use some more of the substance in question. If it tastes really strong, I may have too much in my system, and if it’s in the middle, I’m probably in balance.

Balance. The key word. When it comes to minerals, vitamins, other nutritional supplements and just about everything else in life, balance is the body’s desire. For me, megadosing supplements doesn’t work. Too much is often as bad as too little.

The list of supplements I’ve tried where the taste test comes into play is a long one. Just about every mineral applies, as do things like B12 lozenges, colloidal silver and grapefruit seed extract.

My doctor uses this theory when she gives new patients a bit of zinc liquid to swish around in their mouths and gauge its taste, which can range from “like water” to “like dishwater”. It’s a screening test to get an idea of their zinc level, as zinc plays a vital role in so many of the body’s important functions.

All this is not foolproof science. The body may have other reasons for judging a substance weak, strong or middling. And remember the taste test is a snapshot of a moment in time. You might put the same amount of salt on a plate of eggs at breakfast and another one at dinner and have it taste weak in the morning, and then strong in the evening.

Lyme is at least thousands of years old. If it were stupid, it would have died long ago. It’s probably a lot smarter than I am. But then again my body is a lot smarter than I am too. So when it’s using the taste buds to try to keep me free from nasty things like colds and flu that could weaken me and give the Lyme a chance to make inroads, I’ve learned to listen very, very carefully.