Live Blood Analysis – also known as live cell analysis, Hemaview or nutritional blood analysis – is a technique where the practitioner takes a few drops of the patient’s blood, smears them on a slide, covers it with a glass cover slip to keep it from drying out, and observes them in a microscope. They use special, highly expensive visual microscopes such as dark field or phase contrast microscopes that usually come equipped with a camera and monitor, so that both the practitioner and the patient can view the result. These microscopes are capable of 1000 X magnification. So it looks all nice and scientific, and probably reassures many patients that they are in reliable hands. But is this really the case?
Practitioners claim to be able to diagnose several diseases and conditions by observing the blood. They claim to be able to see in the plasma several objects, including:
Undigested food particles
Fungi
Uric acid crystals
Bacteria
Cholesterol plaques
Parasites
“Fibrous thallus”
Mold
“Rod forms”
Basophiles
“Black crystals”
Rouleaux
They also claim to see in the cells themselves
Yeast at the edge of red blood cells
Fermentations
“Anaesthetised white blood cells”
Let’s take these objects apart one by one (I’m drawing heavily from Mark Crislip’s excellent article):
Undigested food particles: No, just no. There is no way undigested food would be able to pass through the intestinal walls, the particles would be too big. I don’t know what the microscopist imagines he or she is seeing, but I suspect an artefact of a dirty slide is responsible.
Fungi/Yeast: There are conditions where you really may have fungi in your blood, but a Live Blood Analyst will never see a case. Why? Because at that stage you’re both immunocompromised and in an ICU near death from sepsis. Such people do not visit quacks, they’re too busy fighting for their life.
Uric acid crystals: They simply would not be visible, even if present. These are more artifacts of dirty slides or even microscopic splinters from the not properly cleaned slide itself. You know, they are made out of glass.
Bacteria: This is comparable to the case with fungi. You’re seriously ill with sepsis when you have bacteria in your blood, and definitely are not well enough to go visiting a quack.
Cholesterol plaques: More dirt on the slide. Cholesterol cannot be seen in a blood sample.
Parasites: More dirt or debris. While Plasmodium (malaria) species can be diagnosed from a blood sample, it needs to be stained before diagnosis. Live blood analysis would not spot these parasites. Anyone with malaria parasites in their blood once again would be too ill to visit a quack, as the symptoms are severe enough for them to check into A&E.
“Fibrous thallus”: An invented term by Live Blood Analysts. It is used of what is actually an artefact of fibrous debris on the slide.
Mold: What applies to fungi applies to mold, which really is fungus as well.
“Rod forms”: Unlike what the Live Blood Analysts claim, these are not “bacterial forms born out of red blood cells” as this is an impossibility. Blood cells do not transform into bacteria in anywhere else than the fantasies entertained by these quacks. In reality they are artifacts, and many times larger than any bacteria.
Basophiles: While blood can contain basophiles, it is impossible to detect these without staining the sample, so they would not be visible.
“Black crystals”: Not “tobacco, marijuana; chemical, recreational and prescription drugs” as they claim, but more dirt on the slides.
Rouleaux: Depending on the practitioner, these are alleged to indicate either “acid in the blood” or weak pancreas – pick your choice. In reality, it’s an artefact of the blood sample starting to dry out and a large number of red blood cells clumping together.
Yeast at the edge of red blood cells: This is a common artefact, a small irregular shape on the red blood cell.
Fermentations: Light spots on blood cells are interpreted as fermentation caused by high blood sugar. Fermentation requires the presence of yeast, as it needs to produce the enzymes to break down sugar. As explained before, a Live Blood Analyst will never see a patient with yeast in their blood, so they won’t ever see fermentation either.
“Anaesthetised white blood cells”: This is completely meaningless, as nobody has yet to come up with a way to anaesthetise a white blood cell. It sounds scary, though, as most people are aware of the white cell function as a part of the immune system.
Interestingly enough, no two Live Blood practitioners will see the same objects on the same slide.
At this point the poor patient is probably petrified with the thought of all that nastiness in his or her bloodstream. The practitioner then carries on to diagnose what all these things indicate. Claims of what they can diagnose include: multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies, toxicity, tendencies toward allergic reaction, excess fat circulation, liver weakness, arteriosclerosis, cancer, arthritis, candida, chronic fatigue syndrome, prostate issues, multiple sclerosis, bacterial, viral and yeast infections, depression, sleep disorders, headaches, constipation, excess body fat, potency or fertility problems, memory problems, PMS, menopause etc.
Without fail, most practitioners will claim that any disease/s they have diagnosed are caused by the patient’s diet being too “acidic” (this is especially true of the ones trained by Robert O. Young or his accomplices) and that the patient will need expensive supplements – conveniently available from the practitioner, how surprising – to “alkalise” their body (see my previous post about how useful this in reality is). So now the poor patient leaves, with a much lighter wallet and laden with dietary advice and pricey supplements to begin his or her treatment.
As already indicated by the description of what the practitioners imagine they see in a slide, none of the above has any scientific validity, and most of it is based on profound ignorance of real human biology. Adherence to fantasies like pleomorphism, the long discarded idea that bacteria can morph to different forms according to its environment now actively promoted by Young and other alternative medicine characters or the even more insane idea that human cells can transform into bacteria in too acidic conditions, makes sure that this test is about as pseudoscientific as it can be. It has been described as “a fraudulent means of convincing patients that they are ill and require treatment by dietary supplements” – in other words a scam.
Where does this whole idea come from? It appears that one Günter Enderlein – who was not a medical doctor – was the first one to describe the use of dark field for live blood analysis in the early 20th century. He created his own terms for what he imagined he could see, calling them protits, symbionts or endobionts. Others soon followed, going equally wrong.
Gaston Naessens, developer of the worthless cancer nostrum 714X, built a microscope he called the “Somatoscope” and claimed it could enable him to see objects as small as 150 Å. This is actually physically impossible, as the refraction limit for light microscopes is around 2000 Å – this is a distance that depends on the wavelength of light. Only electron microscopes that do not depend on light can see objects this small. Naessens claimed to see organisms he called “Somatids” – needless to say no scientist has ever witnessed one, despite electron microscopes.
Nowadays probably the most influential – at least noisiest – proponent of Live Blood Analysis is above-mentioned Robert O. Young. He runs expensive courses for would-be Live Blood practitioners – the latest price being $9,995 for a single course – based on his so-called “New Biology” (not so new, the same principles were promoted already by Dr William Hay in the 1920’s). The scientific worth of his ideas can be judged from his writings, and a really telling example can be found here – I can’t repost it for copyright reasons.
So in conclusion, Live Blood Analysis was developed from Bechamp’s discredited hypothesis by Enderlein, and then was further developed by people who blithely disregarded laws of physics. It is now practised by people who imagine they have been medically trained but in reality are dangerously ignorant of anything resembling real medical knowledge and diagnostic skills. Do you really want to put your health into the hands of such people?
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