by Ashleigh Cue

Sitting on a medical bed was an older man, hand raised up with blood running down his arm. His thumb, wrapped in bandages, was swollen from all the blood gathering into it. The only way for the blood to flow out was through a cut on the hand. The man was in tears having been told that the thumb may need to be amputated. Doctors had tried several times to reattach the severed thumb, but had not been able to get the thumb’s blood circulation working. If the thumb was not better by morning, it was going to be amputated. The patient lying on the grey-ish blue chiropractic table with one arm raised, flinched as she listed to her chiropractor and alternative medicine practitioner, Bryan Ardis, tell the tale of his father’s severed thumb. Joann’s face, lightly aged with wrinkles, scrunched up in disgust as Dr. Ardis continued his tale while simultaneously performing a muscle test on her.

Dr. Ardis is a chiropractor, who received his doctorate at Parker University; however, he has also been trained in acupuncture, nutrition, and the technique most patients see him for, muscle testing. Muscle testing revolves around the frequencies in the body; each organ has its own frequency and should pulse to a certain number. In order to find this number, the doctor performing the muscle test, tests the automatic locking mechanism of a muscle. Muscles automatically lock up when pressed and doctors trained in muscle testing can feel when that automatic locking mechanism of a muscle fails to lock due to a stressed organ. Patients lay face up on the table with their left arm up in the air and their right hand over their left breast. The doctor then puts his hand over different organs and pushes down on the raised arm. He counts to the organs pulse, to see in the organ is strong or if it is stressed.

After he identifies what organs are stressed, Dr. Ardis must find the most stressed organ, the organ that is causing the other organs to be stressed as well. Once he knows where the problem is he can find out what is causing the problem. He pulls out a case, what looks to be a VHS case, that is full of small jars full of water. Each jar of water had been lasered to match the frequency of different bacteria, fungi, parasites, allergies, etc. The patient places their hand over the jars and Dr. Ardis once again tests the automatic locking mechanism of a muscle to find the key problem. Once he identifies the problem, he pulls out jars of different herbal medicine from the rack on the wall of the small office and sets it on the patient’s stomach. He again tests the automatic locking mechanism of a muscle. If the medicine caused the organ to pulse stronger, they need that medicine. He continues until the body does not test for any more herbal supplements.

Joann lays on the chiropractic table in a small room at the back of the office, which is on the lower level of a two-story family home, turned office building, located off of 5th street just south of Main in Frisco. As she lay there, arm raised, Dr. Ardis is performing the muscle test on her. She had had her period early and was experiencing mood swings and hot flashes. Laying there on the table, hand raised, Dr. Ardis gives her the answer to her problem; she has a parasite called amoeba in her thyroid. The thyroid helps regulate hormones, which was why she had her period early and was experiencing other hormonal symptoms. One of the medicines he told her she was going to need was VRM3, a herbal supplement designed to target the amoeba parasite.

Joann is just one of Dr. Ardis’ many different patients. He treats people of all ages, some come in just for chiropractic, others simply for acupuncture. He previously had an office in Tennessee before he relocated to Texas. His most memorable case occurred when he was in Tennessee and was of a young girl, Christen who had Edward’s Syndrome, which is incurable and usually kills the baby at around two months of age. This little girl was two and the doctors at the hospital sent her home, giving her only two weeks to live. The father of the little girl had asked for the two weeks off to spend time with his dying daughter, when the boss referred him to Dr. Ardis. Dr. Ardis remembered receiving the call from the father asking him if he had treated many children with Edward’s Syndrome. “I had never even heard of Edward’s Syndrome,” Dr. Ardis admitted, but told the father to come in and he would see what he could do.

He clearly remembered hearing the little child from the back of his 360 square foot office. “Shiiii Shuuu Shiii Shhuuu.” It sounded like a wild dog. Shortly after hearing the sound, a mom came in pushing a baby wheelchair with a breather. He instructed the mother to place the baby on the chiropractic table, and with her help he began testing the child. He recalls putting the young girl on 30 cardio plus, an herbal supplement for the heart. After two months of Dr. Ardis’ treatments, the young girl was taken off her oxygen. The little girl was nine years old, when Dr. Ardis left Tennessee. She was going to school, walking and talking like other children her age, something doctors told the family she would never be able to do.

Dr. Ardis was not always an alternative medicine practitioner; in fact, he started off skeptical of the very practice he now does. He started out as a premed student. His reasoning for going into the medical field was his little sister, who was diagnosed with Lupus at age 11. The doctors did not know why she suddenly developed the disease and Dr. Ardis was determined to find out. “The medication she would receive as a result of her condition would ultimately take her life before the disease ever did. So, me, as the older protective brother, was not okay with that,” Dr. Ardis recalled.

