Autonomic Response Testing — muscle biofeedback

Osteopathy is at its best in treating structural problems in the body, but many other factors also sit behind chronic complaints.

Muscle biofeedback aims to identify the root causes of those chronic complaints. They are often linked, for example, to past psychological trauma, an excessive toxic load, chronic infections, and scars left by injury or surgery. Muscle biofeedback works both as a treatment and as a diagnostic method that leads on to other treatment recommendations — more on those below.

In a nutshell

When the body is given a stimulus, the muscles’ ability to resist pressure changes. By assessing those changes in muscle response, it is possible to interpret what is beneficial or harmful for the body.

In simple terms, muscle strength is tested, usually by pressing a straightened arm downward. A stimulus is then applied to the body — for example, by touching the skin over an organ — and the muscle is tested again. If the strength has changed, the nature of that change indicates whether the stimulus is beneficial or harmful. That makes it possible to interpret which parts of the body are under load, and how their healing can be supported.

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What people say about ART

“Hakeuduin Edvinin hoitoon kroonisten vaivojen, borrelioosin ja long covidin vuoksi. Olin pitkään etsinyt apua, ja Edvinin kautta olen löytänyt aivan uudenlaista toivoa ja ymmärrystä. Hoitojen avulla olen saanut kehoni kokonaisvaltaiseen tasapainoon ja löytänyt selityksiä oireilleni. Erityisen suurena asiana koen sen, että olen jo päässyt detoxaamaan kehostani raskasmetalleja ja infektioita. ART on menetelmä, jonka ainutlaatuisuus, nopeus ja kustannustehokkuus ovat tehneet minuun suuren vaikutuksen. Arvostan tätä työkalua syvästi ja olen todella kiitollinen, että olen löytänyt sen ja Edvinin osaamisen sen äärellä. Edvin on lämminsydäminen ja työlleen omistautunut hoitaja, jolla on kokonaisvaltaista ymmärrystä ja kyky kohdata asiakas turvallisesti ja myötätuntoisesti. Uskon, että näiden hoitojen myötä minulle avautuu aivan uusi elämä ja monet pitkään vaivanneet ongelmat alkavat ratketa.”

“Kiitos vielä hoidosta todella paljon, musta se tuntui tosi ammattimaiselta ja hyvältä. <3 Suosittelen sua kyllä kaikille tutuille ja tuntemattomille! :) Oli iso juttu että oivalsin mun syviä uskomuksia siitä että en oo tän elämän arvoinen, koska äiti kuoli.”

“Edvinin tekemä ART-testaus on ollut erittäin hyödyllinen vaikeista kroonisista infektioista toipumisessa, kehon kuormitustekijöiden tunnistamisessa sekä omalle keholle sopivien yrttien ja luontaistuotteiden kartoituksessa. Suosittelen ART-testausta kaikille epämääräisistä terveysongelmista kärsiville, jotka eivät ole saanet lääkäristä toivomaansa apua.”

ART treatment takes several factors behind chronic complaints into account

Structural disturbances
For example, imbalances of the musculoskeletal system
Nutrient deficiencies
Shortages of nutrients the body needs in order to function well
Toxins
Harmful substances built up from the environment, food, or the body’s own processes
Chronic infections
Long-standing infections that load the body without causing local symptoms
Food allergies and sensitivities
Substances that activate the immune system and strain the body
Interference fields
Scars or inflamed areas of tissue that disturb nervous-system function
Electromagnetic radiation
The body’s reactions to electromagnetic fields in the environment
Geopathic stress
Load arising from the earth’s natural radiation phenomena
Psycho-emotional trauma
Unresolved feelings and conflicts from the past that affect nervous-system and physiological balance

Case story: Karoliina’s shoulder pain

Karoliina came to my practice because of shoulder pain that had lasted for years. Testing found a disturbance of the autonomic nervous system that caused chronic constriction of the blood vessels in the shoulder, preventing normal recovery from load. Aluminium, as well as Babesia and Bartonella infection, was also found in the shoulder tissues.

Behind the disturbance was a scar from childhood, linked to psychological trauma. In treatment, the trauma connected to the scar was released by tapping acupuncture points, which restored nervous-system balance immediately. No other treatment was needed.

A few months later I received a message:

“Edvin! My pain is gone! Can you believe it? For a few weeks it has slowly eased, and now it doesn’t bother me at all.”

