The other diagnostic tests on offer include those that use pendulums or dowsing rods to test patients, those using radionic boxes, ‘energy boxes’, Vegatest electrical devices or other instruments. There are also tests derived from applied kinesiology, which mostly measure muscle strength. Most of these tests are based on ideas about energy fields or energy flows in the human body that are ‘disturbed’ by illness. There is little evidence to support these ideas about energy fields, and even their proponents claim that they are un-testable in a scientific sense.
Even if such energy fields or flows do exist, the logic behind the tests does not stand up to scrutiny. Every therapist has his or her own version of the tests and it is therefore difficult to generalize. However, many therapists claim to identify problem foods simply by applying their chosen method of testing to the patient’s body, or to a hair sample or blood sample. In other words, they claim that the energy ‘disturbance’ is so specific that it can reveal precisely which foods cause the illness – this is surely stretching credibility to its breaking point, especially when there are several foods involved.
Furthermore, the practitioners of these tests believe that it is the disturbed energy fields that produce the physical symptoms. But it is a common observation in food intolerance that there is, by and large, no relationship between the type of physical symptoms that a patient suffers and the type of foods that he or she is sensitive to. If the physical symptoms do not relate to the type of food responsible dien how can the changes in the ‘energy fields’ (that are supposed to produce those symptoms) be so food-specific?
The implausible nature of the reasoning behind these tests becomes evident when one looks more closely at what some practitioners actually do. Some claim that they do not need to have the patient present at all to perform the diagnosis – they can get to the root of the problem by swinging a pendulum over a list of foods, while thinking about the patient. And it does not matter if the practitioner and patient have never met, apparently.
No amount of logic will dissuade those who firmly believe in this type of medicine, of course. But there are a great many others who turn to such therapists simply because they are ill, and desperate to find out the source of their illness. Such methods can seem attractive short-cuts to a cure, but in reality they are most unlikely to work, and none have been evaluated scientifically. Anyone who thinks they may have food sensitivity would be much better advised to put their time and energy into an elimination diet – it is far more likely to help, and it will be a great deal cheaper.
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