The Specific Action of Nutrients
Using Nutrition Successfully in Your Practice
By James D. Henry, D.C.
One of the greatest challenges facing alternative health-care providers today is using nutrition successfully in their
practices. Because of the growing interest in nutrition and the dramatic results that can be obtained through appropriate
use, we must become experts and dispel the myth that the nutritional supplement that’s good for one person is good for
everyone. Recommending to each patient the same multiple vitamin formula and having him return with improved health
would be great. But contrary to popular opinion, nutrition guidance works only if supplements fulfill that particular person’s
unique needs.
The “one-pill-fits-all” theory simply doesn’t work. Visiting the local health food store armed
with a list of symptoms will only result in a waste of money and may actually pose a health
threat.
Biologic Individuality: Each person’s biologic individuality demands that we discover his
unique nutritional needs and deficiencies and then recommend specific product(s) that will
correct those deficiencies. If we use a method to determine those needs accurately and
objectively, we will provide the help that patient expects of us. To do that, we must
recognize the limitation of the methods we’ve all used in the past.
Sampling blood, hair, saliva and/or urine, for example, provides incomplete, and often
misleading, profiles of the patient’s actual needs and does not recognize his uniqueness.
Nor can these tests indicate specific nutritional products that will correct his deficiencies.
Various forms of muscle testing have proven to be influenced by too many variables,
including operator prejudice. Symptom surveys, health histories and diet diaries also do
not provide the necessary data.
The flaw in textbook nutrition is that it completely ignores our biologic individuality. Although I’ve used the methods
mentioned above with some success, I recognized their limitations about 10 years ago when I began my search for the
ultimate test to determine nutritional needs/deficiencies that would also indicate specific products to correct those needs.
Of course, the test would also have to be grounded in “good science” and would not rely on subjective data.
Genetics and heredity are two factors that influence our nutritional needs. We can inherit deficiencies just as we can
inherit tendencies to develop certain diseases. We have known for quite some time that the introduction of drastic dietary
changes into a culture can cause serious health problems. For instance, Asians who make radical changes to a typical
Western diet often face severe health consequences, as it seems to take generations before proper utilization of new
foods is possible.
Another factor that influences nutritional needs is exposure to environmental toxins. This exposure places extreme
burdens on the body’s nutritional reserves. Other causes of nutritional deficiencies are traced to psychological and
physical stressors, activity levels, age, weight, gender, lifestyle, habits and sensitivities. I have found that drugs probably
cause more multiple nutritional deficiencies than all other factors combined. Synthetic, fractioned and mega-dose vitamins
are included in this group because they have pharmacological effects.
If this is not enough, add the fact that our diets are poor, our food is grown in soil that is depleted of minerals and other
nutrients, and that our water, soil and air have been polluted and are toxic. We cannot assume that any two people with
same or similar conditions will have the same nutritional needs or will benefit from the same supplements.
Traditional Medicine Is Clueless With worldwide increases in the diseases whose cures we’ve been promised during the
past 50 years and with new diseases appearing at an alarming rate, it’s no surprise that people are turning to alternative
health care. Traditional medicine has completely missed the boat. Could it be because it doesn’t recognize each person’s
unique biologic individuality?
Could it be because medical practitioners assume that everyone with the same symptoms or conditions will benefit from
the same treatment? Could it be, for instance, that they think that everyone with low magnesium (or iron, B12, calcium,
manganese, phosphorus, iodine, etc.) will show acceptable levels after supplementing with magnesium, without
discovering the best source for that nutrient or the appropriate synergists?
In order to use nutrition successfully in your practice, you must be able to determine accurately and objectively who needs
what based on that person’s own unique physiological responses to nutritional stimuli. (Remember the basic scientific
principle: “A stimulus produces a response.”) Not only must we discover what the patient needs and the best possible
source of that nutrient for proper utilization, but we must also find out what he does not need or should not have because
of possible sensitivities.
We also have to know what synergists are necessary. I have seen several examples of very low magnesium levels in
patients whose medical practitioners have prescribed large doses of magnesium over extended periods of time with little
improvement in those levels. These levels improved dramatically after finding the synergists that each person required to
assist in absorption and utilization. The synergists differed in each
case because of each patient’s biologic individuality, and in each case,
no magnesium was included in the supplement program, only the
synergists.
