A Double-Blind, Randomized Study to Assess the Validity of Applied Kinesiology

Abstract:

Premise

Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a diagnostic technique widely used within the Integrative Medical community. In essence, it posits that a question can be mentally held in a person’s mind, sometimes while they are holding a substance like a vitamin, or a food sample, and by measuring relative muscular weakness an answer as to whether the substance or the condition represented by the question is good for that person can be obtained. This AK is presumed to have a diagnostic capability. That being presumed, this study asks the following questions: (1) Is there a difference in muscular strength when an individual holds a substance that is inimical to life processes (a poison solution), as compared to a substance that is essential for life (normal saline)? (2) Is this effect a transaction involving input from both the person being measured and the kinesiologist doing the measurement or is it only the person being measured? (3) As an extension of question 2, is the result the same when different kinesiologists take the measurement or when no kinesiologist is involved? (4) Does belief, expectation, gender, or time cognition play a role in determining response?

Methodology

To answer these questions, which would help to define the parameters of the AK process, 51 participants were tested during three trials each, first by one kinesiologist, then by another, and finally, with no kinesiologist present by grip strength indicated using a hand dynamometer. Grip strength being a self-administered AK test of relative muscular strength. For each trial, a pair of randomly numbered sealed vials, each pair in a randomly numbered plastic bag, were used as the objects of the trial. In each bag, one vial contained saline solution while the other was filled with a slightly smaller amount of saline solution to which had been added ionic hydroxylamine hydrochloride (NH3OH)+, producing a toxic solution of 9?mg/ml. Each trial consisted of a separate muscle test for each vial. All present at the trials were blind as to which vial contained the toxin. And all who prepared the vials were blind to the trials. The force used by the kinesiologists in each of their trials was measured via a pressure pad system. The hand dynamometer trials were conducted with no kinesiologist present.

Conclusion

The data in this study, particularly when seen in the larger context of a review of the literature from the AK field itself by Klinkoski and Leboeuf (1990), which considered 50 papers published between 1981 and 1987 by the International College of Applied Kinesiology, and the survey by Hall, Lewith, Brien, and Little (2008), using standard evaluation criteria [quality assessment tool for studies of diagnostic accuracy included in systematic reviews (QUADAS), Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Studies (STARD), JADAD, and Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT)], for research methodology, as well as six prior non-clinical studies by Radin (1984), Quintanar and Hill (1988), Braud (1989), Arnett et al. (1999), Ludtke (2001), and Kendler and Keating (2003), all together suggest the following: The research published by the Applied Kinesiology field itself is not to be relied upon, and in the experimental studies that do meet accepted standards of science, Applied Kinesiology has not demonstrated that it is a useful or reliable diagnostic tool upon which health decisions can be based.

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Antietam

Antietam (Full Text PDF)

EXCERPT:

In the darkened silence the endless  line of cars moves slowly forward, and no one honks. No one breaks the line. Spread out in the night across the Maryland fields are thousands upon thousands of little points of light —  small brown bags, each with a flickering candle.  One for every dead or wounded soldier both North and South.  On the first Saturday in December since 1988, volunteers have risen early to take part in this one night citizen ceremony.  Elderly widows, generals, and entry level clerks have made sure the bags are lighted and in place by dusk.  Now the tiny lights float in the dark, a twinkling pattern undulating across the gentle hills; a haunting image, profoundly moving.
Most Americans think of D-Day as our nation’s benchmark for carnage. Images from Saving Private Ryan newly fixed it in our collective mind. Yet the most massive amphibious assault in history, the product of months of planning by the greatest ground armies ever assembled, does not begin to rise to a moment-of-opportunity battle fought in a few small farm fields with single-shot muzzle-loaded long guns, and mostly smooth-bore horse drawn cannon.

Trends That Will Affect Your Future?… Nonlocal Linkage and the Social Dimension

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Do you sense the schism occurring in the United States? Not the red and blue of politics, although that comes into it. Something deeper, a shift that is producing two very different reactions. Can you feel the ground moving? The zeitgeist of one population is grounded in fear, resentment, anger, and a sense of loss. It is theologically conservative, politically rigid, and exclusionist. The other population holds a sober realization that great change is coming, but also the sense that it offers at least the putative opportunity to create a more stable life-affirming culture. It is theologically and politically accommodating, and inclusionist.

