Aside from that, my son is intolerant to cow’s milk too (the whey proteins, so he is fine with cheese) and he can also tolerate goat’s milk. As a baby he would vomit copiously even if *I* had drunk cow’s milk (he was breastfed) and get a bad eczema rash all over his body. A year ago he would be sick if he had a fair amount of cow’s milk and smaller amounts would trigger an eczema rash (less extensive than before). Now he is fine unless he has a lot of cow’s milk, in which case he gets a bit of eczema. He had nothing like AK, and still got better. Sometimes we do things at the same time as we get better from an illness. It doesn’t mean that whatever we did was the cure.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/562475

Misdiagnosing or self-diagnosing dairy intolerance in children can have lifelong effects.

The AK did NOT ‘desensitize’ him. The gradual reintroduction of milk products would have induced digestive enzymes in the small bowel to allow him to tolerate milk once more. Nothing ‘magical’ nor ‘holistic’ here, and sadly, no ‘unconventional logic’ at work either. Just exploitation by your AK therapist of the general publics lack of knowledge about how the body works, and what its capable of.

But in order to add neutral comment to the debate, this article – written by the very people who use AK as ‘diagnostic techniques’ is required reading. This is where I get my opinions from. Dogma doesn’t feature. If it is not biologically plausible then I’m sorry, its a charlatan at work…

http://www.chiroandosteo.com/content/pdf/1746-1340-15-11.pdf

The authors (Haas et al) conclude
“When AK is disentangled from standard orthopedic muscle testing, the few studies evaluating unique AK procedures either refute or cannot support the validity of AK procedures as diagnostic tests.
The evidence to date does not support the use of MMT for the diagnosis of organic disease or pre/subclinical conditions”

Your accusation of – as an registered Health Professional of ‘dogma’, then perhaps you will

Then I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know the Prof John Garrow has looked at Applied Kinesiology in a BMJ article, and wondered if it works. It turns out to works as well as chance alone, when subjected to a blind test.

Now, it’s hard to know why practitioners of AK make the diagnoses they do. However, if I were asked to guess what one food someone is intolerant of, milk would likely be my first guess…

If you’re so keen on curiosity, looking at life and wondering why, why not apply that approach yourself? Did you explore the possibility that the change might not be down to the sessions but to the passage of 12 months? Google is your friend: ["cow's milk" outgrow]. Not so difficult to confirm that it’s a very common pattern for infants to have an intolerance to cow’s milk that goes away spontaneously by the age of 3-4.

Your cynical view of Applied Kinesiology (AK) is entirely grounded, it being one version of the non-science (or should that be non-sense) forms of irrelevant ‘tests’ used to ‘diagnose’ food allergy/ intolerance (the terms being used interchangeably by the alt.health market, despite meaning very different things). AK/ IgG testing/ Vega tests are all proven not to be of any benefit in diagnosing true allergy, let alone presumed ones.

Despite the risk of nutritional and developmental harm to children submitted to such diets by willing parents and gullible teachers, I remain amazed by how easy it has been for the self-styled guru’s – and their acolytes – to access this vulnerable group of children via the school networks, and how they continue to do so. In my experiences such encounters follow a particular process, which your readers may care to be alert to.

First, the benign approach (we’re doing it for the kids/ an extension of ‘Jamies healthy eating plans’) that no rational nutritional professional would contest, and which is quickly accepted by the school as part of their healthy ‘Food In Schools’ approach.

Only after a few weeks worth of educational ‘healthy eating’ to kids and parents has been safely tucked under the belt and trust gained, comes the real offensive – which, of course, comes at a cost. ‘Optimum nutrition’ can only be achieved if that healthy eating approach is augmented with a particular vitamin and mineral supplement, and of course the ubiquitous fish oil capsule – the latter supported by a paucity of actual clinical research but with a high media spend to push the allusion of instant intelligence if you swallow it (so to speak).

Finally comes the tentative but persistently persuasive grooming that ‘food intolerance’ ‘diagnosis’ will optimise development – resulting in unnecessary tests and irrelevant food exclusions, made all the more severe with the pre-existing issues with food common in this group of children with behavioural problems.

But what concerns and abhors me most of all is the apparent dismissiveness of LEA’s and the Headteachers concerned when their benign acceptance of these unregulated and self-styled guru’s are challenged. ‘No Harm Done’ is their mantra, as the therapists move on to the next school willing to finance their input and allow them to exploit the trust between school and community. It must be difficult for a senior teacher to admit they were as duped as the parents, but they should acknowledge this honestly rather than hide it behind their need to maintain educational professionalism.

But the harm is done. A pervasive opinion that diet can never be sufficient without supplements. A reluctance to reintroduce foods that should never have been excluded on the basis of flaky tests such as those above, condemning the child to totally irrelevant dietary restrictions. And worse of all, no nutritional follow-up to ensure growth centiles are tracked – but with a cut-and-run approach within 2 terms or so, its easy to hide the dietary mess left behind …

thank you for highlighting this in your column