While preparing for medical school, Dr. Ardis became a father for the first time. The moment his son, Bryce, was born, he refused to be laid on his right side, he constantly fussed, and only slept for 15 minutes at a time. Doctors had prescribed several different medications for Bryce, but Dr. Ardis and his wife decided to stop the medications when the newest one caused Bryce to go into a seizure. “The medications weren’t helping anyway, but if they’re going to do that to him, we might as well take him off of them.”

Sometime after taking Bryce off of medicine, Dr. Ardis dislocated his shoulder playing intramural football and was sent to rehab clinic. After the second visit, Dr. Ardis’ doctor asked if the screaming baby was his and if he could examine him. “What is a rehab guy going to do with my kid?” He goes, “I am not a rehab specialist, I’m chiropractor.” Dr. Ardis recalled the conversation. “What in the world is a chiropractor?” After examining Bryce, the chiropractor determined that the top vertebra in Bryce’s neck was misaligned and adjusted it with Dr. Ardis’ permission. Bryce started screaming even louder afterwards. Dr. Ardis immediately left, furious that the doctor hurt his child. However, on the ride home, Bryce fell into a deep sleep, something he had never done before. After that, Bryce was a normal baby. It was because of this incident that Dr. Ardis decided to go into chiropractic care instead of going to medical school.

While in Chiropractic school a friend had had invited him to a seminar on muscle testing. All around the ballroom were doctors doing muscle testing. “It was the most really weirdest thing I had ever seen in my life,” he recalled. He laughed, recalling that he thought of muscle testing like voodoo. Even though he did not believe in muscle testing, he was hired by a doctor to go around teaching the technique to other doctors. He did not actually do any muscle testing, but taught about the products.

Dr. Ardis started believing that there was something to muscle testing when his father had his thumb cut off at work. Surgeons attached the thumb back on the hand, but it kept dying and they would have to go back in to reattach the veins and arteries.  “When they said they were going to cut this off, my dad started crying and I said, ‘Dad, I am going to call somebody.’ So I called my good friend who was with me through the seminars.” He said recalling the memory.

The good friend he called was Cliff. He asked Cliff if there was any way to save his father’s thumb. Cliff called Dr. Brimhall, a doctor from Arizona who runs the muscle testing seminars. Brimhall calls Cliff back, telling him to give Dr. Ardis’ father three different supplements and tells him to laser the thumb for 13 minutes. Dr. Brimhall had proxy tested his father and found the exact supplements he needed for recovery.

The next morning when the resident surgeons unwrapped his thumb, it was completely flesh colored for the first time in three weeks. He recalled telling his dad to let him see his thumb and thinking “holy crap!” Even the surgeons were amazed at the recovery. “It was an amazing moment that changed my view of muscle testing,” He said. “And so at that point, is when, I really decided there was something to this muscle testing and I have to know what it is.”

Dr. Ardis’ next experience with muscle testing occurred after his daughter, Savannah, was born. Savannah was born premature and doctors had to give her a drug to make her lungs inflate since her lungs were not fully developed.  The doctor proceeded to tell him that she would always have asthma due to her prematurity. “It really did not make sense,” Dr. Ardis thought. He knew that all children’s lungs continued to develop into adulthood, so would Savannahs.

Over the next few years, Savannah would have asthma attacks every day, some even lasting weeks. He never could figure out what was triggering her attacks. “Ideally, I wanted someone to fix my daughter and tell me what was going on and what was causing her symptoms,” he said. They ended up seeing a doctor in Florida that did a similar muscle testing that he does in his office. The doctor tested Savannah’s muscles in a similar fashion to the method Dr. Ardis currently uses. The test revealed that Savannah’s heart was stressed and asthma is the common symptom for a stressed heart.

The doctor asked if Savannah was on any medication for her heart, which she was not. However, Dr. Ardis remembered that the drug the doctors gave her right after she was born affects the heart, as well as the lungs. Thinking back, Dr. Ardis recalled what the doctor told him. “He says, ‘Well just so you know there is a solution. There is a nutritional supplement that she is testing for.” Savannah just needed one pill a day to help her heart heal. The doctor continued to tell Ardis, “’But, you, Mr. Ardis, you need to learn how to do this testing technique so you can determine when to take her off of it.’”

After giving his daughter the supplement, she no longer suffered from the asthma that plagued her as a baby. It was this experience that motivated Dr. Ardis to learn more about muscle testing. Muscle testing revolves around the frequencies found in the body. These frequencies tell what organ is stressed, what is stressing the organ, and what helps the frequency return to normal.

Dr. Ardis will admit that muscle testing is still probably the weirdest thing he has ever seen in his life. However, the practice has helped his family and perhaps it will help others who cannot find the answers they seek with traditional medicine.