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by Gayla Owen

Like many other Knoxvillians, Ronda Day suffered from seasonal allergies. Unlike a lot of other people, however, she says she found a cure for her allergies that didn't involve shots or medications. It instead involved someone sticking needles in her body.

Day, who is 33, says her allergies were so bad that she had to be on antibiotics year round for sinus infections. She was then seeing a traditional allergy doctor, who prescribed allergy shots once a week and three medications.

"Allergy doctors made a big difference, but not enough," she says. "I was still sick every spring and fall and had to be on antibiotics all of those months."

Day says she found an end of allergies through an alternative health treatment called NAET. It stands for Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique, and it uses a combination of applied kinesiology and acupuncture or acupressure to treat allergies.

Day says that after five months of weekly NAET treatments, she no longer takes allergy shots and no longer needs allergy medication or antibiotics. Recently, she went to lunch with three friends. "They were all whining and griping about the pollen and feeling bad," Day says. "This one had a sore throat, this one a sinus infection. I didn't have anything to complain about."

NAET was discovered, or invented, in 1983 by California doctor, chiropractor, and acupuncturist Devi Nambudripad. Today, there are over 5,000 licensed medical practitioners trained in NAET, as well as several books on the subject.

Knoxville has two NAET clinics: Knoxville Allergy and Health Management Center in Bearden and Allergy and Health of Knoxville in Farragut. But much like many other alternative health techniques, it has its skeptics among many medical doctors. "The success of alternative techniques such as acupuncture in the treatment of allergies is usually anecdotal, and there have never been any scientific studies in the U.S. that have shown that they are effective," says allergist and internist Dr. Bob Overholt. "The placebo effect of any type of medicine is 30 percent, and it is my opinion that any response to acupuncture in controlling allergies is no better than a placebo." However, Overholt concedes that "alternative methods of medication are helping a lot of people who are searching for help, as long as it doesn't hurt the patient physically, medically, or financially."

During a NAET session, the patient holds a perfume-sample-sized vial containing a suspected allergen. The practitioner, using applied kinesiology, tests the muscle strength of the patient's arm before and while he holds the vial. If the muscle weakens while holding the vial, this indicates the substance is a problem for the patient, according to Sandy Ayton, the practitioner at Allergy and Health of Knoxville.

Once a problem substance has been identified, the patient continues to hold the vial while the practitioner taps acupressure points along the spine, "which stimulates the autonomic nervous system," says Ayton. Acupressure, or acupuncture if the practitioner is a licensed acupuncturist, is then applied to points on the hands, arms, legs, and feet, she says.

To complete the treatment, the patient holds the vial for 15 minutes after the acupressure is complete. For a treatment to become permanent, the patient must avoid the allergen for at least 24 hours, although some practitioners have a device they say reduces this "clearing" time to two hours.

One allergen or groups of similar allergens, such as various kinds of trees, is treated at a time. A treatment in Knoxville costs between $50 and $65. An initial evaluation, which includes testing of 15 or more allergens, a book, and the first treatment, costs between $150 and $165. Usually, one treatment is all it takes to eliminate one allergen or group of similar allergens, although it occasionally takes more, says Robbie Arledge, the practitioner at Knoxville Allergy and Health Management Center.

According to Nambudripad's writings, the NAET treatment "reprograms" the brain, changing its response to an allergen, and removes blockages, allowing energy to "flow freely through the energy meridians." Energy meridians, a term from traditional Chinese medicine's acupuncture, are the pathways in the human body for the flow of subtle energy, known as qi.

"This is not voodoo, not witchcraft," says Arledge. "This is just a different way of assessing and treating the body. It is not even new. It's Chinese Medicine, an ancient medicine which has been used for over one thousand years."

Arledge says she didn't always think this way. "I thought it was really way out there." But she says NAET treatments resolved her seven-year-old's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Most of his ADHD symptoms were gone after 12 treatments, ones mostly for foods and nutrients, she says. "I have never seen anything change like that in my entire life."

Practitioners and patients say NAET works on all kinds of allergies. It can even eliminate life-threatening anaphylactic allergies, they say. However, Arledge notes, anaphylactic allergies are more difficult to treat than most. "They require a specific protocol" and almost always take more than one treatment.

Donna Mingie, 33, says she is proof that NAET works on anaphylactic allergies. She had them to latex, fish, sulfites, and the food additive MSG. "If someone even flipped a latex glove around me, I was in danger of dying," she says. This made her job as a hospital supervisor especially difficult.

According to her primary care physician, Janet Lubas, Mingie's anaphylactic allergies are gone. Her seasonal allergies are also greatly improved, she says. "She's completely off all her allergy medications; she's not always calling with sinus infections," says Lubas. "The NAET seems to have helped her quite a bit more than the shots and medications."

Lubas, whose office is in south Knoxville, says she has told some other patients about NAET. "I don't know how NAET works," says Lubas. "But I think it's important to be open to other things that we may not understand."