BenGreenfield-MuscleTesting.mp3

Hi, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Ken Best is on the call with me. Dr. Best is known as one of the top chiropractic physicians in la, and he's not only the author of several different books, but he happens to specialize in something called muscle testing, which I get asked about a lot by podcast listeners and I'm personally very curious about, just because it's something that I know that a lot of chiropractic physicians use and I see talked about all the time, but have really never delved into on this podcast. And if there's one guy who really knows this stuff back and forth, it's Dr. Best. He actually works with a lot of celebrities down in LA and has been doing this a while. So as we're talking, if you're interested in checking out ken's website, it's drkenbest.com and, and we're going to hone in here on muscle testing and also something called applied kinesiology. So, Dr. Best, thank you for coming on the call today.

Hi, Ben, thanks for having me.

Well, let's just start right here. What exactly is muscle testing?

Well, I mean, muscle testing gets into a whole big group of things as far as what people relate to as being muscle testing. The typical thing that a lot of people see is kind of the arm push down test, which is kind of, as far as research goes, it's not the most consistent test because you're not isolating one specific muscle when you're doing that. So there's a lot of variability that can come into doing a muscle test. And that's where practice comes in.

So that arm test you're talking about, is that the one where you hold out your arm?

Yeah. Typically you'll see somebody either put it out to the side or put it out in front of them at a 90 degree angle and you'll push down and see what kind of resistance you get. So in real muscle testing, there's Kendall and Kendall muscle testing, which is a standard for actually testing muscle strength when you're evaluating a patient. And that's looking at more atrophy and disconnect in the nervous system. When we're talking about applied kinesiology. Muscle testing, which is what I do in my practice with sports injuries, is that we're testing the eccentric muscle contraction, which tests the feedback loop. So you're testing more the proprioceptive system of the body. So you're testing really a whole feedback loop and then the body's ability to respond to that, which is different than doing A concentric muscle contraction. So when we're doing a muscle test in Applied Kinesiology, it's really not about how strong the person is because both arms may be able to lift the same amount of weight, which is your concentric contraction, but the other arm may give away when you're doing this eccentric. So an eccentric contraction is the muscle is already placed in a contracted state, and then you're pressing down on the muscle to see if they can hold the contracted state without the muscle elongating, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So what would it actually look like if somebody were going to do this? Say I'm standing beside you and you're going to take me through an applied kinesiology test if I were there in your office or something.

So, like the typical one we just talked about, where the arm goes out to the side, you're testing the deltoid muscle. So the arm's at 90 degrees, which contracts the deltoid, and then you're applying three to five pounds of pressure steady in, so that you can see if the muscle locks. Basically, that's all we're really looking for in an AK test is if that muscle locks. You get like a reverb in the muscle, kind of a strong little bounce. But whereas if you kept applying pressure and the muscles actually turned off or inhibited, it will just feel mushy and it'll just keep going down. Now, some people, when you test them, it's such a sharp difference between strong and weak that they're very simple to test. And really, when you're testing athletes, their body is so optimized, they can basically start firing some other muscle fibers and kind of basically cheat. And so it's really harder to pick up true weaknesses in that system in a performance athlete. But when you can isolate the specific muscle, you can find the muscle weaknesses pretty easily.

Gotcha. So as far as kind of the basis of doing something like muscle testing or this variation of muscle testing called AK or Applied Kinesiology that you talked about, why would somebody do something like this? I mean, what would be the reason?

Well, the idea is that muscles move the bones in the body. And so if you go from that premise, having the muscles in balance allows the skeletal structure to stay in balance. So let's say, for example, I see a lot of shoulder injuries. There are 17 different muscles that support the shoulder girdle itself. Having one or two muscles neurologically inhibited or turned off then changes the whole dynamic or the whole balance where that shoulder girdle's hanging on Your body, basically, and that can predispose you to injuries. Does that make sense? So it's the imbalance. So basically a weakness on one side creates a spasm on the other side. So a lot of people are going and working on the spasm, trying to get rid of the spasm, when it's really they need to turn up the muscle that's gone weak. Basically, muscles have a resting rate. They never completely relax. But if you think about it, from 0 to 10, 10 being spastic and 0 being really completely weak, it should be set at a five. Now, each muscle has what we call muscle spindle fibers and Golgi tendon fibers, which let the muscle know how to react. And if those entities within the muscle are turned down too low, then the muscle's not going to respond as quickly as it should.

