Treatment delves into tissues
Kylie Saari — Staff WriterArticle Photos
FAIRMONT - Marissa Clancey had been feeling awful.
Plagued with bouts of diarrhea, vomiting and menstrual cramps, the teenager and her family had come to their wits end. Her father, local chiropractor Mike Clancey, had tried nearly all he could to help her.
"My kinesiology knowledge wasn't getting the job done," he said. "I had to find out what was wrong with her because I was getting ready to haul her in to have her appendix out."
But Clancey had one more avenue to pursue.
A colleague of his, Dr. Melinda Morgan, had begun a relatively new treatment called nutritional response testing, something Clancey had heard about, but had not trained in.
He brought Marissa to see Morgan, where she completed a relatively simple course of muscle testing that revealed a number of problems - food allergies to wheat and sugar, and pesticide sensitivity that, according to Morgan, was interfering with Marissa's body functioning.
"(Morgan) developed a nutritional protocol for that and within a week, (Marissa) was a ton better," Clancey said.
The protocol, which included avoiding refined sugar and wheat products as well as supplements for a period of 90-120 days, also improved Marissa's ability to focus, Clancey said.
Clancey was convinced that nutritional response testing was worth further investigation. He has since become trained in it and offers the service to his clients.
Nutritional response testing is based on the principles of kinesiology and is sometimes referred to as applied kinesiology or autonomic response testing.
"We use a muscle test to find (problems) because it is a functional thing," Clancey said.
Clancey said many people wonder why his testing may show different findings than a standard blood test for the same problem.
"Well, it is because (some problems) don't hide in the blood," he said. "(They) hide in the tissue. Unless you are taking tissue samples and take the right one, you aren't going to find it, but with muscle testing, it is pretty sensitive and it works pretty well."
Nutritional supplementation using whole food supplements allows the body to heal whatever is causing the problem, whether a poorly acting thyroid or overworking pituitary gland, according to Clancey. The type and amount of treatment is individualized, and regularly monitored and adapted during the course of the three months of treatment.
However, Clancey says simply giving a patient supplements and sending them on their way is ineffective because the body can resist the treatment.
"There are five big stressors that will foil any nutritional protocol out there," he said. "(They are) if you have a food allergy to a major food category, if you have an immune challenge, if you have a heavy metal toxicity, if you have a chemical toxicity or if you have scars."
According to Clancey, scars can interrupt acupuncture meridians, causing the scar to act as a capacitor to the body's natural electrical system.
"We don't go in there and say 'You have this disease so we will use this protocol' because you will get burned every time if you go symptomatically," Clancey said. "The body is very paradoxical. You don't know which adaptations it has made. So we go in and we check which organs are stressed out. When we go through and see which one is the most stressed out, we treat that one first. Ordinarily, we treat the one most stressed and the others fall in line."
The nutritional response testing method has proven doable to most of Clancey's patients. Clancey says most patients respond well enough to go off the supplements after the 90-day program.
For Marissa, the difference was fast and substantial.
"She is a different kid," Clancey said.
