As spring unfolds in the Lehigh Valley, familiar watery and itchy eyes, persistent sneezes, raspy coughing and skin eruptions emerge with a renewed vengeance. Conventionally, patients often turn to allergy shots and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, with their expected inconveniences and side effects. An innovative method of allergy management exists, though, in the holistic sector: Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET).

NAET is a gentle, non-invasive, drug-free, natural solution employed to treat allergies of all types and intensities. In 1983, this modality of allergy treatment was first employed by Dr. Devi S. Nambudripad to treat her own lifelong, severe allergies. Merging knowledge from traditional medical training and intense study of Oriental Medicine (OM), she developed a treatment approach described in her seminal patient resource, Say Good-Bye to Illness, as one that, “… uses a blend of selective testing and treatment procedures from acupuncture, acupressure, allopathy, chiropractic, nutritional and kinesiological disciplines of medicine to balance the body bioenergetically with various unsuitable electromagnetic energies found in one’s living environment.”

With its holistic perspective based on OM principles, NAET expands our understanding of allergies. An allergy is a condition of unusual sensitivity of one person to one or more substances, which may be harmless to the majority of other individuals. The result of energy imbalance in the body, an allergy contributes to the development of diminished health in one or more organ systems. The brain interprets an allergic substance—an allergen—as a threat to the body’s well-being. Viewed through the OM lens, an allergy is defined in terms of how it affects energy flow in the body. An allergen, or allergens, can affect the normal flow of energy through the body’s energy pathways, or meridians—thereby disrupting the body’s electrical circuits. The resulting energy blockages cause interference in the communication between brain and the body via the nervous system. Blocked energy flow, thus, represents a first step in a chain of events that can develop into an allergic response.

During NAET, client and practitioner can identify allergies through a combination of standard allopathic tests and kinesiological procedures.  Working in conjunction with an individual’s primary care physician, the NAET practitioner may receive information from some standard allopathic laboratory tests. Some patients may also bring their NAET practitioners information from completed skin scratch testing, intradermal testing, sublingual testing, cytotoxic testing, blood pressure testing and pulse testing to identify allergic reactions or may do this work concurrently. Information provided from different modalities helps give the NAET practitioner a comprehensive, yet individualized overview of client needs. Muscle response testing compares the strength of a specific muscle in the presence/absence of a suspected allergen in the NAET allergy kit. Weakness signifies that an item is an allergen. Without using needles, but applying gentle acupressure, NAET treats allergies by unblocking meridians or draining meridians overflowing with energy and their associated body organs. NAET urges the body back to homeostasis.

During NAET, allergens are treated one at a time—usually a single allergen per visit. This substance then needs to be avoided for the next 25 hours. Depending on a person’s level of sensitivity to the allergen, it may be eliminated in a single session, although sometimes a substance may require additional clearings.

Dr. Nambudripad’s method addresses inhalants (trees, flowers, grasses, pollens, mold, etc.), ingestants (foods, drinks, drugs, vitamins, supplements and more), contactants (poison ivy, poison sumac, animal dander, cosmetic, detergents, chemicals, heavy metals), injectants (insect stings, snake bites, serums, antitoxins, vaccines, injectable drugs, etc.), infectants (allergens that produce their effect by causing an adverse reaction to an infectious agent, such as bacteria), physical activities and agents (heat, cold, sunlight, dampness, dryness, humidity, draft, fog, smog, mechanical irritants and more) and molds and fungi (yeast infections, athlete’s foot, ringworm, etc.).

As a method of allergy management, NAET is natural, painless and non-invasive.

Lehigh Valley Chiropractor Dr. Carol Peterson is a longtime NAET practitioner with a wide range of clients. Peterson Chiropractic is located at 115 East Broad St., in Bethlehem. For more information, call 610-997-3992.