Gotcha.

So when you, let's say you injure yourself or you overstretch a muscle and kind of pull the muscle, sometimes you kind of damage or you turn down those muscle spindle fibers. So now that muscle is not working at its optimal efficiency anymore, and now you predispose to injury.

So you talked about how muscle imbalances, which kind of makes sense, would cause a muscle to be more weak on one side than the other or weaker than you want it to be on one side. But to my understanding, it seems like a lot of times when people are doing muscle tests, they're looking at things above and beyond, just like muscle imbalances. You hear about this stuff being used a lot of time for food allergies or emotional issues or things of that nature, like toxins and chemical influences and nutrient deficiencies and all this kind of stuff. Do you do that kind of muscle testing? Or. I mean, do you think that that stuff works? And if so, how does that actually work?

I'll explain how it works. And, you know, it really comes down to the practitioner, how skilled they are. I mean, because when you're going into those things, you're really testing energy influences on the body, and it's multifactorial. There's so many different things that are affecting you. Like if I tested you versus somebody else testing you, my energy or my emotional issues could come into play with your emotional issues on doing the muscle test. And that may actually influence the test. So there's a lot of things that can influence it. And that's where, you know, having some discretion is like, does this make sense in a broad picture when we're diagnosing somebody, or is this something extraneous and we should try to retest this and really make sure it's there or not. So, that being said, the first line of muscle testing is really looking at balancing the body. The second line is, why are those muscles going weak? So, in applied kinesiology, a muscle can be neurologically turned off or inhibited or weak, whatever you want to call it, in relationship to the acupuncture system. So it may be treating the acupuncture system, which is the energy flow around the body. Right. It could be working on the muscle itself, muscle spindle fibers. It could be adjusting the spine. So the nerves coming out to that muscle, there's the sacral occipital, the flow of the cerebral spinal fluid can affect it, and neurovascular points, which is the vascular supply to those areas. So when you're talking about the factors that can make it weak, those are the main five factors. But, for example, I see people with chronic injuries all the time. And if we touch the emotional points on the forehead, which are in acupuncture, if it makes that muscle go strong now, it tells me there's an emotional connection. So, yeah, so we can find that that weakness is related to an emotional problem by seeing if that weak muscle now becomes strong, or if they're touching an area of the back that they just sprained and they're weak, but now they touch the forehead and it's strong, it's then telling us there's an emotional connection. So we can use muscle testing to also start tapping into the body like a computer, because we're tapping into that proprioceptive system, so the awareness of space and time. So if we introduce something new to your nervous system, like touching emotional points, that change is a test. That change tells us neurologically you're responding differently for some reason.

Gotcha.

You know, and how clear that is, you know, depends on what you're actually testing. I mean, when you are testing for allergies, for example, you know, there might be a difference between putting a piece of bread on my chest and muscle testing me to see if it goes weak versus putting it in my mouth and testing it. Because in my mouth, I have lingual receptors that know that I'm eating gluten and my body will have an instantaneous reaction to it. As far as with the muscle test.

Yeah, that's always made more sense to me, that type of testing compared to whatever holding a piece of paper with the word bread written on it or putting a piece of bread on your chest, something like that. So that's the kind of muscle testing you do is you're actually looking at the direct influence of something that you're wearing or tasting or something of that nature.

Yeah, if I can. I prefer to use the neurologic system of the body and test those things against it. Sometimes you can't. So going completely the other way, I've, I've had people come in with, let's say a virus or whatever, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. I had a patient come in, it looked like he had hepatitis, he had a family and stuff, and I thought, well, we should probably figure this out. So I actually went out and printed out some photos of the cellular hepatitis and I put the photo on him. I did hepatitis A through E. Every time I did hepatitis A he went weak and he didn't know what I was putting on his body. And I didn't really care what came up. I just wanted to see if something would happen. So every time I did A, it showed up. So I was like. And given some of the other clues to diagnosis. I was like, you know what, let's, let's have you go for a blood test because if you have hepatitis, you need to get treatment for you and for your wife. So he did. And it was like one of the first outbreaks of hepatitis from this restaurant. So it can pick up those things. You just have to use some common sense or some diagnostic sense when you're going into those kind of things.

