Experimental evidence of kinesiological test © di Renato Burri Holistic doctors regard kinesiology as a diagnostic method largely profitable in detecting food intolerance. Philosophically it relies on the psycho-physical relationship that man establishes with his environment. As a principle the kinesiological test reveals a direct link between the muscle-tone and a stressing factor. We define a stressing factor any substance that results noxious, intolerant or allergenic to the patient’s organism. Kinesiology assumes that the simple presence of a stressing factor causes to the patient a loss of muscle-tone that the doctor can detect through a suitable test. The most widespread technique is the O-ring test. It consists in checking the strength of the O-shaped grip the patient does by firmly pressing against each other the tips of his right hand thumb and index. In a preliminary phase the therapist checks the patient’s strength by opening his O-ring grip in normal conditions, i.e. when stressing factors are absent. After this procedure that is a sort of calibration, the therapist asks the patient to hold in his left hand, one at a time, several glass vials while he checks the O-ring grip strength. Each vial contains a different substance and some of them may seem to loosen clearly the O-ring grip strength. When this is the case, the therapist concludes that the substance contained in that specific vial acts as a stressing factor on the patient’s organism. Holistic doctors have been using this diagnostic method since many years now and through that time it has gained an increasing acceptance. Nevertheless under these premises the test interpretation appears fairly subjective so that many detractors claim the method is diagnostically unreliable and scientifically unacceptable. Our research team has investigated this method in search, if possible, of its objective basis. As a first step we found and experimentally inspected the test subjectivity causes that depend on the therapist: 1) The patient's acquaintance can influence the therapist so that during the test he may apply a stronger or weaker strength according to some preconceived beliefs. 2) The therapist's organism may undergo during the test the same influences than the patient; in other words he could be sensible to some substances in the same extent than the patient. 3) The patient may be too strong or too weak in the therapist's regards, so that the test may become hard or even impossible to perform. There are also some subjectivity causes that depend on the patient, such as, 1) random factors, as for instance a momentary distraction, fatigue, or emotional agent. 2) the patient may be influenced by the therapist. We thought that by performing the O-ring grip test in a mechanical way we could get rid of these problems, so we planned and built a mechanism 1) to experimentally verify the loss of muscle-tone due to stressing factors, and, 2) to give an objective interpretation of the phenomenon. In this case the results reliability depends on the solution of the instrumental interference problems Preliminary investigations confirmed the findings of the therapist skilled in this technique, i.e. that the presence of any electromagnetic field, as the one generated by the accumulators of a portable phone, or even by a watch battery, is enough to invalidate the test. The device we built was designed to meet three basic requirements: 1) to elude any possible electromagnetic test pollution: we reached the scope by adapting to our needs the robot grippers technology since these mechanisms use air or oil pressure as the driving force; 2) to make the therapist's interpretation objective: we reached the scope by planning our instrument so that the force the mechanism exerts is calibrated and constant throughout the test. 3) to continuously control the pressure the patient is applying. Operating system The operator through the instrument performs two operations:- he measures the patient's muscle tone through his O-ring grip strength in normal conditions i.e. - when the patient is not in contact with any test substance; he repeats the same operation when the patient is in contact with test substances. The first device we built was operated by the air pressure flowing into a simple double compensating cylinder. This device, that we called COOPTA to mean a three-play action, allowed us to evaluate the range of the forces in play: the O-ring grip strength and its changes due to stressing factors. In our experimental practice we noticed that during the test the patient sometimes changes the force he is exerting on the instrument only because of subjective reasons such as a momentary distraction. This event of course invalidates the test. Thus we built a second device (named COOPTA2) that allowed us to monitor the force the patient exerts during the test. The experiments we conducted with this device on a large number of patients pointed out the importance the time variable plays while he undergoes the O-ring test. The force variation caused by a stressing factor depends on how long the patient has to exert that force. Therefore we had to take into account not only the opening distance between the two levers of the instrument, but also the time during which they stay open. The power involved in the opening of the levers when the patient is exerting a force F is thus P=Fst, where s represents the distance between the levers in the open position and t is the time it takes the levers to open. Since we can assume P=const and s=const we conclude that if we increase the test time a smaller force will be required. Thus we can determine the time variable in quite a large range of values, so that an increase or decrease of one second can help in evaluating weak forces more precisely. To satisfy this new requirement we built a third instrument, that we called COOPTA 1000, and that is much more complex and sensible than the previous ones. This mechanism does not only perform a dynamometric measure, but also an electronic operational data processing. The system operates through pressure gauges to avoid any electromagnetic test pollution. The electronic data processing operates through thin air channels at a safety distance of about 3 metres. Nevertheless this sophisticated machine did not solve all possible problems, since checking a quite large number of patients we found that the test is contradictory in an average of about forty per cent cases. This means that the instrumental response points out as not being a stressing factor a certain substance that results to be a stressing factor six times out of ten. To better understand what was going on we had to set up a test method. Investigations over almost hundred patients indicated some standard requirements in performing the O-ring test: - during the test the patient should look in a fixed direction; - the vial containing the substance to check should be kept at the breastbone level, - the patient should hold the vial for at least ten seconds before performing the test. Our experimental investigation suggested a couple of important conclusions. The most significant one is that experiments documented the belief that some substances, although contained in a sealed clear glass vial, really cause a weakening of O-ring grip strength. On the other side the comparison between blind tests performed by the COOPTA instrument and several therapists using the traditional system showed no agreement both between Coopta results and therapists results and among therapists themselves. Obviously the mechanical way of performing the kinesiological test requires a longer time than that required for the manual test, but on the other side the results are definitely more reliable. Once we ascertained the objective existence of stressing factors and their weakening action, we will aim our next efforts on one side toward the understanding of which biophysical instrument allows the organism to recognise the stressing factors, and on the other toward the intimate nature of these external forces that are able to interact with the organism itself. 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