What is Human Kinesiology?

Kinesiology is literally the science of movement. It derives from the Greek word kinesis from which we also get the word kinetics, the study in physics of the movement of bodies. Human kinesiology is the study of human movement. Typically the study of kinesiology involves studying anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics and the application is typically in the field of sports medicine and orthopaedics. There's an overlap with physiotherapy.

But kinesiology has also been adopted as a branch of alternative medicine, a therapy which links the movement of the body with mystical ideas. Sometimes it is used as a technique by chiropractors who claim that it can be used to diagnose certain conditions.

So how does it work, if indeed it does?

The principle behind kinesiology as a diagnostic tool is the belief that by testing muscle strength in certain muscles, it is possible to identify specific illnesses. It is argued that every illness associated with an organ causes an associated weakness in a particular group of muscles. By identifying the weakness in the muscle, it is possible to identify the illness in the organ.

This is a startling claim first advanced by George Goodheart in 1964 but its popularity has been steadily growing so that now, many chiropractors include this technique in their product range. But what needs to be established for us to accept this technique?

How are muscles related to organs?

Clearly there has to be some tangible connection between the specific muscles and the organs they are claimed to reflect. We need to have some reliable means of showing that an illness in a specific organ will always generate the appropriate loss of strength in a particular muscle group. If we can't do that, then we don't have a reliable diagnostic tool. So it ought to be fairly easy to set up a trial to test the hypothesis and, if it works, to demonstrate accurate diagnosis.

But to be sure that the correlation is trustworthy, we also need to have some explanation of how the effect is transmitted. In other words, we need to know how, specifically, an illness in say the kidneys affects a specific muscle group. It should be possible to take a range of patients with specific impaired organ function, predict the muscle group which would show weakness, and then test them to see if the prediction is correct.

That has been done and there is no evidence to suggest that kinesiology can be used as a diagnostic tool. We should be very clear about this: kinesiology does not have any evidence of diagnosing any medical conditions. Those who claim it can should be challenged to produce reliable evidence.

The ALTA Foundation for Sports Medicine Research in California published a study in June 1988 in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association which concluded "the results of this study indicated that the use of applied kinesiology to evaluate nutrient status is no more useful than random guessing". You can read it yourself here.  Guesswork is no basis for diagnosis and no other studies have shown any correlation with accurate diagnosis.

Why should we be suspicious?

There are many claims that alternative therapies can effect remarkable transformations and there are many businesses promoting such techniques. In very many cases the practitioners have no evidence to support their claims, nor any explanation for how such treatments may work.

When a clinician makes a medical diagnosis, they can explain the reasoning based on observation and known causal links. For example, they can look at blood sugar levels and insulin levels and demonstrate a causal connection which explains the condition of diabetes. Or they can assess the level of blood creatinine and detect the condition of gout, relating the blood chemistry to changes in the joints and the consequent pain.  They can diagnose reliably when that causal evidence exists.

In other words, diagnosis is based on observation and an underlying causal connection which is evidence-based. That is the basis of reliable diagnosis - given the causal conditions, the observed symptoms are related to the underlying illness and this provides a means of reliable diagnosis and recommended treatment.

In the case of kinesiology, as with so many alternative therapies, there is no causal chain. There is no way of relating the observations of muscle tension to the condition of specific organs. Clinical trials to assess these claims found them to be no more related than pure guesswork.

Although anyone can invent theories about how the body works, and even invoke ancient mystical beliefs, the important question to ask is how do we know? Having provided a proposed theory we then have to do the work of checking it, examining the evidence and seeing if it's right. In the case of kinesiology, there is no evidence, no diagnosis, no causal connection. Just empty fanciful theory. Unfortunately it's a scam.