Now how do you think something like that works? I mean, literally having a photo of a condition and having someone respond in a different way neurologically based off the presence or absence of that.

Well, basically everything's energy. So all we're testing is the influence of this energy and how well our body can actually tune into that energy or not. So, you know, had he maybe not been an open minded patient or whatever, maybe I wouldn't have picked it up even if he had hepatitis A, you know, so there's a lot of factors that can come in with that. I like to use a magnet. If I'm going to do something like that, I like to put a magnet over it to kind of keep it in their energy field. Because basically our body is just like a big magnet. And so bringing something into somebody's energy field can affect them. Like testing EMFs. Some people, you put a cell phone on them and they go weak and some people, they don't. I'd say probably 70 to 80% of the time you do one or two cell phones and most people will go weak from it because that's just physiology. It's higher energy going to lower energy. It kind of drains you.

So how did you learn to do this stuff? I mean, do you go to a specific institution of learning? I mean, for, you know, for like the applied kinesiology, specifically, like that version of muscle testing? Is that something you created or is that like a, like a certification or something like that?

Dr. George Goodheart Jr. Founded it back in, I want to say the 60s, it might be the 70s, I should know this, but. So there's the International College of Applied Kinesiology. And when I was in chiropractic school, actually before chiropractic, I broke my back when I was 16, so I've lived with chronic pain all my life. And it's a non union fracture. So it's something I would need surgery to actually fix. But back then they couldn't guarantee it would be any better. So I ended up seeing chiropractors and I ended up seeing one who did ak, which changed my life in ways that other therapies didn't help me. And so when I was in school, I studied the course three times, which the basic course is 100 hours. So I did 300 hours while I was in school. And then when I graduated from college, I assisted teaching the course for the next seven years. And there's just so much information and especially when you get into the advanced work and looking at muscle weaknesses that are not going to show up in the clear, which is really important for a sports athlete because you're not going to find those unless you do certain types of tests.

Gotcha. So as far as the kind of work that you do now, are you mostly working with people who have food allergies? Are you working with folks who have sports injuries? Or what exactly do you do with your applied kinesiology?

I work mostly with sports injuries and chronic injuries, because chronic injuries, you can deal with them so much better than acute injuries. I mean, acute injuries, it's like doing physical therapy, you know, you have to get them out of that acute phase. I mean, I do have lasers and stuff, which really helps help that acute phase. But somebody who's seen everybody for a chronic problem and then you can find the root of the problem relatively quickly using applied kinesiology and actually give therapy directed straight towards that. So you can make huge changes in chronic problems.

Can you give me an example of a muscle injury? Like how this would work if somebody came to you with a muscle injury?

So I had a cyclist who had a couple falls on his bike, had concussions and then from that also had chronically weak gluteus medius and low back muscles. So what we had to do is actually basically allow the cerebellum to heal and you can use magnets to influence the cerebellum and you can see the direct effect on the muscle. To find out which cerebellum to work on, which is your cerebellum governs the proprioception and your balance and all that, it takes more than 50% of the neural input to the brain. So going in and correcting those issues from the cerebellum, you can see the muscles just go and turn back on. So right away you see huge changes in posture and contralateral muscle spasms that were resulting from the weaknesses. So you can just tap into it that way, which is kind of amazing.

Interesting. So have there been studies on this stuff? I mean, do you guys actually. Or is there like a journal that reports on muscle testing or applied kinesiology? There's a lot of people who I know would like to see some of the research behind this stuff.

The Icak International College of Applied Kinesiology has a website where they do have postings of research and journals both for and against the reliability of muscle testing. The biggest problem is most devices are are set up to measure physical muscle strength rather than the neurologic component of a feedback loop because it's more like you're testing a reflex than the strength of the muscle. So it's trying to devise equipment that actually really test that loop has been the big problem. And then how a lot of tests are set up really can influence what information you're getting or not getting.

