10/15/2025
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to address concerning trends I am seeing in the alternative health or wellness space. I neither want to alienate clients nor do I want to insult a myriad of lovely professionals in the wellness space. So I've been publicly silent on social media about these issues and conspicuously neutral in clinic, with the attitude that "if it doesn't hurt you and you like ___, keep doing it." But as with most women in their 50's, it gets harder to keep my mouth shut ; ) After all, I don't refrain from criticizing conventional, corporate healthcare.
Today, the rock in my shoe is about what is called nutrition response testing (NRT).
People who offer NRT state that it is noninvasive way to determine what may be going awry in the body and "what it may need." They brand it as noninvasive, based on the body's innate wisdom. Well who doesn't love the sounds of that?! Just hearing it makes me feel like the person doing it to me is a bit magical, while simultaneously hearing that my body is wise. Scrumptious! And you get touched in the meantime, which is often therapeutic in and of itself. Unfortunately, there is zero peer reviewed, published research that supports NRT as a diagnostic tool. None. Look for yourself, tapping ChatGPT5.0 to see what it comes up with. You can hold that vial of powdered milk and have someone pump your arm up and down, and it still won't tell you if you are lactose intolerant or have milk protein allergies. I've had people NOT take their iron supplement in pregnancy, based on lab work that indicated their iron stores were low, because their chiro did NRT and told them they don't need it. It was a real bummer when I needed to send them for an IV iron infusion a month prior to birth because they were too anemic to safely qualify for a home birth. An expensive, time consuming, and needless situation, when they could have taken the $12 bottle of ferrous bisglycinate purchased on Amazon.
While some would brand this care as "getting to the root cause" of someone's issues, the only impact may be on your wallet. The bulk of the time, after NRT, people are sold a myriad of supplements by that same professional, that will cure their digestive woes, clear their brain fog, detox their body, etc. The mark up on those supplements is often 40-100%. I have a problem with that and you should too. I don't make money off of the prescriptions I write, and that is the way it should be. No financial incentive likely translates into less biased care. Sometimes what you are paying for in the wellness industry is a feeling, a warm fuzzy, an experience. I would rather get a massage...
Take home message. Be discerning about ALL of the care you receive. Get in touch with whether you are paying for a feeling, or for legitimate care.
