Brief History of Nutritional Balancing
- There are two sources of Nutritional Balancing.
Nutritional Balancing
is the name of a specific protocol for the treatment of adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, and other chronic illnesses.
It uses hair analysis to measure mineral levels, mineral ratios, and toxins.
I was attracted to Nutritional Balancing after seeing the success of others on the adrenal fatigue forum on Curezone.com.
There are two sources of Nutritional Balancing, from two different labs.
The labs are:
- ARL (Analytics Research Laboratories)
- TEI (Trace Elements Incorporated)
Both versions of Nutritional Balancing seem to work. However, some people seem to do better with ARL, while other people seem to do better on the TEI program.
The article Is Hair Analysis Accurate? compares results obtained from both labs. Both labs use similar procedures, and the results they obtain are very close.
The articles Success Stories using Nutritional Balancing contains quotes from various forums and support groups.
The Founder of Nutritional Balancing
The founder of Nutritional Balancing was Dr Paul C Eck. Dr. Eck founded ARL (the lab) in 1974.2.
He used the work of other researchers as a starting point, and completed his own research as part of his clinical practice.
The following quote is from the About
page of Analytical Research Laboratories, which is the lab he founded.
It summarizes the foundation of the
Nutritional Balancing program.
To correctly interpret a tissue mineral analysis, Dr. Eck combined a number of modern biological, physiological and biochemical concepts including the stages of stress discovered by Dr. Hans Selye, sympathetic and parasympathetic balancing as taught by Dr. Melvin Page, oxidation types as taught by Dr. George Watson and mineral balancing as taught by Dr. William Albrecht and others.
No other laboratory uses all these concepts to help understand the significance of tissue mineral levels, ratios and metabolic patterns Dr. Eck pioneered many innovations in the study of trace mineral deficiencies and excesses and their relationship to various metabolic dysfunctions associated with disease 1
Dr Eck died in 1996. His children have operated his lab since then.
One of the main routes that people end up using ARL for Nutritional Balancing is through Dr.Larry Wilson. His site ranks quite well with search engines like Google.
Dr Wilson worked for 14 years with Dr Eck (~1982 to 1996). Dr Wilson mostly sticks to Dr. Eck original concepts.
However, Dr.Wilson has added a few things to the program. He has focused more on detoxification, which is an important part of adrenal fatigue treatment.
Unfortunately, Dr.Wilson has a lot of stuff on his website that turns many people away from trying Nutritional Balancing. I personally found Dr. Wilson site on 2005, did not try Nutritional Balancing until 2012.
Founder of TEI
TEI, or Trace Elements Inc., was founded in 1984. It was founded by Dr. David L. Watts.
Dr. Watts was originally an employee of Dr. Eck (the founder of ARL). He left to start his own lab, as well as his own version of Nutritional Balancing.
It has grown in a major operation. This is from the about page of TEI.
Trace Elements is an independent testing laboratory specializing in hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) for health-care professionals worldwide. With continued growth since its inception in 1984, Trace Elements serves thousands of health professionals of all specialties in over 46 countries, including exclusive franchise agreements in 26 countries.
Trace Elements and its employees are dedicated to providing timely, accurate and precise laboratory services, high-quality nutritional products and clinically relevant information and consultations.
Summary
There are two sources of Nutritional Balancing, ARL and TEI.
Although the raw results of hair analysis are nearly identical between these two labs. The interpretations are sometimes different, and the supplements recommended can be completely different, even though the hair analysis results are identical.
Other articles cover some of the differences between the two programs.
References
1. About ARL2. drwilson.com: Nutritional Balancing, an Introduction
3. About TEI