Yes, I can believe it. Releasing the nervous-system disturbance improved circulation in the tissues and allowed the immune system to work normally there. The body was able to clear the toxins and overcome the infections, so the tissues stopped sending threat signals to the brain. And the pain disappeared.

Individual treatment recommendations

ART is a diagnostic method for finding what is stressing the body, and which treatment options fit best. During the visit, scars and trauma can still be treated lastingly. Below is a short list of the treatment recommendations a visit can lead to.

Trauma work

Almost all chronic complaints have a psycho-emotional component behind them. During the visit it is possible to map past traumas, unresolved feelings or inner conflicts underlying your complaints, and to work through them thoroughly and lastingly. In many cases this can reduce, or even remove, the need for natural products, herbs or other external treatments.

Diet

There is no single perfect diet that suits everyone. If you want to support your health through food, ART testing can show which diet suits you best right now.

Herbs and natural products

Herbs and natural products are an effective way to support health, but of the thousands of options only a few are genuinely useful for you. At the visit, products I commonly use can be tested, and if you wish you can also bring your own preparations to be assessed.

Tapping acupuncture points

Many complaints can be eased by doing acupuncture yourself — tapping certain points in the right order. At the visit, the points that suit you can be determined.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a gentle but effective tool for normalising a disturbed immune system. In my treatments, the Homeo K preparations developed by Dietrich Klinghardt play a central role; I often also recommend homeopathic urine therapy for autoimmunity.

Minimising radiation exposure

If testing shows excessive exposure to electromagnetic radiation or earth radiation, practical steps can include switching off Wi-Fi and using a wired connection, keeping the phone in aeroplane mode and in a radiation-shielding pouch, and cutting the bedroom power entirely at night from the fuse box.

How do I prepare for treatment?

I recommend reading the treatment options in the previous section carefully. Then consider your own expectations and wishes: what do you want to know, which options do you prefer, and what are you actually willing to do for your health?

Do you want a detailed analysis of the stressors, pathogens and toxins in your body? Or do the treatment itself and the recommendations matter more?
Are you interested in using herbs and natural products? Treatment may lead to a comprehensive natural-product programme, or it may include trauma work and a recommendation to tap acupuncture points together with a single natural product. The choice is yours.
Are you ready and willing to work with past trauma?
Are you ready to use your smartphone less, give up Wi-Fi, or move the bed if that turns out to be necessary?
Are you ready to give up foods that are harmful for you, such as wheat?

Other things to keep in mind

If you want your own herbs, supplements or natural products tested, I recommend stopping them 48 hours before the visit.
Consider whether you can bring a friend or family member to act as an assistant.
I would ask you to avoid black clothing when you come for treatment. It interferes with the treatment and makes my work harder.

What you can bring

Diet. Write down everything you currently eat, and the foods you would like to eat, and bring the list to the appointment.
Herbs and natural products. Pack capsules, pills and powders into small plastic bags, each holding one dose. Herbal extracts can come in their original bottles.
Homeopathic urine therapy (if you want to try it). Bring a lidded glass jar containing 100 ml of water and 1 ml of urine.

ART report

The treatment includes a full report of the findings and treatment options, sent to your email within a few days. You do not need to remember everything, or take notes afterwards.

Learn more about ART

Over the past 50 years, physicians and practitioners in complementary and alternative medicine have developed a set of diagnostic methods that are not based on technology, but on biophysics and the physiology of the autonomic nervous system.

These methods are often called “energetic testing methods”. They work as an extension of a conventional clinical examination and offer a deeper picture of the patient’s state without laboratory tests or imaging. Physician Neil Nathan has written a book on the subject, Energetic Diagnosis, which is an excellent introduction to this field.

There are several such “energetic” testing methods, including:

Autonomic Response Testing was developed by the German physician and doctor of medicine Dietrich Klinghardt. You can read about him on the websites of the Klinghardt Institute and Sophia Health Institute.

ART is used by many physicians around the world, especially in Germany. On this map you can see Germany’s certified ART practitioners. Among others, the world’s leading biological dentists use ART in their procedures. When I had my own teeth treated at that clinic, ART was used to make sure I was not allergic to the medicines or filling materials. It was also used to make sure that all unhealthy bone was removed when a wisdom tooth was extracted.

Mechanisms

What the testing methods above share is the use of some kind of indicator to read the responses of the autonomic nervous system. A commonly used indicator is the muscle response, but some methods watch the quality of the pulse or changes in the body’s fascial tension.

