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Ever wonder how energy medicine works? For many it sounds WAY out there. But energy medicine & Traditional Chinese Medicine modalities can be a powerful tool to support your healing journey!
Today's guest, Juliann Abecassis-Walsh, is a former Mayo Clinic Acupuncture Physician and a Diplomat of Oriental Medicine. She is NCCAOM Board Certified in Foundations of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture, Bio-Medicine and Chinese Herbology. Juliann founded Balanced Healing of Jacksonville in 2016 and now acts as the clinic director and is a full time provider. She is passionate about teaching others how to become their own health advocates. At Balanced Healing she strives to create an environment which promotes healing, an environment in which you feel heard, understood and supported. She specializes in complex cases, “mysterious illness”, mold and mycotoxin illness, stress related conditions, allergy elimination, gut dysfunction and promoting optimal wellness.
Have you ever tried NAET? Let me know in the comments if it worked for you!
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In this episode:
- What is NAET and what can it be used for?
- Breaking down a NAET clearing visit — how it works + what to expect
- Examples when you should NOT rely on NAET to help
- How many treatments before an allergy typically clears?
- Crazy story of healing a lipoma after many visits with doctors
Quotes
“Some people can clear things in one or two treatments, other people for big allergens, it could take five treatments.” [11:27]
“If mom is holding the baby and I do the mom's back while the mom is holding the vial and touching the baby's leg with the vial, the baby gets the treatment.” [20:13]
Links
Follow Juliann's Practice, Balanced Healing, on TikTok
Follow Balanced Healing on Instagram
Check out Juliann's book: The Healthy Baby Guidebook: A Guide to Health Awareness & Food Education for You and Your Baby
Healthy Skin Show ep. 086: Allergies, Your Immune System & Skin Rashes w/ Dr. Maya Shetreat
Healthy Skin Show ep. 218: TCM Diet To Support Skin Rashes w/ Dr. Olivia Hsu Friedman, DACM
Healthy Skin Show ep. 222: Food Allergies + Skin Rashes in Kids w/ Jennifer Brand, MS, MPH, CNS
273: What Is NAET for Allergies + Sensitivities? w/ Juliann Abecassis-Walsh, A.P. FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer Fugo: I'm so excited to have you here, Juliann. Thank you so much for being with us.
Juliann Abecassis-Walsh: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Jennifer: So we were talking before we started about allergies and what to do if you're struggling with allergies or maybe you have a child who's struggling with allergies and you're just not seeing results from a more conventional side of things. And you feel like maybe you've run out of options. And so that's why you and I are having this conversation today so can you talk to us a little bit about… I'm sure you have patients like this who are in this exact boat, but what should they think about if they're in that space where they're struggling, but they don't know what else to do. Are there some other options, like someone like yourself will talk about some of these modalities, but I'm just kind of curious to hear what your thoughts are on allergy issues.
Juliann: Yeah. So, oops, sorry about that. When someone comes into the office and they kind of feel burnt out by the standard approach and they're not getting the success that they want, there are so many different ways that we can address it from an integrated traditional Chinese medicine and functional medicine standpoint. And as I'm sure you know there's lots of reasons as to why someone may have allergies. So first we want to do a very thorough initial evaluation to determine, are there other underlining issues? Are there gut issues? Are there liver stagnation issues? Do we have any kind of histamine issue? Is there a mycotoxin or mold component? Is there a hormone imbalance? There are so many things that can contribute to allergies. Once that's been determined, then you can kind of pivot and address both the root and then the actual allergy itself.
In my office, we use a technique called NAET, which is N-A-E-T an allergy elimination technique, which uses a type of energy medicine to essentially desensitize the body from the allergen. And that has been something that is kind of maybe a little [inaudible 00:02:11] to someone who's not immersed in this type of medicine, but that's been around for a very long time and we have phenomenal success with it.
Jennifer: Yeah. Well, before we talk about that, I want to ask you a quick question. So do you find that… Do you work with children in your practice?
