When your body experiences stress, your pulse increases in response. It’s one of a cascade of events that occurs within your body in response to stress, whether that stress is emotional, physical or in response to exposure to potential allergens.
This connection between increased pulse rate and exposure to allergens was noted by Dr. Arthur Coca, an immunologist of the early 20th century. After studying how the pulse accelerates in response to ingesting an allergen, Dr. Coca developed a way of testing the pulse to pinpoint foods to which the body reacts negatively. While is original book is out of print, you can read the full version online.
He recommends keeping a food journal and a record of your pulse in addition to testing your pulse after having consumed foods. In his book, he links myriad conditions to unknown food allergy, and while that seems a bit myopic to me, he does describe many case studies among his patients who were able to pinpoint food sensitivities, eliminate their triggers and see resolution in symptoms and improved health.
How to Do the Pulse Test
This simplified version of Dr. Coca’s original test is the approach that’s taught through the Nutritional Therapy Association, an organization that educates and trains Nutritional Therapy Practitioners and Nutritional Therapy Consultants. Before taking the test, make sure you’re in a relaxed and calm state. An agitated state, in which your pulse is abnormally raised, will make it impossible to perform this test with any accuracy. You also want to make sure to begin the test on an empty stomach, at least 2 hours after having eaten or drunk anything, and, preferably, first thing in the morning before breakfast.
- Take your pulse for a full minute, and record it. This is your base rate.
- Take a bite of food, chew it if you like, but don’t swallow it, and let it rest in your mouth so that you can taste it for thirty seconds.
- With the food still in your mouth, take your pulse for a full minute again
- If your pulse increases by 6 points or more, spit out the food and rinse out your mouth. Wait 2 minutes before trying another food, or until your pulse has returned to its base rate.
Understanding the Results
If your pulse increases by 6 beats over a minute, or more, this potentially indicates a stressful reaction to the food you tested. If your pulse remains steady, the test is negative and it is not indicative of a stressful reaction to the tested food.
Accuracy of the Pulse Test
Research on the accuracy and usefulness of the pulse test is extremely limited, but there is a connection between pulse acceleration and exposure to a potential allergens. Among the little research on this test, is a study done in 1961 with a very small sample size in which researchers found some validation for the pulse test, seeing a connection between pulse acceleration and food sensitivities, and, importantly, the removal of those foods and improvements in rashes, asthma and migraine headaches among some, but not all, of its subjects. At the same time, the study faced challenges, such as subjects taking inaccurate pulse readings (this was corrected for when researchers conducted the test), and the researchers questioned the pulse test’s value in a clinical setting.
While researchers may not have found the pulse test valuable for use in a clinical setting, like a doctor’s office, it might help you to pinpoint potential, but elusive triggers for symptoms that bother you, but you shouldn’t rely only on it, and remember to take its results with a grain of salt. Perhaps, if you’re considering an elimination diet, which remains the gold standard in testing for food sensitivities, the pulse test may help guide you in determining which foods to eliminate during that diet.
Consuming caffeinated foods or beverages or taking certain heart and blood pressure medication may affect the pulse, and, accordingly, obscure the results of the test. Emotional stress may also increase the pulse rate, thus obscuring the results of the test, too, so it’s possible to get false readings. Also, if you assume that you may be sensitive to a particular food, your pulse may increase in anticipation, thus obscuring the results, too. So while the pulse test will not provide complete accuracy, it may be a helpful tool.
My Experience with the Coca Pulse Test
My husband and I are training with the Nutritional Therapy Association, and, as part of diving deep into their curriculum, we decided to take the pulse test. It flagged corn, avocados and egg whites for me (I had also, previously, had a positive skin prick result to egg whites). Upon removing corn, avocados and egg whites from my diet for a period of about a month, the migraine headaches that I had previously attributed to fatigue completely disappeared as did my perpetually stuffy nose. When I accidentally consumed corn later, after its removal, I got a migraine within a few hours.
I didn’t realize I had eaten corn until I got the headache and then looked at the ingredients on the package of food I had eaten. Further, postpartum I had experienced an increase in hypothyroid symptoms and a dramatic rise in anti-thyroid antibodies, and after the elimination of the foods flagged by the pulse test, my thyroid levels normalized and my thyroid antibodies dropped by 45%. While other factors may be at play in the improvement of my thyroid’s health, the elimination of foods to which I’m potentially sensitive may also have helped.