AURAL PHOTOGRAPHY

In aural photography, standard film or digital photographic equipment is manipulated in an attempt to reveal the subject’s aura. The manipulation may occur during photography (with the addition of fiber optics or adjustment to the light, time exposure, or lens focal length) or during film development, which in the case of digital aural photography employs digital enhancement or editing. Practitioners may attempt to diagnose disturbances in a subject’s aura or to prove a treatment is working because of a difference between before and after aura photographs.

AYURVEDA

Ayurveda is a healing tradition from India that is considered by many to be a whole medical system. It has long been extended to practice on animals. An ancient text called Aswa-ayurveda detailed equine medicine. Ayurveda includes herbalism, Hindu philosophy, and a belief in an adjustable life force called the prana. The body is viewed as a reflection of the earth with the five ayurvedic elements (earth, air, fire, water, and ether) corresponding to the five senses.

COLOR THERAPY

Color therapy, also called chromotherapy, makes good simple sense at its basic level. Who wouldn’t rather avoid sitting in a room with black walls, and who wouldn’t prefer a sunnier color? The idea that animals are strictly color-blind is likely a bit of an overstatement, just as is the notion that humans cannot see in the dark. True, animals’ eyes generally have more rods (which work with light) than cones (which work with color) while humans have the reverse arrangement, but people do have rods and can see somewhat in the dark. It is likely that animals have some color perception.

Practitioners have developed attempts to influence animals’ physical and mental behavior with color. Color therapy has evolved into an alternative treatment that incorporates different-colored lights that the animal is exposed to, and even to the use of water that has been exposed to different-colored lights. This treated water is called color essences. The water is then sold in small spray bottles to be applied as desired. For example, water that was exposed to green light is sprayed inside a horse trailer in hope of calming a horse that is a poor traveler. Color therapists often rely on ayurvedic tradition with the chakra concept and assign seven or eight colors to specific behavioral effects.

CUPPING

Also known as fire cupping, the ancient practice involves creating a light suction on the body by means of a small heated cup that is inverted on the skin. Animals’ fur can interfere with the creation of suction, so the practitioner may shave or gel the area to be cupped. Often numerous cups are used. There is a risk of burns from the hot cup. The health benefit is believed to be essentially restoring balance by drawing out whatever is believed to be in excess or relieving stagnation. Some practitioners restrict the practice to acupressure points.

Although cupping has been practiced on most continents and in numerous cultures (it is mentioned in an old Jewish proverb and a Muslim hadith as well as writings from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Mexico), it is most commonly associated with TCVM.

DARK FIELD MICROSCOPY

Dark field microscopy (DFM), or live blood analysis, is an examination of a drop of the fasting pet’s fresh blood under a microscope, without using a bright light to illuminate the slide holding the blood. This method of microscopic study shows the image in reverse, like a negative. Some practitioners believe they can determine more about a pet’s health via DFM, and they choose a remedy such as polysan or Sanum remedies based upon analyzing the fresh blood under dark field microscopy.

A study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health found the reliability of blood analysis using dark field microscopy to be low (http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/l686274l).

ELECTRO-DERMAL TESTING

In the 1950s, Reinhard Voll theorized that if meridians really were energy channels, then they should be measurable. He combined acupuncture theory with a galvanometer (a device that measures differences in electrical current) and electro-dermal testing (EDT) was born.

Also written unhyphenated (eleetrodermal) or as two words (electro dermal) and sometimes as computerized eleetrodermal screening (GEDS), EDT is done with a device that measures the electrical potential between two points in hope of gaining information about the animal’s health. Practitioners also work on saliva and hair samples.

Prosecutorial action has stopped EDT practice on people in Washington and Oregon.

ELECTROPHORESIS

Electrophoresis is the scientific term for the movement of charged particles via an electrical field, such as one created with the application of electrodes to the skin. In conventional medicine, immuno-electrophoresis and immunochemical electrophoresis are tests used to assess the amount and type of immunoglobins and antibodies in the patient. In the alternative treatment setting, some practitioners assert electrophoresis assists with lymph drainage and improves the benefits of massage. Drugs or herbs are also delivered via this mechanism, similar to the manner in which dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) has long been used to carry substances into the body across the skin. As a transporter of supplements or other medication, electrophoresis is also referred to as iontophoresis.