Juliann: Yeah.
Jennifer: So do you find that the reason that kids have allergies, would you generally say, is it more complex or less complex than say an adult?
Juliann: That's a tough one.
Jennifer: I know.
Juliann: I would say… That's a loaded question. I would say they can all be complex, but I feel that babies and kids heal a lot faster than adults. There's usually less of a toxin load in burden. This is general, every child is different in their home environment and their exposures and their medications can all contribute. But generally speaking, kids and babies heal a lot faster when we go through this process than adults do.
Jennifer: Okay. So that's good to help manage people's expectations. I tend to find that the same… There's occasionally I'll work with a client's child just as like a favor to them and they usually get better a lot faster than adults do.
Juliann: Yes.
Jennifer: So this technique, the NAET. So what does this work on? Is it all these different environmental allergies? Is it just food allergies? Is it pet allergies? What exactly is it supposed to be used for and what do you tend to use it for in your practice?
Juliann: So we will use it for any inappropriate reaction. So whether that's an inappropriate reaction to food or an inappropriate reaction to environmental, like some kind of pollen or to a pet. So any inappropriate reaction can be used to treat, to get treated with the NAET. I tend to stick with food sensitivities, I will do a combined approach between NAETs and then the underlining imbalances as to what's causing that food sensitivity. But I have used it for environmentals and for pets, it's a lot more challenging to do those, but it is possible to clear them.
Jennifer: Okay. And what about, if you're struggling with… Say, like someone's living in a moldy environment, which… I mean you're in Florida, I'm sure between hurricanes hitting certain areas and people that have been exposed to mold, then you've got somebody who's got maybe some masked cell activation or some real serious histamine problems on top of this. Do you feel like there's a place for NAET with those type of more complex cases? Or do you feel like there's other work that probably should be done first before you would go to this option?
Juliann: So I would pursue the other work first. In my practice, we specialize in mold, mysterious illnesses. So a lot of complex cases and histamine issues. And when we are dealing with those, you really need to eliminate the burden on the body, NAET or N-A-E-T it's very effective, but it still is hard on the body, it's still a treatment. And if you are in a place of crisis, whether it's a mass cell crisis or you have very high mycotoxin or molds accumulation in the body, you may not handle a NAET treatment well. But also we need to get to the root cause, everything that I do in my practice, our goal is to eliminate the root cause so then you can heal. Otherwise, you're kind of using alternative medicine as a bandaid approach, which is never my direction.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Juliann: Does that make sense?
Jennifer: Yeah, it does. And can I just ask, I didn't know, you could react poorly to NAET. What would that look like if you were to have a sort of negative reaction to it?
Juliann: Yeah. So after we treat you have 25 hours of what's called processing time where you can't eat or touch the thing that we just treated you for. And during that time, you might be more symptomatic. So you might have a rash, you might have fatigue, mood swings, dizziness, nausea can be across the board. If you don't clear the allergen in one treatment, you can have lingering symptoms until the allergen is cleared. So if you can't come back into the office to clear the treatment, you may not feel so great. And if your body's already undergoing… If you already have a tremendous amount of stress from any other internal stressors, whether it's mold or pathogen or mycotoxins or histamine issues, you may not tolerate that processing very well.
Jennifer: Interesting. I like how you said, you can't do NAET with way more complex stuff going on. It's interesting how there is… There's an order of operations it sounds like.
Juliann: Yeah. And this is my opinion there are some providers that are strictly NAET providers, that's all they do in their practice. But actually when I did my internship, I worked in a place like that. But clinically and through my years of experience, and now in private practice, I'm realizing that we just do not get the level of success when we do it like that. And that's kind of why I said, it can be like a bandaid medicine, because all we're doing is desensitizing you to this one thing, but then they're sensitive to something else and then something else and then something else. And so we're just treating you for everyone. I mean, you could be doing a thousand treatments. Yeah. So it's like, why don't we get to the root cause of why this issue is happening to begin with.