Every muscle contains proprioceptors — sense organs — one of which is the muscle spindle. Muscle spindles sense muscle length and changes in length, and the central nervous system uses that information when regulating how contracted the muscles are. The autonomic nervous system, in turn, regulates the sensitivity of the muscle spindles. Reactions of the autonomic nervous system are therefore reflected as changes in muscle tone, and muscle biofeedback makes use of that.

The responses of the autonomic nervous system are examined because the nervous system reacts to a stimulus either neutrally, positively or negatively. That reaction shows whether the stimulus is neutral, useful or harmful for the body.

When a stimulus that does not meaningfully affect the body is applied, the autonomic nervous system gives a neutral response, and the indicator does not change.
When a stimulus affects the body positively, the nervous system responds positively and shifts into a healing state. That shows as a change in the indicator, reflecting the nervous system’s healing state.
If a stimulus affects the body negatively, the autonomic nervous system responds with a stress state. That appears as a change in the indicator, reflecting the nervous system’s stress state.

By following changes in the indicator, it is possible to interpret what is harmful or useful for the body, and to find out what is loading it and what might help reduce that load.

Scientific studies

Of the energetic testing methods, ART is, on an objective assessment, the most reliable. Klinghardt has developed the method for more than 40 years by comparing its findings with laboratory and imaging results. Thanks to that long, careful work, ART has reached a high sensitivity and validity, even by medical standards.

LaRiccia et al. (2019) offers an excellent introduction to the ART method.
Frandsen et al. (2018) compared ART findings with IgE allergy-panel blood tests in chronically ill patients who had not been helped by conventional medical care. The study found a strong positive correlation between ART findings and the IgE blood tests. According to the researchers, the results suggest that ART is a useful tool for assessing allergies, compared with IgE blood tests.
Klinghardt and Ruggiero (2017) reported cases in which Lyme disease diagnosed with ART did not show on a PCR urine test. They used ultrasound as a provocative method to force bacteria in the tissues into the bloodstream. After that, the urine test gave a positive Lyme result. This shows how sensitive ART can be in detecting chronic infections that conventional laboratory tests do not necessarily find.
Chung and LaRiccia (2016) used ART in the treatment of painful scars and found that it produced reliable and useful results most of the time.
Chung and LaRiccia (2017) confirmed the validity of ART in a study in which three women’s chronic neck pain eased only after the causes were found with ART. In these cases the pain came from breast-surgery scars, which were treated with local-anaesthetic injections. The researchers concluded that ART was decisive in these cases, because only with it could the scars causing the pain be located.

What makes ART unique?

ART differs from every other method of energetic testing in that it takes into account the autonomic nervous system’s ability to regulate the body’s functions, and so-called “switching” disturbances.

At the start of an ART session it is always checked that the person’s autonomic nervous system can regulate the muscle response. If it cannot, testing does not give useful responses. That is one reason applied kinesiology — the best-known form of energetic testing — has not proved very reliable. When the autonomic nervous system cannot regulate the body’s functions appropriately, the person is said to be in a state of blocked regulation. In those cases treatment begins by restoring the body’s ability to regulate itself, which is a necessary condition for healing.

Switching disturbances refer to disturbances of the frontal lobes that produce paradoxical, or even opposite, responses to stimuli. For example, if a mildly toxic substance is injected into a test subject, the white-blood-cell count should rise. In some studies, however, it has fallen instead in certain people. That is an opposite response to a harmful stimulus, and it is a sign of a switching disturbance. If switching is not resolved at the very start of the session, testing gives unreliable results.

Because these points are taken into account, ART has reached a reliability that no other testing method has yet matched.

Direct and indirect testing

I use the indirect technique whenever I can. It is a little more reliable, and much easier for you. The practitioner then has an assistant, and it is the assistant’s muscle response that is tested instead of yours. Otherwise the testing works in exactly the same way, because every response from your body is reflected in the assistant’s body. With the indirect technique you can lie on the treatment table; with the direct technique you have to stand for the whole test.

If you can, I recommend bringing an adult friend or family member (without serious neurological complaints) who could act as an assistant. If that is not possible, it is not a problem. Testing can also be done reliably with the direct technique, but it asks a little more effort of you.

Dietrich Klinghardt

Dietrich Klinghardt, who developed ART, is a physician and doctor of medicine, known and highly regarded worldwide. He has taught at universities in the United States and Europe, and has received several awards for his pioneering work with chronically ill patients.

Among other honours, the Global Foundation of Integrative Medicines named him physician of the year in 2007 and 2009.

ART demonstration

In the video below you can see what ART testing looks like in practice.