While medical allergy treatment can be unpleasant and painful, David Kennet, a registered holistic allergist, provides an alternative. His practice of BioEnergetic Intolerance Elimination (BIE) uses pressure points and low-frequency electric pulses to rewire the body to tolerate allergens.

“Basically, allergies are a type of confusion,” Kennet explained. “The immune system doesn’t know what something is, assumes it’s a threat, and begins attacking it. What we’re doing is we’re showing the body what things are. The way we’re doing it is by getting the energy of substances into the cells, into the cells of your body, because once something is inside the cell, the body begins to perceive something for what it is, and knows how to respond accordingly.”

The treatment starts off by first identifying the allergens affecting the body, without using needles. Kennet has hundreds of little vials containing everything from dried food to plant essences. The patient places the vial next to the arm and is tested to see if the substance causes any weakness. Santa Barbara is particularly ripe for allergies, according to Kennet, because of the abundant plant life, making pollen the number one allergen in the area. “I did find out after coming to Santa Barbara that allergies are a huge problem here,” Kennet said, “and it makes me excited to think that I could be helping a lot of people.”

However, not all allergies are caused by physical entities, according to Kennet. He also has vials of bottled emotions ranging from fear to worry to rage. “If you have too much of one emotion, it can affect you on a physical level,” Kennet said. “That’s a type of intolerance. The body is rejecting a certain emotion. And we find that when the body starts accepting fear, or anxiety, you might say that those emotions become more balanced.”

Kennet recalled a patient in his fifties who came in for a routine allergy treatment, and ended up being treated for rejection, due to an incident nearly three decades ago when he was thwarted by a college sweetheart. According to Kennet, this not only improved the patient’s physical state but his mental state as well. “Some people get more excited about the emotional aspect of these, even, than the allergies. Sometimes I have people coming in just to work with their emotions,” Kennet said.

After determining the causes of intolerance, the patient then uses a device that emits low-frequency electric pulses at acupuncture points. The process is pain free and takes about 15 minutes, and, according to Kennet, the treatment is permanent. Unlike medicines like Zyrtec or Claritin, he said, the BIE treatment addresses the root of the problem. However, he said, it is only effective if the patient is fully hydrated before and after the session. The treatment could be ineffective or wear off if, as Kennet said, the patient “does stupid things” like consume caffeine and alcohol or not sleep enough.

Although Kennet is a firm believer in the holistic philosophy that the body will naturally heal itself, he said BIE is not a replacement for medical treatment. “I think everything has its place,” he said. “I would never recommend that someone immediately go out and eat peanuts after I’ve cleared peanuts. They certainly would have to go to their doctor first.”

Kennet said he hopes it will become more common for people to utilize both types of allergy remedies. “My dream is to see holistic practitioners working in conjunction with conventional doctors,” he said. “That is an exciting new direction that, hopefully, we are going to see more and more. One should not exclude the other.”

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