Jennifer: Right. So instead of playing whackamole…
Juliann: Exactly. Yeah.
Jennifer: You actually start clearing larger amounts in a more efficient manner.
Juliann: Yes.
Jennifer: Or feeling better. I feel like we should back up for a second because people are probably like, “You're getting a treatment.” What does that mean? So I will share that, I have gone to see a trained acupuncturist. This was many years ago, I would guess at least 15, maybe 17 years ago. I struggled with a lot of food sensitivities and I was referred to a local acupuncture. So I was going to say nutritionist, but it was an acupuncturist. And she performed some Neat treatments on me, I had been referred to her by someone who had a daughter who was allergic to citrus. And the daughter really struggled because citrus is in a lot of different things.
Juliann: Yeah.
Jennifer: It was just obviously easier if she could eat citrus and would bring more enjoyment to her life. And eventually she was able to consume citrus without a problem. And so I was really curious about it, I don't honestly remember whether it helped me a whole lot or not. And I know that everyone's experience with things varies and some things may be a good fit for one person and not for another. But I think it's worthwhile, that's why I wanted to have you here to talk about this for somebody where it could be a good fit. So if you are interested in NAET treatments, what does that mean? So you go to the office and then what are you assessed?
Juliann: Yeah.
Jennifer: What does it look like?
Juliann: Yeah. So essentially there's these little vials and they… This is where it kind of gets a little woo woo. So you got to go out on a limb and just kind of trust the process. There's these little vials and they have the same energetic frequency of the substance that you're allergic to. So in theory, if you're sensitive to eggs, we would give you the egg vial, which has the same frequency as an actual egg. You can also bring in the item, if your provider doesn't have that specific vial and you would come in and we would check you on the first… What we call the basic 15 allergens. So this is going to be micronutrients. So we're going to have calcium, vitamin B, vitamin C, acids, bases. And if you were sensitive to any of these 15 micronutrients or basic fundamentals, then you can't move on and just do for example, apple.
So if someone's allergic to… Or let's use your example, oranges. If someone comes in, they're allergic to oranges, we're not just going to treat the orange because it could actually be an issue with vitamin C or vitamin A or whatever else is high in that specific item that you're sensitive to. So this is kind of like the whackamole it's like, we don't want to just pick one at a time, we want to clear the whole out. And so if you're sensitive to any of these, we use manual muscle testing to determine if there's an imbalance or a sensitivity to the vial or the allergen, then we would treat you for that. The way that we do that is we hand you the vial if it's safe for you to hold it, if it's an anaphylaxis case, that's a kind of a different story. But for a general allergen, we would hand you the vial and you would hold it as we stimulate different acupressure points down the back.
While we do that, you're going to go through different breathing patterns to stimulate and stress out the nervous system. Once we're done doing that, we'll take the vial back. And for 24 or 25 hours, you can't touch or consume the thing that we treated you for. So if it's for vitamin C, you can't… We have a whole list of foods you have to avoid. And then you would come back in and you'd get rechecked using manual muscle testing to make sure you cleared it. If you cleared it, then you're no longer sensitive to it. Some people can clear things in one or two treatments, other people for big allergens, it could take five treatments. Once we're done with those foundations, then you can come in and say, “Okay, I know I have an issue with oranges still.” Then we would treat you for oranges specifically.
Jennifer: Okay. And you mentioned something about anaphylaxis. So are there varying levels of allergens that this could be helpful for versus not helpful for?
Juliann: Yes. So if you go to a NAET practitioner who does not have advanced training in anaphylaxis, then this is going to be helpful for anyone with a food sensitivity or an allergy that does not trigger an anaphylaxis response. So if you have headaches, when you eat something or GI upset or you break out in a rash, this would be a great option for you. If you have anaphylaxis to a substance, you can get treated with me and it can be cleared with me, but you do need to go to someone who is advanced trained, and certified in anaphylaxis with knee treatments.