We all have a vested interest in this schism and the struggle it has produced, not only because through our choices we are its source, but because we will live with the consequences of the decisions made over the next few years. What is particularly concerning is the obsession amongst the population driven by fear with willful ignorance. Yet it cannot be denied that this is an essential attribute of its world view. Only by denying a fact-based world can this perspective be maintained. Most of human history can be seen as a striving for deeper understanding. Science is the highest manifestation of this impulse, perhaps because it is the most objective manifestation. Yet now in the 21st century, we see its antipode emerge—a deep denial of science and the fact-based view of the world. Science, from this perspective, is just another political position, competing in the marketplace of ideas as a political theory.

Willful Ignorance

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EXCERPT

For most of human history we knew very little, and what we did know was known by very few. Thomas Young (1773-1829), an English scientist, researcher, physician, and polymath is usually cited as “the last person to know everything,” by which is usually meant the then-contemporary academy of Western scholarship.1 He was popularly known as “Phenomenon Young,” spoke a daunting number of languages, and made contributions to many fields of science, including translating the Rosetta stone and coining the term “energy.” Einstein praised him for his work on Newton and his physics in his 1931 foreword to an edition of Newton’s Optics. For most of modern history, people took pride in being knowledgeable, and the deep drive of Western cultures, particularly in America, was to expand knowledge and make it more widely known.

Benjamin Franklin, who more than any other founder set in motion the processes that have become the American culture, had a very particular kind of culture in mind, and open-minded education was a major part of it. His America was solidly middle class. It encouraged upward mobility and did not permit hereditary privilege. It absolutely separated church and state, yet was tolerant of individual religious beliefs, or with equal equanimity, the complete absence thereof.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
July 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 4, Pages 232-234)

Leverage Point

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EXCERPT:

Last November, I was sitting in the Grand Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel next to Grand Central Station. Self-consciously, the reiterated adjective defines the space. Six hundred people, in black tie, grouped at little tables, guests of a philanthropic society, The Bravewell Collaborative. Our role in this public event was as witnesses to the honoring of our esteemed executive editor, Larry Dossey, as well as Jim Gordon, MD, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, Dean Ornish, MD, Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, and Andrew Weil, MD, for the contributions they had each made as pioneers of integrative medicine (IM)—“integrative” being the latest modifier replacing “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), which itself replaced “holistic.”

The awards were certainly well deserved. The only person missing in my personal constellation of heroes being Gladys McGarey, MD, who introduced me, son of an anesthesiologist and a nurse, to this view of healthcare in 1965. And, as we ate well-prepared healthy food, and people talked in twos and threes, there came a moment when the conversation at my table died, and in that zone of silence within the room’s noise, I looked out across the ballroom and realized a moment of significant transition was taking place. It took me a moment to work it out what it was.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
May 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 3, Pages 168-169)

A Secret in Plain Sight

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EXCERPT:

If I told you that I could make you smarter, improve the structure of your brain, reduce your stress level, make you sleep better, concentrate better, be more creative, have a better functioning immune system, and become a better lover, would it catch your attention? If I said you could achieve this essentially cost free and it would only take a few minutes of your time each day, would you be interested? Or would you just assume I was some kind of scam artist trying to pick your pocket with outrageous claims?

If you chose the second option, it wouldn’t surprise me. But the truth is, each of the above claims is backed by peer-reviewed, published, research papers, and they number into the thousands. I am speaking here of meditation. Its power to change our lives from the vitality of our cells—to an enhancement of our capacity for creativity—is extraordinarily well documented. This is the path that allows us to open to nonlocal awareness, the part of ourselves outside the domain of space time. The part of us Brahms described this way:

Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
September 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 5, Pages 263-264)

And Nary a Drop to Drink

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EXCERPT:

It is generally thought that, for immediate personal needs, each person on the planet requires at least five gallons of clean water per day. Not surprisingly, that’s not how it works out. Many poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America survive on just over one gallon of water per day—most of it contaminated—whereas those of us in the United States and much of Europe send 13 gallons down the drain daily flushing toilets.

Imagine, then, you turned on the tap. .. and nothing came out. It really is unthinkable, isn’t it? We take it as a given that when we turn on a faucet, clean drinkable water will come out—as much as you like. Will your children think that way? Maybe. Maybe not. Will your grandchildren? Definitely not.

Can this be true?

Water stress is defined as a nation providing for each individual, for all purposes, access to less than 449,150 gallons (1,700 cubic meters) per year.1 Water scarcity is less than 264,200 gallons (1,000 cubic meters) per person per year.1 It takes a lot of water to be an even marginally vital human.

Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
March 2007 (Vol. 3, Issue 2, Pages 95-97)

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