It was a hot July day. The year was 1989. I was an active, normal 27 year old female just out of graduate school who had been into health and fitness for many years. At the threshold of my career as a psychotherapist, I felt like I had my whole life ahead of me. But on this particular day, I could not raise my head off of my pillow – I could not get myself out of bed. I had never felt this way before and I thought, “Something is really wrong with me.” As I lay there I wondered if maybe I had the flu, but it was the middle of July! Several days passed and I felt no better. I was incredibly weak and fatigued and I just knew something was terribly wrong. So, finally, I gave in and landed myself in the doctor’s office and after running a battery of tests, including extensive blood work, my Lyme titer came back “off the charts high” and I also tested positive for the active phase of the Epstein-Barr virus.

Here is where my journey began.

I went to the best specialists dealing with Lyme at that time. I went through a round of oral antibiotics and felt no better. I had a spinal tap which came back negative. I was then given another round of antibiotics – still no improvement in my symptoms. I felt weak, tired, dizzy, and full of body aches, especially in my neck. I spent most of my time in bed and would begin to feel nauseous upon any amount of exertion. After the two full rounds of antibiotics and six months from the initial diagnosis, I felt no better. At that point, the doctors basically threw their hands up in the air and said, “Well, this is all we can do – you’ll just have to live with it.”

I walked out the door of the hospital and never looked back. I was 27 years old and was looking forward to the work I had just spent 6 years in school aspiring to achieve. I wanted to help others, yet something unexpected had stopped me dead in my tracks and I just wasn’t going to take it lying down. I felt more determined than ever to get well and I knew that traditional western medicine was done with me.

And so began, part II of my journey – the wonderful world of holistic medicine.

I began researching alternative medicine to treat my conditions. I started going around to the top holistic doctors in the field. I went into Manhattan – saw doctors who specialized in parasites and Candida and chronic fatigue syndrome, doctor’s on the radio, nutritionists, acupuncturists….you name the doctor, I saw him. I tried many treatments and I was taking close to 30 supplements a day. But guess what? After much time and thousands of dollars spent, I felt no better. This time, I felt really discouraged. If the holistic field could not help me, then who could? Just as I was about to give up hope, I saw a flyer in my local health food store about a free seminar that was being given by a local chiropractor who specialized in auto- immune disorders like chronic fatigue, Lyme Disease, Candida….At this point, I was so cynical and bitter, I had to convince myself to go. After all, it was a free lecture, so what did I have to lose?

And here began the third and final chapter of my journey….Dr. Steven Silverman.

The lecture was filled with all types of people suffering from all types of ailments. We had all done the holistic “circuit”. We were united by a common bond – we were the “misfits” of society, the ones who “fell through the cracks”, the “lost causes”, the ones that couldn’t be helped by even the best “healing gurus”. This is what bound us together as we sat in desperation and listened to Dr. Silverman talk about his methods of kinesiology. I was skeptical of everyone now. He was going to have to do some convincing to get me to believe that he wasn’t like all the other “holistic slick talkers”.

He asked for a volunteer and my hand went up almost before I had a chance to think about it. The next thing I knew, I was on his chiropractic table in front of a room full of people and he was testing all kinds of foods on me. I had my arm raised and he put a piece of chocolate in my mouth and my arm weakened. I literally felt my arm go limp and I knew that I wasn’t making it happen. It was the chocolate! He tested several other common foods and my arm fell weak to almost all of them. I remember the moment – it was definitely an “aha” moment, when I thought, “This guy is for real!” It was because I knew my body couldn’t lie. And I knew my body was telling him what “weakened” me and that he was “reading” my body for all the answers. As I got better, many of the foods that originally were bad for me, no longer weakened me. My food tolerance and sensitivities were dramatically improved.

