A Leicester skeptic visits a business making some strange claims
Take a walk through our lovely, shiny Highcross Centre and among the glitz and the glamour you'll find a business making some very strange claims indeed.
The posters and leaflets in Herbmedic advertise that its acupressure service "stimulates Qi mobilization to regain Yin-Yang balance".
They also claim to treat you for a variety of ailments by giving you a candle to set fire to then stick in your ear.
It is illegal to sell ear candles in Canada for a simple reason – there is no evidence to suggest they are effective, but plenty of evidence to show they are dangerous.
When I phoned Herbmedic to try to book an ear-candling treatment, I was told that they did not do the treatment in the store, but could sell me the candles to use them at home.
Why don't you do it in store? I asked. "Because it is dangerous."
What interested me more was the claim to be able to "test your level of allergy to over 400 items from a piece of your hair" for just £35.
This claim surprised me for a couple of reasons. First, at less than 9p per allergen it seems extraordinarily cheap. Secondly, I can't see how it is possible to test for allergies using your hair. Allergies are disorders of the immune system, and with hair being dead, it seems unlikely that it is able to provide any kind of immune response to test.
But I'm a stickler for the open-minded principles of scientific skepticism. Just because it seems a bit strange, does not mean it's not true.
The open-minded response to any claim is simply to say: "That's sounds interesting, let's put that to the test and see if it is true.''
In this spirit, I popped into Herbmedic, requested the test and paid my £35.
The gentleman who served me cut off a small sample of my hair and put it into a zip-lock bag to send away for processing.
A few days later, a friend of mine also went into the store. He brought a sample of hair with him already in a bag.
Two weeks later and £70 poorer, we went back to collect a full report containing our allergy test results.
I suffer from hay-fever and am allergic to cat and rabbit fur. Despite this, my test came out negative for an allergy to tree pollen, grass pollen and plant pollen. It also came back negative for animal dander/hair.
More interesting was the huge difference between my friend's test results and my own.
They told me I had a low reaction to wheat, pepper/spicy, nuts and a moderate reaction to dairy, caffeine and yeast. I could apparently benefit from more chromium and valerian.
My friend's test reported a low reaction to nightshade family, citrus fruits, salt, sweet, beet/cane sugar, house and dust mite and a medium reaction to dairy, orange and grass pollen.
It said he could benefit from more Omega-3, Milk thistle herb and co-enzyme q10.
With the exception of dairy, our results were completely different. Which is strange, since the sample of hair that my friend took in came from my head.
That's right. Two samples of hair from the same head. Two completely different results.
Judging by the number of allergy test results they have in their paper tray, I guess a lot of people are losing money with this pointless service – and worse, this may be influencing people to change their diets and buy unnecessary supplements.
Leicester trading standards have been informed.
Simon Perry runs the monthly Skeptics in the Pub lecture series in Leicester and blogs at the website below, which questions bold claims. He spells skeptic with a "k", rather than a "c", because he believes people associate the "c" with "cynical".
45 Comments
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by ml, leics.
Thursday, November 19 2009, 3:23PM
“Written by someone and put on their twitter.
"is stealing ideas from @dontgetfooled 's book to use in his Leicester Mercury column."”
by ml, Leics.
Thursday, November 19 2009, 1:58PM
“"We can agree to disagree on whether or not hair testing is 'alternative'. I don't much care." so why comment? I care.
Can we agree that a large percentage of these tests have been devised by scientists or conventional health care professionals and are conducted in laboratories using scientific and medical equipment?
Kudos on Leicester mercury for running the article, inserting a heading, which started this debate, then changing it.
"Simon has a national reputation for uncovering such shoddy commercial dealings and it is great that the Mercury is now publishing his stuff."
