While choices abound for alternative therapies, relatively few diagnostic or discovery techniques are available. Most allopathic (mainstream medical) tests are limited in scope, expensive, and proceed from a wholly different view of health and disease than those of the alternative health world. So if you want to know which body system is sub performing, genetically weak or what the general state of your health is, your choices are constrained to a few. Among these are those that rely largely on a health history analysis such as homeopathy and chiropractic, energy healers who are attuned to morphic and psychic fields, and touch-based techniques like therapeutic touch, acupressure, pulse analysis, kinesiology, cranial-sacral, and reflexology.

Iridology is a whole-body, non-intrusive discovery technique that is based on reading the human iris (the blue or brown part of your eye). All body systems and organs can be seen in the left or right eye, as nerve activity from every part of the body is self-reported and recorded in the iris fibers over time. A trained practitioner can quickly and accurately determine your genetic weaknesses ("did I inherit my mother's weak heart?"), organs presently under stress, trauma indications and so on. An iridology reading is painless, non-intrusive, and surprisingly accurate. Light source and magnification are the iridologist's tools, and generally your eye will be photographed to accurately track changes.

The first thing an iridologist will acquaint you with is your constitution. By this the iridologist means your inherited strength of resistance, presence of inherited weaknesses, in short your genetic bank account. Just as being born into an affluent family insures having financial resources you can fall back on, so being born of parents who pass on a strong genetic inheritance insures your ability to resist debilitating influences of environment, toxins that we're all exposed to, stress, and even trauma. Your constitution is not necessarily the same thing as your health at a given moment, but more the inherent ability to sustain health in the face of debilitating influences.

Since all organs are depicted in a particular sector of either the right or left iris (or both in the case of medial organs like the thyroid), the absence of a mark in a particular iris region indicates a normal, healthy condition in the organ indicated there. Finding a mark or discoloration, the iridologist will note the irregularity on your chart, and look for marks in allied organs. For example a mark in the heart would suggest glancing at the brain sector to see if the medulla shows irregularity, pointing to a possible electrical problem manifesting as arrhythmia, etc. In this way underlying causes of malfunction are often uncovered, as well as contributing causes in other body systems and organs.

The iridologist will then, in fifteen or twenty minutes go over your entire body as depicted in the irides, carefully noting findings on an iridology chart or often using a computer assisted pictorial chart. Depending on which therapeutic modality she or he uses, results of the iris analysis will suggest an herbal, chiropractic, energy or other regimen which will bring affected systems into homeostasis. You will walk away with a whole body assessment that you can use as primary diagnosis, or as a second opinion from an informed source, your own body's self-reported record.

The strength of iridology as a detection technique inheres from the total body view it affords, and in its perspicaciousness-ability to detect a tissue condition in the early, acute, stage before it advances over eight to fifteen years to the chronic stage where most allopathic diagnoses are performed. Early onset detection typically requires a correspondingly mild corrective, and avoids the costly, heroic measures that beset treatment in the chronic or degenerative stages.

While iridology enjoys popularity and even mainstream medical acceptance in Russia, Europe, and South America, lack of insurance coverage and inclusion in teaching institutions has held back general availability in the United States. This is changing as baby boomers are taking responsibility for their own health. The now-famous Cassileth study at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center disclosed a surprising correlation between education level and selection of an alternative/complementary practitioner as secondary or even primary health care provider. College trained individuals were found to be 24% more likely to use an alternative practitioner than those with only High School diplomas. Among those with advanced degrees, the use of alternative providers was even higher, until at the PhD level 89% were using unorthodox therapy either exclusively, or in combination with a traditional provider. The seventeen-year-old (1984) study shocked the medical establishment, expecting to find alternative health users either uneducated or last gasp sufferers willing to try anything. Since then another milestone has been reached: visits to non-traditional practitioners now exceed total visits to mainstream doctors.

In addition to iridology, other tests like hair analysis, muscle testing, pulse analysis, live blood analysis and energetic touch are generally available and often employed with great success in the alternative health world. Some of these while excellent in what they test, are effective in a narrower spectrum, and may not disclose underlying and related conditions.

Fortunately these detection techniques are not prohibitively expensive, affording the informed consumer the option of using more than one test. This trend is likely to continue as the emerging educated public finds increasing numbers of broadly trained practitioners, the mainstream continues to embrace non-traditional modalities, and the health system expands coverage to include those that prove most effective and efficient.

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Article by: Harvey B. Vedder
NEW YORK CENTER FOR IRIDOLOGY www.iridologyNYC.com