After the lecture, I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Silverman and I began to feel cautiously hopeful again. He told me to bring in items that I ate or used on my skin on a daily basis – my drinking water, vitamins, skin cream, etc. The first visit, I walked in with a bag full of vitamins that I had accumulated from all the other holistic practitioners I had seen. Well, after testing them through kinesiology, Dr. Silverman found that almost 75% of the vitamins I was taking were weakening me and actually doing harm. In fact, just eliminating those vitamins made me feel noticeably better. But that was only the beginning. Each week I would come in with various products that I was either ingesting or using (even household cleaners, laundry detergent, my pillows) and slowly one by one, through using kinesiology, we began to knock off all the things that “weakened” me. That was only part of his treatment. The other vital part involved “strengthening” me by finding the specific nutritional supplements/formulas that my body needed, again, through the use of kinesiology. So, in addition, Dr. Silverman also used kinesiology to determine what nutritional supplements and formulas “strengthened” me, so he could literally “build me” back up again.

Looking back, it seems like such a simple concept – the idea of literally testing everything (you either use or ingest) on you to make sure that it is the right thing for you to take or use as opposed to something that could be weakening your body on a daily basis. Just because you might need vitamin B-12, it doesn’t mean that any brand is okay for you. Or just because strawberries are natural, you can still have an allergy to them. This is the important piece that other holistic practitioners miss. If you only give someone a supplement without testing it on them, then you are doing the patient a great disservice. Everyone is different. What might be good for you, might not be okay for me and vice versa. Knowing this, I could never go back to a practitioner and blindly take a supplement without having it tested on me first. The problem is that I know of no other practitioner who uses kinesiology in such a specifically tailored way. Those of us who have been lucky enough to find Dr. Silverman and work with him over a period of time, come to understand and appreciate what “good” kinesiology looks like. And just because someone says that they practice kinesiology, doesn’t mean that they know what they are doing. Dr. Silverman’s patients are too smart, now, for the average holistic doctor who claims to do “this or that.” If they aren’t testing anything on you specifically through kinesiology, you are wasting your time, energy, and money. If you are a patient of Dr. Silverman, you can’t help but become educated about your health in a way that can only be learned by having been treated by the best. I have seen other holistic practitioners who call themselves kinesiologists. It is not just about pushing or pulling a muscle to see if it is “weak” or “strong”. Kinesiology takes a certain discriminatory ability and talent. Just learning about it in school or from a book does not qualify you to be a good kinesiologist. It is very subtle in nature and it takes great skill to be a good a kinesiologist.

Dr. Silverman is incredibly adept and sensitive to the subtle ways that a patient’s body speaks to him through kinesiology. When he works, it is like watching someone who is being channeled from another dimension!

Within a couple of months of his treatments, I began feeling the best I had felt since before I had fallen sick that hot July day. I knew that in finding Dr. Silverman, I had finally found what I was looking for and I couldn’t believe that I felt like”me” again…

Fast forward – 20 years later. I am 47 now and it has been twenty years since the day I showed up at Dr. Silverman’s seminar.

I sometimes have my “bad days,” (who doesn’t?!) but they are nothing like what I had experienced before Dr. Silverman started treating me. I can also go for long periods of time without seeing Dr. Silverman. Sometimes even a year can go by where I feel totally fine. It helps to know that there is someone out there who knows how to “read” my body and to listen to what it is saying and to be able to give it, specifically, what it needs to heal. From my educational process with Dr. Silverman, if I do have a bad day I can usually figure out what I might have been exposed to that “weakened” my system. If I can’t, one visit with Dr. Silverman will help me identify what happened, and I will get the right remedy that will help me recover almost immediately. It is very comforting to know that all I have to do is go in for a visit and the doctor will be able to figure out what to do and I will not have to waste another day to needless suffering.

As a practicing psychotherapist, I am grateful that I can do the work I feel I was put on this earth to do. Over the years, I have come across clients in my practice with similar stories who I have been more than happy to refer to doctor Silverman. Last week, I referred one of my clients to him and she came back and said, “It was a life-altering experience!” I can say that meeting Dr. Silverman and being treated by him, not only changed the quality of my life, but it saved my life.

I literally feel that if it wasn’t for Dr. Silverman, I would not be alive today. I saw him recently and said jokingly, “Hey, you better not ever move!” There is just no one else out there doing this kind of work. I am so grateful to have my health and my life and I really owe it all to Dr. Silverman.

Sincerely,
Karen Jacoby