Jennifer: Oh, wow. So that is a very special thing and would you recommend that they… Are you certified in that?
Juliann: So I am. However, because of the liability with it. It's very rare that I would take on an anaphylaxis case. I don't do it with children.
Jennifer: Okay.
Juliann: Because they can't tell you what's going on. I will do it with a few… I have done it in the past with a couple of adults and we've had success. One of my patients had severe anaphylaxis to soy and I didn't know this, but apparently we use soy in some car facilities to make… I think Toyota uses it in their leather or their pleather. And so anytime she got into a Toyota, she'd have an anaphylactic reaction and it was obviously very, very limiting for her.
Jennifer: Sure?
Juliann: And she was a patient of mine for a long time for lots of different things. And she brought this to my attention and I said, “Yeah, let's go forward.” And we ended up… It took a long time. Anaphylactic allergens are not easy to treat. I think it took us four months and now she's able to get into cars without having an anaphylactic reaction. I don't do… We also treated someone else for Hazelnut and they're able to eat that, but you have to find someone who's really committed to the process with you. Right now, our office is so busy, we've had a waiting list for a very long time and I wouldn't feel comfortable taking on anaphylactic case, knowing I'm not going to be available to you if there's an emergency. So you really have to find someone who's available.
Jennifer: And so you want to ask your NAET practitioner that might live locally to you. If you are struggling with anaphylaxis, you want to ask them, do you have this advanced certification in anaphylaxis. Okay.
Juliann: Yes. And if they don't, they could still work with you on all the other allergens. Just not those.
Jennifer: Okay. So that's a good rule of thumb too, to gauge if someone says, “oh no, I can help you with that.” But they don't have this training. That might be a red flag, that-
Juliann: Absolutely.
Jennifer: There could be an issue. Now when it comes and I love that you separated sensitivities versus allergens, because they are different. And I think that's important for people to know.
Juliann: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jennifer: The ways we do recognize that they're different.
Juliann: Yeah.
Jennifer: So generally speaking, you had said like you do this treatment on… We'll go back to the vitamin C with the citrus. So you did the vitamin C clearing and I come back and say, “Oh no, no, no. Oranges are still a problem. So it must be the oranges.” Now do we do a clearing for the orange itself? And would that one treatment be sufficient? Or what would someone want to expect that it could be just one treatment or it could take five or 10 treatments? What is the expectation more or less of how long it could take?
Juliann: So with a sensitivity, like one to two is pretty standard. If it's more of a true allergy, we're going to look at two to three. But really if you've cleared the basics, like one to three treatments is very normal. Going above that, it's obviously a huge allergen for you or you have something else going on in the body where it cannot handle these NAET treatments. So when I have someone that's doing four or five or six treatments, I'm like, “What else is going on? That you're not able to really tolerate these treatments? Because you should have cleared this a while ago.” So that's where you need to have someone who is not so dedicated to the modality that they're blind from other things, if that makes sense.
Jennifer: And that's actually good to know because not… As I mentioned, not every way works for everyone.
Juliann: Yes.
Jennifer: And that might not be the path or maybe you do a few treatments, it helped with something that helped you get to the next place where now you have to shift gears and do something else.
Juliann: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It could kind of be like this little maze until you find the right combination. For example, oftentimes when people come in and they say, “I have developed allergens to almost everything that I eat, I can no longer eat anything anymore.” We could start you off with NAET, but 9 times out of 10, we end up going back and it's like a mycotoxin or mold issue. And so doing NAET just it's not going to be worth my time or your money or your energy to continue down this pathway if that's not the most successful way to do it.
Jennifer: And so, just to be clear, because I know everybody's thinking with traditional allergy treatments, you're looking at shots and maybe pills and medication. There's no injections, there's no medication or pills or any herbs to take. It's really just this energy work. Is that correct?
Juliann: Yeah. So I act, do you want me to show you a vial?
Jennifer: Sure.
Juliann: Okay. They're right next to my desk.
