As a chiropractic student and former chiropractic assistant, I saw many people get better using adjustments. A year into school though, something was bugging me. I had gotten hundreds of adjustments in my lifetime, but in the past 6 months, I had low back pain that was not going away. Every student I trusted, and several doctors had adjusted me, and nothing fixed it. Was Chiropractic a sham? Did I have something more serious that needed surgery? I had seen it work too many times to say it was a sham, and I was too afraid to get imaging done and be told I needed back surgery. One day I was invited to a seminar to learn a new technique I hadn’t heard much about. The second day, the chiropractor teaching the seminar had me come up to be a demonstration. He had heard about my situation and was confident that he had the answer. He started pressing on my muscles and body, eventually concluding that everyone who had been trying previously had been seeing the problem anatomically backwards. In one quick thrust and a decent pop, the back pain that I had had for half a year was gone. I knew I had to learn as much as I could about this new technique called Applied Kinesiology.
Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a diagnostic system of thought on how to find areas of distress on the body and fix them, utilizing the body’s own healing power. The most common method of gaining insight into the current state of the body's various systems involves the muscle test. These tests can be broad or specific, but with a skilled practitioner utilizing them, they can tell much about the body's current function. Muscle testing has been so successful for AK chiropractors, that it has spread outside of chiropractic to naturopaths, physical therapists, medical doctors, and psychiatrists. It even made its way onto a Grey’s Anatomy episode utilizing an AK offshoot called Neuro-Emotional Technique. Despite increasing popularity and a growing body of research to back up muscle testing as a diagnostic tool*, many in the medical profession still wave it off as simply a party trick. I look forward to addressing these thoughts in the future.
A good basic muscle test isolates a patient’s specific muscle as much as possible and tests it against the guided force of the practitioner.
(Link Pec Clavicular test).
In a basic test, the practitioner is looking to see if the muscle can properly “facilitate” or adapt to the neurological stress that is being applied. A healthy muscle with no other factors affecting it will adapt to the stress and hold strong. A muscle that cannot properly adapt will fail. This is not to say that the patient’s muscle is weak and simply needs to exercise the muscle more, there is a core neurological issue that is causing the muscle to fail. Often these muscles that fail the muscle testing are termed “weak” or, more accurately, “hypotonic” meaning having low muscle tone. The causes of a specific muscle failure are numerous, but they tell the skilled practitioner much. Often the practitioner tests the weak muscle against various therapies, locations on the patient’s body, or nutritional factors to see what causes the muscle to regain a normal tone and strengthen. This testing is done in real time where the patient can feel the immediate effects/strengthening of the muscle. More advanced muscle testing may check for a strong muscle to weaken to various factors such as time under tension, stretching, or exposure to various substances to further gain insight into the patient’s condition and necessary treatment.
With the main diagnostic tool of AK explained, the diagnostic thought process of AK needs bearing out. Chiropractic was founded on the belief that a person’s health was disrupted by 3 things: toxins, traumas, and thoughts. This foundational belief is still self evidently true, but the founder of Applied Kinesiology, Dr. George Goodheart, simply updated the terminology to a neutral framing of structure, chemical, and emotional factors and dubbed it The Triad of Health. This framework has been the guiding principle for diagnostics in AK and chiropractic since.
The Triad of Health:
Structure simply refers to the body’s alignment and its effect on function and movement.
Chemical refers to the makeup of the components of our bodies. It’s the nutrients and toxins that we absorb and excrete daily.
Emotional wellbeing has a direct effect on the rest of our bodies systems, so balancing our state of mind many times can heal physical issues.
This philosophy of the basic realms of health is often represented in a pyramid.
This framework of health is then corrected by utilizing five types of treatments. These five treatments contain many different specific therapies within them, but each therapy can usually be categorized into one or several of the following target areas: Nerve, Neurolymphatic, Neurovascular, Cerebrospinal fluid, and Acupuncture. For years, the official International College of Applied Kinesiologists (ICAK) symbol was a combination of these two core philosophies (Triad of Health and Five Factors), and many AK practitioners still utilize variations of it for their own practice logos or for educational purposes.
Each of the Five Factors for balancing health deserves their own discussions, but a short example of each might be as follows.
Nerve: Electro stim therapy, chiropractic adjustments, or nerve conduction supplements. Neurolymphatic: Stimulation of lymphatic drainage points on the body (Chapman reflexes) or removal of certain irritants from the diet.
Neurovascular: Balancing of Bennet Reflexes on the skull or targeted supplementation based on blood work.
Cerebral Spinal Fluid: Spinal adjustments, blood pressure regulation, and hydration education increase CSF flow to the brain.
Acupuncture: Acupuncture or acupressure performed based on various diagnostic procedures.
All in all, Applied Kinesiology is really a new way of looking at ailments of the body by addressing the question of “Why?” from as many viewpoints as possible. By combining chiropractic, physical therapy, western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, and any other diagnostic and therapeutic viewpoints that the practitioner and patient feel appropriate, patient-based results happen much quicker. Answers to otherwise unknown ailments are found because the doctor tries to remove the bias of a narrow viewpoint. Obviously, a chiropractor and a psychiatrist will still have their biases and unique training, but the overall broadening of vision is purely a benefit to every patient that comes through either of their doors. Every new profession that joins the Applied Kinesiology community adds new thoughts and insights that strengthen the discipline and grow its toolbox.
This is why I am passionate about being a certified AK practitioner. The philosophy and results speak for themselves to not only me, but also to the patients I treat.
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