And I assume that website, if I link to it in the show notes, people would be able to find a certified person in their area who could do something like this with them.

Yeah, it's the icak.com.

Got it.

I don't even think I'm listed on there, but.

Well, people are going to know where to find you. I'll put a link in the show notes to, to your website for anybody who's around la. So one of the things that I wanted to ask you as far as muscle testing goes is does this just have to be things like something that you're eating or perhaps something that you're allergic to that you have nearby, or for example, a muscle imbalance or can it be related to emotional issues as well? And the reason I ask is I've noticed sometimes when I'm stressed out or whenever I've gotten an argument with my wife, as rare as that happens that I don't do as well in my workouts or I don't perform as well. For example, in a race like a triathlon, can you go and get muscle tested to find out almost how optimal of a state that you're in physically in relation to emotional issues?

Yes. There's a technique I learned about 12 years ago called theta healing. This woman I became friends with and I actually assisted teaching with her for 10 years. It's more of an energy emotional healing technique. And they use like a ring finger muscle test to find core belief issues that are causing people to sabotage things in their life. And then how to go in and change those belief systems. And then you go back and re muscle test it and make sure it's strong that you can use directly into going into emotions on a whole other level. But kind of more what you're talking about is I'll see somebody come in and they have a quadratus lumborum, which is the big kind of side back muscle that a postural stabilizer. And that's commonly weak from, you know, people feeling unsupported either emotionally or financially. A lot of times it has a financial component. So I'll ask people sometimes, you know, are you not feeling supported financially? And they're like, oh, how did you know that? And then we'll test that muscle against the emotional points because they basically become like a reflex for loop. You know, it's like when somebody triggers us and they say something to us and we get in a rage. You know, just those two words or three sentences shouldn't get us so angry emotionally, but it's a trigger and it's a shortcut in the nervous system and it creates that reaction. It's the same thing with physical things in the body. Some emotional things can trigger certain muscles basically to be inhibited or shut off. And so it affects us in the same way kind of emotionally that we are at like feeling unsupported financially. Our low back goes out, so we're feeling unsupported, you know.

Right, yeah, that makes sense. Now a lot of people, it seems, are doing muscle testing. Like if you go to health and fitness expo, right. A lot of times people will have like a product there that they try to muscle test you on or I know a lot of people are just muscle testing within their family or their friends to find out things that they might be allergic to or sensitive to. I mean, can people who aren't educated or certified in this stuff really be able to get good results with muscle testing or is it something that you can put much credence in, apart from from someone who's certified and applied kinesiology or something of that nature?

I mean, I think you really have to take it with a grain of salt, to a degree, and some common sense, because it's an art and a skill that takes a while to really develop. And when you're being muscle tested, having a sense of. Are they doing the exact same test they did a second ago? Because. Because oftentimes people aren't aware that they're basically changing the test or pushing harder or pushing farther down on the limb, which changes the lever. There's a lot of factors involved in doing an accurate muscle test. That being said, people work together and they're comfortable with working with each other on muscle testing and they don't care about the outcome. Like, when you're surprised by the outcome, that's usually a good thing because then you're not cheating. If you always get exactly what you expect, you're probably influencing the test. You're overriding it. You're testing either too fast or too slow. You're changing the muscle test itself. So there are a lot of factors involved in that. So especially when you go to these fairs, you don't really know how skilled those people are that are doing the test. And sometimes they have an objective.

Yeah, well, you know, I know that some of this people actually have to see to see how it works. I'm going to put a video in the show notes for those of you listening in. You know that I wear this bracelet and I wanted to see what Dr. Best thought of the wristband and do some muscle testing with that. So I sent it over to him and I'll put a video in the show notes where you can kind of see him demonstrating how applied kinesiology actually works. So I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes for you as well as a link to Dr. Best's website, because he's got a bunch of good information on those. Those of you in the LA area may want to go pay him a visit and check out what he does. And then I'll also put a link to this ICAK website so that if you want to go look for a practitioner in your area to do some muscle testing with you, you can. If you have questions about this stuff, comments, feedback, then I'd love to hear what you think. So leave them in the show notes to this episode, which is going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and Dr. Best, I want to thank you for coming on the call today.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.