Jennifer: And so everybody's listening to this. You're not going to be able to see this on the show. So we'll find some vials and put a picture in the show notes. So you can take a look, but if you're watching on YouTube, when this airs you'll be able to see.
Juliann: Okay. I happen to pick like the most random box.
Jennifer: Okay.
Juliann: So this one… So we get boxes like this. So this vial here is for air fresheners and candles. So you could see it.
Jennifer: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Juliann: So it's literally… It looks like water.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Juliann: But if you're super sensitive to this, if you have anaphylaxis, we wouldn't even put this in your hand because it could trigger a response if that's how sensitive you are. So there's millions of vials that we can order and that's just one of them.
Jennifer: Or like you said, they could bring the actual substance or thing with them if they know the specific issue.
Juliann: So for example, if I have moms where their babies are rejecting the breast milk or have a sensitivity to the breast milk, we would just treat their own breast milk. So they can come in with a little glass jar of their breast milk and we'll treat that.
Jennifer: Okay. So hold on a second.
Juliann: [inaudible 00:18:55]
Jennifer: The baby is having an issue, but you treat the breast milk of the mother. Is that right?
Juliann: Yeah. So if the baby cannot tolerate mom's breast milk.
Jennifer: Okay.
Juliann: And breast milk is the problem and they can't do formula or don't want to do formula or whatever, have you, then we would treat the breast milk on the baby. So then the baby could tolerate the breast milk.
Jennifer: Okay. And so, with the baby… Okay. So you were saying earlier, I'm just trying to understand this is really cool. This is like [inaudible 00:19:26] my wheelhouse. So I'm just, I'm fascinated. So in an adult or like a child that could follow directions, you do like breathing it. You said like you do different breath patterns. How do you do that in a baby? How does that work?
Juliann: So this… Like I said, it's woo, woo. Got to stick with it. Just got to be in it.
Jennifer: We're going out on a link for a moment, everyone.
Juliann: That's right. So basically whoever is the last line in the… Like if two people… Okay, let's start over. If two people are holding hands and you go and you shock the person close to you, the person close to you doesn't feel the shock. It's the last person on the other line who they're holding hands with that feels it because energy travels.
Jennifer: Correct.
Juliann: So do we get that concept?
Jennifer: Yes.
Juliann: Okay. So now that we kind of have that foundation, if mom is holding the baby and I do the mom's back while the mom is holding the vial and touching the baby's leg with the vial, the baby gets the treatment.
Jennifer: Wow.
Juliann: Because it's energy medicine. I know this sounds woo woo. I know it sounds crazy. I have a medical license and going down this road was like hard for me to wrap my head around. But then when people get better, I'm like, “I guess I'm just in it now. I guess I could just accept this as kind of crazy and that's okay even though it doesn't make sense.” I'm in that place and I know if you're listening and you've never heard of energy medicine before, this is going to sound totally off the wall, but we do it in the practice every day.
Jennifer: Well, I can appreciate that you've acknowledged, like I have this license, like I deal in and I've been in medical settings and different type of like actual things that have science based around them. And yet there's this other side that I can't fully explain that I don't… You just have to go with it sometimes.
Juliann: So we have the craziest, this is like the wildest story. I don't know if you're even interested in this, but I had this patient that had a lipoma on the back of her neck for 20 years and she's been to a bunch of doctors. It was benign and they said, it's just always going to be there, but it always hurt. It was always very tender and she asked me if we could just see if it was an allergy to something, because she got it when she moved to Jacksonville and we muscle tested that it was an allergy to boat fuel and she lived right next to one of our Navy Bases.
Jennifer: Okay.
Juliann: That had the Navy ships come in.
Jennifer: Sure.
Juliann: So we treated her for that. It took like six treatments, I was like, I don't know for if this is going to work, this is getting a little… Like you keep wanting to do this, this is like treatment number six. She's like, “Yeah, I really trust NAET. I really trust this process.” On the end of the sixth treatment, it went away and it's never come back. And she was a patient of mine, six years [inaudible 00:22:17] I treat her current children now. And she's like my little star, this is how weird it can be, but this works.
