Increasingly, parents and healthcare practitioners are seeing children become symptomatic from eating certain foods. Eliminating these foods from a child’s diet can be quite challenging, however, especially with children that eat a limited variety of food in the first place. Since compliance is key to lasting success, it helps to involve children in the process of determining which foods could be causing harm and noticing how much better they feel when those foods are eliminated.

Muscle Response Testing (MRT) is a great technique for determining exactly which foods trigger allergic reactions or sensitivity. To begin the process, MRT practitioners often use small glass vials containing the energies of the substances being tested, starting with the most commonly eaten foods. In a typical treatment session, the practitioner has the client hold the vial with the energy of the suspected food while testing a specific muscle to see if there is a response. If the muscle that’s being tested goes weak, it is assumed that the client has an issue with that food.

This is a powerful experience for a child, who can feel his or her strong arm become weak in the presence of a particular food energy, and strong again in its absence. The child can then be told that eliminating the particular food could help him or her to feel better. When the food is removed from the diet and symptoms start to lessen after a week or so, the child will become more invested in avoiding the food.

Once the problematic food is identified, parents are advised to keep it away from the child for a certain period of time, allowing the child’s body to begin to heal. Some practitioners would also offer supplements to support the body as it works its way back to better health. For example, a child with gluten intolerance most likely has a weak gut lining that has been leaking proteins to the blood stream, causing an immune response. This child might be put on whole food supplements to support and repair the lining of the gut.

Some practitioners also use treatments to help strengthen the child’s constitution so that he or she can actually move past the allergy and eat the food again with no ill effects, as with tree nuts or eggs. Three techniques that have shown great results helping individuals to overcome food sensitivities are Koren Specific Technique, Bio- Kinetics Health Restoration System and the Morphogenic Field Technique.

Kristine Jelstrup, LMT, CBK, is a natural health care practitioner and owner of Central Square Health and Wellness, located at 126 Prospect St., #5, in Cambridge. For more information, call 617-833-3407 or visit CentralSquareHealthAndWellness. com.