Does NAET treatment/therapy work? I tried it back in 2015 and here’s my opinion.
TLDR: It helped some, but isn’t a permanent solution. There may have also been other factors involved.
What is NAET?
NAET is Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimnation Technique, named after the man who discovered it. Using acupressure, the spine is stimulated, trying to retrain the brain from having negative responses to the allergens.
Using a combination of Western medicine and traditional Oriental medicine, the body is worked on. The idea is that meridians might be blocked, so they try to remove the blockages using pressure points and energy. This then clears the allergen.
If you want to read more about how it works, I have a list of the articles I liked at the bottom of this page.
My experience with NAET
I stumbled upon NAET in kind of an odd way – it was a friend of a friend’s mom who told me about it. I found she had terrible allergies and food sensitivities. This family had multiple dogs, and she was telling me this story about how she used to be deathly allergic, needing an epi-pen just being in the same room as one.
And now she could own dogs and be around them all the time. This is how I heard of NAET. She told me about this woman she was going to for treatment in Colorado that was making her allergies go away.
It seemed too good to be true. Could I become tolerant to corn again? (This is one of my worst food sensitivities and the worst to live with.)
I didn’t go in with high hopes, but thought why not? If there’s something that can give me my life back, why not try it?
I didn’t know what to expect with this treatment. I was also skeptical. It’s essentially acupressure with vials and some electric waves going while I lay on a table.
First she tested to make sure corn was in fact an issue for me (it was). Then she did the magic, and I left. I was supposed to avoid it for 24 hours, and then try a corn product.
Testing the Process
She wasn’t super specific, so I tried Yumearth gummy worms, and felt sick after. So I thought it had failed. These ingredients weren’t just corn starch or something, but had flavorings and citric acid in them.
I go back and tell her that it didn’t work, and that’s when she explains to me that I was supposed to just try something purely corn; getting rid of my issues to things like citric acid would come later.
She does the procedure again, and this time I decide to try grits because that’s something I really missed. I tried maybe a spoonful. Which in the past, would have bloated me right up.
And no reaction! It was amazing.
I went back and we worked on citric acid.
I had to go buy pure citric acid, and tested barely the end of a spoons worth. It is more sour than lemons. But again, no reaction!
Everything I knew about food changed again. It was amazing. If I accidentally had something with a tiny bit of corn, I wouldn’t be miserable for a few days.
*I was still having my IBS-D issues, but I kept on ignoring that.
Long Term Results
I then headed back to California for school, so the treatments stopped. They seemed to be holding.
Over the course of a few years, I had gone from reacting to corn-based compostable food containers to being able to eat a burrito from a Mexican restaurant (that didn’t put corn in it, but there would have been corny ingredients).
I was able to eat out again.
I continued to avoid foods that I knew had corn syrup or corn starch in them, but didn’t worry too much about going out to eat or foods with additives made out of corn.
This is something I never thought would happen.
I am really happy I did NAET and glad it worked. However, I wouldn’t be writing this blog if it lasted forever. I think after about 3 years it started wearing off. I started feeling if I was slipping up and having corn products. It wasn’t until the end of 2019 I decided to finally cut everything out and stop going out to eat. That’s when I realized it had probably worn off earlier, but I was good at ignoring my stomach.
Overall, I’m very happy with the results. Because it worked, at least for a short time.
Last Thoughts
I know I wrote at the start that I thought eating corn was going to “give me my life back.” At the time, that is how I felt. I felt like part of my happiness was attached to being able to eat like everyone else.
And it is hard to explain every time that, no I don’t want to go out to eat. Or, that’s great you brought in cookies, but I’ll pass.
But it isn’t tied directly to it. It’s not “if I can’t have corn, I won’t be happy.” My happiness is not dependent on eating corn products.
Looking Back
The one thing I really question with this testing is that recently I was told that having an IUD for controlling endometriosis may also help digestive problems. And I had one inserted around the same time as getting this NAET treatment.
So knowing this does make me think the IUD may have been also helping.
As promised, here are some of the articles/studies I liked reading.