Jennifer: Wow.
Juliann: So just throwing that out there.
Jennifer: And so lipoma just in case everyone, isn't sure what that is. It's like a fatty deposit/growth kind of under the surface of the skin, correct?
Juliann: Yes. It looks like a little tumor basically.
Jennifer: Yeah. My husband has those. [inaudible 00:22:42] I'm like, “Oh I should tell him about this.”
Juliann: What kind of NAET does he need? Yeah.
Jennifer: He's not a fan of needles and things that are sharp so this [inaudible 00:22:50] option.
Juliann: I mean, I don't know if his is an allergy. Hers happened to test as an allergy, so it's not going to work on everyone's lipoma. But if it's an allergy lipoma, then it might.
Jennifer: Fair enough. This is why it's interesting to have these conversations. And again, if you're listening to this and you're like, “Huh, what?”
Juliann: Yeah, I get it.
Jennifer: This just doesn't work for me. Totally fine. You do you, you walk your path. I think that's one of the things that I love to hold space here on the show for is, we can look at the different options and say, “What's going to work for you? Because you're the boss. You pick what your…” Like this woman said, I feel this… [inaudible 00:23:31]
Juliann: She was very strongly about it. Exactly. And I was the one that was like, “I don't know about this.” And she dragged me on this journey. I was like, “Okay.” So it's like, I get it. And you… Like you said, you really have to figure out what's going to work best for you. And the interesting thing with healing is a million people could have the same underlining issue and do a million different things and they can all get better. So like you don't all have to do NAET to get better. You don't all have to work on the HPA access or your gut or whatever. There's so many pathways to the same end goal. You have to find what resonates best for you and none of them are right and none of them are wrong.
Jennifer: Yeah. And whatever you feel is best for you is the best way for you. And that's-
Juliann: That's right.
Jennifer: … Completely fine. This has been fascinating and eye opening. And thank you for sharing the actual stories of someone who's working in this and seeing what works, what doesn't work, what the best way is. I think there's nothing that can replace… As you have so poignantly stated. Seeing how things work clinically, you can go, “Oh, this works, but this doesn't work.” And maybe there's a better way to do it. And I really appreciate you sharing that. So everyone here can also make the most judicious choices because also too, things are expensive and granted, these are investments in your health, but you also want to make sure you're doing things if they're appropriate. Right? And so making sure…
Juliann: Absolutely.
Jennifer: That you're not just constantly trying this and you're at your 20th and 25th treatment and you're not seeing any improvement at that point. You need to ask the question, even maybe long before that there's something else going on.
Juliann: That is an amazing point. And I think that… If anything really take that point home with you, because nowadays there's so much information out on the internet and you see so many success stories. So people are like, “Well maybe I'm just not doing it enough. Or maybe my diet's not clean enough. Or maybe if I cut out one more thing.” And sometimes what works for someone else just doesn't work for you and that's okay. There's something that will work for you, you just have to find that.
Jennifer: Well Julian, how can everyone find you? I know that you have a… You're located someplace specific. I don't know if you do virtual clients at all or not, but how can people connect with you?
Juliann: Yeah. So you can head over to my website, which is balancedhealing@jacksonville.com. We do telehealth, we've got clients all over the country and then we're on TikTok, I think it's @healing… No. What is it? It's @balancedhealing. And then on Instagram healingofJax's, J-A-X. So yeah, you can find me on any of those platforms.
Jennifer: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your… Obviously you have a passion for this, you've been doing it a while and you have a lot of clinical experience and it's just so great to have somebody who can share the pros and the cons. And maybe you've opened the eyes. I hope to some individuals out there who had never heard of NAET or N-A-E-T and be like, “Hey, this could be a good path for me moving forward.” So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Juliann: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun to be able to talk about all of these awesome, cool modalities.
