Have you heard of muscle testing? This method of communicating with the body is an alternative medicine technique that helps practitioners make a decision for treatment by testing muscles for strength and weakness. If you’ve been treated by Dr. McSweeney here in Reno, you’ve experienced her form of muscle testing, which is one of many tools and techniques she uses to identify the cause of pain and discomfort. Here’s what else to know about muscle testing, and how it helps Dr. McSweeney help her patients.
HOW DOES MUSCLE TESTING WORK?
Manual muscle testing, or applied kinesiology, is based on the premise that organ dysfunction is accompanied by specific muscle weakness. Drs. McSweeney and Allen use a form of muscle testing, which they call muscle-to-nerve testing, that blends several techniques and involves testing electrical impulses to check the function of major organs in the body. In many cases, the procedure is as simple as checking the indicator muscle group in a patient’s extended arm. It’s painless and non-invasive, and it gives our chiropractors important information and can serve as a first step toward resolving a patient’s issue. Essentially, it helps reveal an imbalance, which may be affecting communication between the nervous system and the brain. Patients who come in to the office with pain, spinal issues, problems in the wrists, elbows, hips or knees, or chronic headaches, plus a number of other conditions, will receive muscle-to-nerve testing as one of many diagnostic tools and techniques to help our chiropractors identify the problem.
IS MUSCLE TESTING EFFECTIVE?
Muscle testing has been verified by over 100 clinical studies as a clinically useful too. In fact, a study published in International Journal of Neuroscience also its efficacy for testing allergic responses, with a reported success rate of 90.5%. Still, muscle testing has its skeptics. That’s likely because this diagnostic tool is somewhat beyond the scope of clinical reasoning, and it’s not easy for everyone to understand.
For Dr. McSweeney and Dr. Allen, muscle-to-nerve testing is a simple, but very effective tool. If you’re interested in finding a practitioner who offers muscle testing here in Reno, schedule a visit today.