5027 Green Bay Road, Suite 118 • Kenosha, WI 53144
262.925.8600
Allergies conjure up a variety of images: scratch tests, blood tests, hay fever, etc. Many people will tell us that they have already been to an allergist and been tested, but most of those tests are for IgE allergies (histamine based) only. Testing that we perform here is more broad-based. It basically answers the question: "What harms my body?" or "What does my body not like?"
Practitioners often talk about what they need to "put into" the body (prescription drugs, vitamins, minerals, etc.). Aside from this, there is still another element that remains in determining what is making a person sick. That element involves removing foods and other irritants that cause a reaction in the body.
Dr. Berglund could throw a bunch of vitamins and minerals at any particular condition, but without removing the offending foods, healing takes so much longer and is less effective.
One of the key steps in helping his patients achieve their best level of health is by finding food sensitivities and removing them from their diets.
Absolutely no needles or scratch tests are used to do this type of sensitivity testing. We utilize muscle strength and weakness to gauge whether or not there is a sensitivity. This technique is called "manual muscle testing".
There are lab tests available, such as the ELISA-ACT test, ALCAT test, or SAGE test, but these tests are quite expensive compared to the muscle testing. The beauty of muscle testing is that it can be done in-house, the test results are immediate, and it is painless and non-invasive.
Dr. Berglund has been using this technique (along with many other health care professionals around the world) for many years and feels very confident about it. He has looked at the results patients have gotten from scratch tests as well as blood tests and thinks that in many ways this testing produces superior results.
For more information about the conditions Dr. Berglund can treat using the food sensitivity testing, visit our conditions page.
Other helpful links
Food sensitivity testing
Conditions treated by Dr. Berglund
I have been interested in nutrition since I was a child. My parents were involved in nutritional supplements, and their approach on health made a lot of sense to me.
My concept of nutrition is that we are trying to shore up inherently weak or weakened areas of the body. Our physical bodies are no different than our personalities and giftings.
Some of us are book smart and some of us have more common sense. Some of us are good at making decisions and some are better at taking instruction. The same holds true for the body. Taking a look at a patient's symptoms and their family history leads me to know where their weaknesses are. Some patients are pre-disposed to heart disease someday. For other patients it's cancer. Once I know where they struggle, I can help provide what the body needs. My manual muscle testing technique I use helps me to take that theoretical "I think a person like you could possibly need this" to "Not only do I think you may need this, your body is actually asking me to give you this". In the case of an infection, I can determine if the needs of the immune system are more to help it fight a viral invasion or a bacterial invasion. In other cases, I can see what form of calcium is most optimally needed by the body, or what type of iron is best absorbed.
Nutrition, to me, is the use of natural compounds in helping strengthen the human body. There are different levels. The first thing I like to do is to get the body's nutrient level up to where the body needs it to be. These needs may include vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. The other thing I like to make sure of is that the glands and organs in the body are doing what they need to do and functioning optimally. People always look at herbs as nutrition. I think of them more as an in-between. I believe that God put them on this earth as his natural pharmacy. For example, white willow bark is a natural aspirin, tumeric is a natural anti-inflammatory, silymarin is a natural liver detoxifier, and goldenseal is a natural antibiotic.
Ultimately, I believe that there is a wisdom in the body (put there when God designed and created us). That wisdom the body has is one that knows how to heal itself. My job is to get the patient to stop putting harmful things in it that are harmful/inflammatory and to start putting helpful things in it that the patient is deficient in. In most cases, once I do that and get the all the parts of the body doing what they are supposed to do, the patient gets better.
This paradigm makes more sense to me than traditional medicine does. Traditional medicine always intervenes to do things FOR the body or to jimmy-rig the system to re-route or shunt function away from a dysfunctional region. Traditional medicine doesn't seek to fix problems, but rather seeks to override dysfunction using unnatural means. I have no problem with a patient going on an antidepressant medication, for example, but only after they have tried to determine what the underlying cause is (emotional or physical) and trying to correct that dysfunction.
I have seen so many people fall through the cracks of the traditional health care system. To me, seeing a patient in amazement at how simple it was to fix their problem is what really makes this fun and worthwhile for me. Whatever the problem, I'm confident I can help you.
-Dr. Michael Berglund