ESOGETIC COLORPUNCTURE

German naturopath Peter Mandel developed esogetic colorpuncture, a form of acupressure using colored lights, with the treatment usually being done in conjunction with Kirlian assessment. Although the names implies otherwise, there is no puncturing of the skin in colorpuncture, just the use of colored lights at acupuncture points, often with very little pressure as well.

HAIR ANALYSIS

Conventional research sometimes uses microscopic and chemical analysis of hair to determine the presence or absence of various chemicals, including the detection of heavy metal poisoning. In the world of alternative treatments, hair analysis is offered by practitioners who claim to be able to assess the nutritional and health status of a patient. The service is usually promoted as hair mineral analysis (HMA) or hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA).

It is important not to confuse HMA with other studies of hair or fur, such as trichology (the scientific study of scalp and hair health) or DNA testing. In the latter, a hair sample is pulled to analyze the DNA in intact cells of the hair root, usually for the purpose of determining genetic traits when planning a breeding.

A veterinarian who specializes in horses notes that 80 percent of horses either have toxic levels of heavy metals in their systems, or are deficient in minerals, or are electrolyte deficient. For about two hundred dollars, online buyers can purchase hair analysis services from this vet and mail in their animals’ hair sample. Buyers will soon receive a multi-page report of the laboratory findings along with the vet’s recommendations on nutritional supplementation and detoxification. The veterinarian need not personally see the animal. He sells special supplemental formulas created for the individual animal based on the hair analysis results and advertises that his individually designed oral supplements can chelate heavy metals, detoxifying the horse.

One equine supplement company states hair analysis can reveal enzyme and endocrine function, inflammatory tendencies, and nutritional imbalances. Some alternative practitioners offering HMA claim to be able to assess medical problems such as allergies or stress via hair analysis. Mainstream medicine categorically advises that allergies cannot be determined through hair analysis.

Alternative practitioners for animals who tout HMA as a reliable method of screening the pet’s mineral content note that fur collection is not only less invasive than having a blood sample analyzed, but that a length of hair provides a record of intakes and exposures in the past weeks and months, while blood shows only the content of the patient at the time tested.

The American Medical Association is opposed to hair analysis as a means of assessing human health. A1985 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that hair samples from two healthy patients sent to more than a dozen labs reaped inconsistent results, with very little agreement among the different labs on what mineral and other values were identified in the hair samples. Half the labs recommended various nutritional supplementations. The article’s author, Dr. Stephen Barrett, serves as a guardian against health care fraud. He calls hair analysis a cardinal sign of quackery, and one of the labs that routinely provides hair mineral analysis sued him in the summer of 2010.

In 2001, JAMA reported a similar experiment on HMA services, sending samples from one volunteer to multiple labs, and again the results were inconsistent, with the researchers concluding that HMA was unreliable and health care practitioners should refrain from the practice.

One medical doctor who advocates HMA decries the two studies published sixteen years apart in JAMA and advises that practitioners using HMA should make their lab requests to one of two labs in the United States that does not clean the hair samples. This advocate also points to a 1979 meta-analysis by the U.S., Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that reviewed more than 400 studies using HMA from around the world.

The EPA meta-analysis concluded that if “hair and nail samples are collected, cleaned [emphasis added] and analyzed properly with the best analytical methods under controlled conditions by experienced personnel, the data are valid. Human hair and nails have been found to be meaningful and representative tissues for biological monitoring for most of these [antimony, arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium, tin, and vanadium] toxic metals.” (http ://cf pub. epa.gov/ols/catalog/catalog_display.cf m?&FIEL Dl=AUTHOR&INPUTl=Jenkins%20AND%20Dale%20AND%20 W&TYPEl=ALL&item_count=8).

Another medical doctor who recommends HMA suggests using yet a different lab and also points to the EPA meta-study as proof of the efficacy of HMA. He recommends only sending hair samples to labs that use inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (IGP-MS), not IGP-atomic emission spectrometry.

Mass spectrometry involves using acid to digest the hair sample, burning the now-liquefied sample, and measuring the gases given off during burning.

Analysis of hair has been used to successfully identify the presence of certain heavy metals, but the baseline or norm for many of these values is not known, making HMA for specific heavy metals a qualitative test but not a good quantitative test. There are no reference ranges for how much lead, for instance, one should expect in a horse living in a given area. There is no known appropriate value for how much zinc is acceptable in a dog’s fur.