"Nice detective work Simon. Of course they'll pass of the dodgy results as 'an admin error' or some such,"
"Very well done to Mr Perry for exposing this"
He copied the story, a very quick google search would have given you the same format outcomes etc.”
by Allo V Psycho, St Peter's Close
Thursday, November 19 2009, 11:40AM
“Sorry if you have been missing me me, ml. Re your 16/10 comments:
I didn't see the original sub-editor's headline. I understand it wasn't Simon Perry's, so your comment seems a bit pointless.
We can agree to disagree on whether or not hair testing is 'alternative'. I don't much care. However, you then move to an unsubstantiated attack on Simon Perry himself, apparently alleging that he plagiarised the article, and lied about carrying out this little test. That seems to me to be entirely typical of alternative medicine believers - you lose the argument, so you launch a personal attack. With regard to your 18/10, you provide no details to back up your claim, and appear to rely on an argument from authority (rather laughably in this context, from a physicist or engineer). Again, this is entirely typical of alternative medicine. Kudos to the Leicester Mercury, btw, for running this story.”
by ml, leics.
Wednesday, November 18 2009, 3:43PM
“Allo and Mr Perry have gone very quiet. Here is another company, scientist etc who provide hair allergy testing.
These are tests designed by scientist and conventional Health professionals and you would STILL claim it was alt med?
"It was developed by ex-NASA scientist, Prof William Nelson, in an effort to help his autistic son."”
by ml, Leics.
Monday, November 16 2009, 11:01AM
“I still don't agree with the "old" title of this story, it was changed soon after, and I still don't agree that this test has anything to do with Alt Med. After all Mr Perry stated that the company replied with "a qualified allergist in equally qualified surroundings" What if this person was a scientist just using poor equipment? You don't know who did the test and how qualified they are. This test is obviously a con but does that mean a man of science wouldn't touch it with a barge pole? Or maybe somebody is hiding behind their qualifications to make a lot of money.
To finish, this is not a new story and was obviously copied from a which report some time ago.
The truth about allergy testing
Hair analysis
We contacted two companies, Bionetics and Integral Health, which use hair to diagnose intolerances. Bionetics uses a scanner to diagnose intolerances, claiming it tests ¿the vibrational energy pattern of your hair which represents the energy state of your body¿ to diagnose intolerances.
Using hair analysis to diagnose food allergies has never been proven
Integral Health claims to ¿genetically examine the DNA at the hair root¿ to investigate food intolerances. The hair analysis tests cost between £48 and £75, depending on the company.
What we did
Each researcher sent a few strands of hair to each hair analysis company. A few days later, Becky sent another sample to Bionetics under a different name and Dee did the same for Integral Health.
Our findings
The companies post a report with intolerances, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Integral Health successfully diagnosed Becky¿s lactose intolerance and she was told to avoid all dairy products.
But Bionetics told her to avoid only sheep¿s milk and no other dairy products on her first test, and on her second test only cows¿ milk and no other dairy products.
Becky¿s test results from both companies were very different.
Of 37 foods identified, only two appeared on both lists. The two tests sent to Bionetics also gave very different results, with only one of 31 foods appearing on both lists. Dee was told to avoid cows¿ milk by all tests, even though she has no lactose or cows¿ milk protein intolerance and has never shown any symptoms.
Experts¿ verdict
¿Despite exhaustive research, using hair analysis to diagnose food allergies has never been proven,¿ Dr Morris said. Integral Health claims that no two people are the same and that their test results are 98% accurate. ¿But Becky and Dee both received standardised reports advising them to avoid similar foods,¿ said Andrew Williams.
This is what is said about the founder of integral health
Dr Sam¿s background lies in conventional medicine, having started his career as a reconstructive dental surgeon.
Dr Sam He is one of the very few dental practitioners in the UK to be a member of the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons of England. He furthered his conventional training spending four years in anaesthetics, two years in hospital theatre dealing with road accident victims who had suffered head and neck injuries and seven years in Germany running a large practice.
And this is what biotecnics uses.
The technology used is manufactured in Germany under ISO regulations and carries CE Mark IIa approval for medical use.”