Stimulus-Response Testing Because so many factors influence our
nutritional deficiencies, we must accept the fact that everyone’s needs
are different, and we can correct the deficiencies only through
accurate identification and supplementation with specific products. It’s
futile to discover that a patient has a low calcium level and then to
supplement with a calcium product from a source that the patient
cannot utilize.
We have developed a Nutritional Deficiency Identification System (NDIS) which will allow practitioners to help their
patients, not cure diseases. Each response to a nutrient is compared only to that person’s other responses, not to any
preconceived norms or artificial ranges, thus recognizing his biologic individuality.
To understand how NDIS, or stimulus-response nutritional testing, works, it is necessary to understand the importance of
the hypothalamus gland. The fact that the hypothalamus controls heart rate, blood pressure and respiration is of little
practical value. If you have ever observed a patient in the hospital connected to monitors, you would see how quickly they
change.
The hypothalamus gland also regulates body temperature, which is fairly constant under normal circumstances. It
regulates temperature primarily by vasoconstriction or vasodilation, sweating or the cessation of sweating. The
hypothalamus gland is also important in regulating homeostasis and is not protected by the blood-brain barrier, therefore
leaving it exposed to the extracellular fluid or internal environment. The hypothalamus, an integral part of the limbic
(survival) system, works very closely with the thyroid gland, which controls metabolism, the pituitary gland and, to some
extent, the pineal gland that regulates biorhythms. Furthermore, the hypothalamus is linked by nerve circuits to almost all
parts of the brain by utilizing input from other areas of the brain and information received from blood passing through it.
The hypothalamus controls hunger and thirst, and it contains feeding and safety centers while helping to regulate blood
glucose levels and fat and water metabolism.
To understand the process of using stimulus-response testing to identify specific nutritional needs, we must also
remember that digestion begins in the mouth. Ptyalin is secreted by the parotid glands, lipase by the sublingual glands
and protease by the submandibular glands. Thus, introducing a nutritional supplement (stimulus) orally will produce a
metabolic change (response) which can be measured by monitoring and recording temperature changes using the latest
technologies in biofeedback instrumentation and computer hardware with specially designed software.
These temperature changes are simply a reflection of the response of the hypothalamus gland to a particular nutrient. (It
is important, of course, to have the test preparation instructions followed closely to maintain blood sugar and hydration
levels using our recommended modified basal conditions.)
Identifying Patient Needs The actual in-office testing procedure is direct and easily administered by a technician who can
be trained in a short period of time. A sensor, which is attached to a biofeedback instrument that monitors even slight
temperature changes, is held comfortably in place under the patient’s arm by a belt. The biofeedback instrument is
connected to a computer with the NDIS software installed, and the response generated is recorded. Each nutrient to be
tested is held on the patient’s tongue for 90 seconds.
The NDIS software indicates when the nutrient is to be discarded and when the next nutrient can be tested, based on
parameters included in the program to avoid carryover responses from previous supplements. The data are sent via
modem to our office for interpretation. We provide a written report indicating specific recommendations for the patient’s
supplement program.
You provide the supplements and have the opportunity to review the data on your computer with the patient if you wish.
(Test examples of responses to two different nutrients are shown.) These procedures have generated a great deal of
patient enthusiasm and compliance because you can show them the actual responses that pinpoint their biologic
individuality and prove the body’s innate ability to select foods for health and survival.
This comprehensive but simple test represents a model for using nutrition successfully in your practice. We can obtain
information from a patient which is indeed often a blueprint of his biologic strengths and weaknesses. Our success comes
from using specific nutrients to correct specific nutritional needs, and one can only discover those needs using objective,
scientific methods.
About the author: James D. Henry, D.C., a 1965 graduate of National College of Chiropractic, has used nutrition in his
practice for more than 30 years. He served on the board of directors of Belleville (Mich.) Hospital, and he is involved in
clinical nutrition research as president of Wellspring Technology Inc., in Mobile, Ala. For more information, call (205) 3049581; fax (251) 414-5104; or e-mail drndis@gmail.com or drhenry@chiroassociates.com .