Mercury is often present in hair samples, for example, but people and animals are regularly exposed to mercury in water, food, and air. Methyl mercury can be ingested by consuming fish. A person eating several cans of tuna a day for consecutive days and weeks can develop mercury poisoning symptoms and show elevated levels of methyl mercury in tissue samples, including hair samples.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) asserts that with the exception of methyl mercury, hair analysis testing for environmental exposure provides no insight into whether or not the tested individual has or will have health consequences from the chemical or element identified in a hair sample.

Some alternative practitioners offering HMA claim to be able to access medical problems such as allergies or stress via hair analysis. Mainstream medicine categorically advises that allergies cannot be determined through hair analysis.

In 2002, the U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also concluded that hair analysis was unreliable.

Hair of the Dog: Alternative Analysis

Roll over Beethoven. Newsweek magazine reported in 2000 that analysis of the composer’s hair revealed high concentrations of lead. This finding raised speculation that lead poisoning may have caused or contributed to Ludwig van Beethoven’s death. Such remarkable news helped foster interest in laboratory analysis of hair, with the alternative treatments industry—which had long been using hair analysis—promoting anew the practice of hair analysis to identify both nutritional deficiencies and the presence of toxic elements.

I borrowed a lovely dog named Maxine, completed an alternative practitioner’s accompanying questionnaire, prepared to pay the fee and wait for results.

And I read a 2008 article in Toxicology & Environmental Chemistry which concluded that lead was not a likely contributing factor in Beethoven’s illness or death. This article notes that Pb (Pb signifies lead in the periodic table of the elements) in hair is known to be an unreliable indicator of lead absorption because hair can be contaminated with lead externally, and further, the finding reported in Newsweek conflicts with the known kinetics of lead in the blood.

One alternative practitioner offering HMA for pets notes that mass spectrometry is really meant for analyzing soils. This practitioner also decries blood testing animals for diagnostic purposes (believes the practice is of little benefit to the dog) or of testing via radionics boxes (believes the practice is a poor effort to replace an experienced practitioner). This practitioner instead promotes hair analysis through dousing, claiming to read the energy signature surrounding the fur sample and that this energy signature represents the animal’s body systems.

Another alternative animal practitioner needs just one single hair from the animal and claims to then be able to remotely connect with and read the pet in perpetuity.

Some shampoos contain the same elements that are routinely tested for in HMA, such as selenium, lead, iron, or zinc. Thus, HMA services have specific guidance on how recently washed or otherwise processed sampled hair can be. They also direct people to sample from just above the nape of the neck, though this is largely vanity issue, affording the person a well-hidden sampled area.

Animal practitioners have transferred this advice to suggesting hair be taken from an animal’s lower neck. Indeed, the service I used gave specific instructions.

LEFT: Sampling fur from the neck for hair mineral analysis.

“Cut fur from the lower neck or breast, where she can’t lick herself.”

Maxine, the borrowed dog whose fur I submitted for analysis to this alternative practitioner is a fourteen-year-old female mixed breed. She’s fed a premium diet and has been with the same loving family almost all of her life. Because she is aged, she gets Wellness checks at her veterinarian, but she has no medical problems. She enjoys long daily walks. People would guess she’s in her middle years, but they wouldn’t guess she’s fourteen—she acts half her age.

In completing the questionnaire on the animal’s history and health complaints, I was tempted to report that Maxine suffered numerous symptoms, to see if the lab report might arrive adjusted to fit possible explanations. If I said she was lethargic, would they report her low in iron? If I said she had an assortment of nonspecific illnesses, might they claim various heavy metals were in her fur?

To be fair, a good health care provider evaluating an animal will inquire about the animal’s history, its living situation, diet and symptoms. It would be unfair of me to claim the dog had symptoms she did not in fact exhibit.

I did, however, claim I had just found her, so her diet and past exposures were completely unknown.

The HMA service I patronized claims they can analyze the presence or absence of more than half of the periodic table of elements. When I called to arrange the basic test of about two dozen minerals, the consultant immediately suggested I purchase the more expensive test of over fifty minerals.

“It’s in parts per billion, whereas the basic test is only in parts per million,” he said. “And of course, it tests for a lot more things, like palladium.”

Palladium? Maxine, my loaner dog, could have a problem with palladium in her system?

I thought about the previous reports in JAMA sending samples to multiple labs. Nobody had bothered sending identical samples to the same lab. I sent two samples from Maxine to the same service, but I claimed the samples were from two different dogs. I named the second fur sample Beethoven.

A month later, I was still waiting for results. The service again suggested I pay for the expanded testing at a higher fee. I agreed and sent the additional funds.

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