There were a bunch of questions and comments in response to my previous entry, so here goes with Part II.

First off, the conclusions that I reached last time don’t necessarily apply to anyone except me. In fact, it’s possible that my nutritionist hit a clunker this time, and they don’t even apply to me. Caveat lector.

My nutritionist was trained by the late Dr. Donald J. Lepore (pronounced “luh-PORE”). As I understand it, Dr. Lepore’s formal training was in chiropractic, but he was also a self-trained naturopath, and preferred that label. (This is one case, by the way, where a “mail-order” naturopath, although clearly different from the graduates of certified naturopathic schools, was a skilled practitioner in his own right.)

He described his various non-chiropractic techniques (insofar as they can be reduced to writing) in his book, The Ultimate Healing System. The verbal descriptions are augmented by copious illustrations (and the jovial bearded gentleman who appears a few of the drawings is Don Lepore himself). As with anything, I pick and choose from what the book offers – but I have found a good many gems there. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the book (originally published in 1988) is back in print, and is available at Amazon, among other places.

The woman who would later be my nutritionist was a client of Dr. Lepore’s, and was so impressed by his ability to help her where many others had failed that she signed on as his student. One very important aspect of her training was hands-on experience. She told me that she found muscle testing very difficult at first, but that she and the other students would spend literally hours per day practicing on each other until they “got it.”

As I mentioned last time, I had previously been muscle tested by a number of other practitioners, none of whom seemed to have any real grasp of the technique beyond the basic concept. I suspect that they had seen a demonstration of muscle testing, had tried it themselves and had gotten some sort of result, and assumed that was all there was to it. Because they made no effort to improve their skills, they remained at a mediocre level. My nutritionist makes the technique look so effortless that you’d think she was born with the ability – but not so!

My first appointment with her came at a time when both my family doctor and my allergist had been expressing concern over my low iron levels. Taking the iron supplements that the doctor recommended hadn’t helped much. I didn’t tell the nutritionist about that (or anything else for that matter). She went through her array of supplements, testing me on this and that while we chatted. Suddenly she stopped and exclaimed, “Wow, you must be really anemic!” I looked down at my “supplement” hand, and saw maybe six or eight nondescript capsules. She explained that they contained yellow dock, which meant nothing to me, but I started taking it.

The next time I saw my doctor, she was jubilant over the improvement in my iron levels. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing,” she said, “but keep it up.” I’ve noticed that doctors in this type of situation never ask “what have you been doing?” – implying, I suppose, that they assume the improvement must be due to some sort of fluke, rather than to anything the patient has done.

Some years later, when my career had come to an obvious crossroads, I asked my nutritionist whether she would be willing to train me, and she agreed to do so. Unfortunately, I didn’t prove to be any quicker at muscle testing than she had been, there were no other students for me to practice on, and nobody expressed a willingness to donate hours of their free time. (I suspect that I might never have acquired my nutritionist’s level of skill anyway, because my tendency to analyze things to death would have made it difficult for me to simply observe the results -- I would have been more likely to anticipate and therefore influence them.) Mercifully, Hubby was transferred to California about then, so I was able to put a quiet end to the whole affair.