The following material has been summarized from Alternative Medicine issue #46 What is electro-dermal screening? Electrodermal screening is an overall term for instrument based methods that provide information about the health of the body via electrical measurement of the skin at various points on the hands and feet. Is this technique new? Actually, electrodermal screening, or EDS, unites 20th century technology with the ancient healing arts of homeopathy and acupuncture. It was first developed around 50 years ago in Germany. It has been continually improved since then. The technique was originally and is still sometimes called "electro-Acupuncture according to Voll", or EAV. Who is Voll? Reinhard Voll was a German medical doctor who studied Chinese acupuncture meridian system in the late 1940's. He reasoned that if acupuncture theory was correct and channels of energy did run throughout the body, then there should be a way to measure this energy. So Dr. Voll constructed a device to measure the electrical conductivity of acupuncture points on the skin using a ohmmeter. What did Voll discover? Well, First, he compared the acupuncture point measurement of healthy individuals to those who had diagnosed diseases. He found that the electrical conductivity of acupuncture points associated with the disease conditions were outside the normal healthy range. Second, he discovered that when medicine was placed in the proximity of the patient, the acupuncture point readings would change back to the healthy range. So, this would mean that EDS can help pinpoint both health problems and possible remedies? Yes. EAV started a revolution in medicine. Doctors now had a noninvasive method that allowed them to evaluate their patients at the core energetic level. EAV also helped practitioners prescribe the best medicines for each patient by testing them first "in circuit" to confirm their effectiveness. Is there any research to back up this theory? Yes. First of all, remember that using electrical measurements for evaluation purposes in not unique to EDS. Conventional medical devices that use electrical current for patient evaluation include the commonly used electrocardiograph (ECG), to measure heart rhythms, and electroencephalography (EEG). The biofeedback instruments commonly used by contemporary psychologist are based on galvanic skin response circuitry (GSR), which measures the change in electrical resistance of the skin in response to a change of emotional state. From a technical point of view, EDS machines are essentially biofeedback instruments. In research, there have been many studies. For example, in 1985, Dr. Sullivan at the UCLA School of medicine reported in the American Journal of Acupuncture that patients with lung disease had 30% lower electrical conductivity readings at lung acupuncture points. Acute diseases such as viral and bacterial infections, as well as chronic diseases such as cancer, affect the electrical charge and water content of the cell and the pH of extra-cellular fluids, thereby influencing cell membrane potential and tissue conductivity. Dr. Julia Tsuei and Fred Lam, at the University of Hawaii, have published at least two dozen papers establishing the correspondence of EAV readings with physiological disturbances. Does anyone understand the mechanism of how EDS works? There is no single theory to explain the mechanism. We know from modern physics that all matter vibrates at a specific and unique frequency as a result of the electrical charges of the particles at the atomic level. These vibrating, electrically charged particles emit electromagnetic waves. This means that every medicine produces its own unique electromagnetic signature. Also, at the same time cellular biology explains that all cells have two types of antenna like receptors on their surface. While the first type of receptor is designed to detect biochemical substances such as nutrients and hormones in the body, the second type of receptor is designed specifically to receive electromagnetic signals from the surrounding environment. A leading expert in cell biology, Dr. Bruce Lipton, cites experiments that show cells are actually a hundred times more sensitive to electromagnetic signals than chemical signals. Why does conventional medicine not recognize EDS? Conventional medicine is still based on the outdated mechanistic physics of the 19th century, as if the body works like a machine. It still holds the foundational belief that life process can be described and understood solely on the chemical level. Quantum physics and its biological applications have mostly been ignored, although undercurrents have been recognized by many important scientists. So, does this imply that energetic level is primary to the physical or biochemical level? Exactly. All disease initially begins as a functional disturbance that only becomes a clinically recognizable disease over time. This is one reason why so many patients have symptoms that cannot be diagnosed using conventional methods. If there are no morphological findings, conventional medicine is often at a loss to explain the problem. The material disturbance is always secondary to the energetic disturbance of the body. The primacy of energy over the material has been known since ancient times. Is EDS as easy as hooking up a patient and having a machine tell you what's wrong? No. It is important to emphasize the fact that EDS is only a tool. EDS machines do not produce automatic answers for medical problems with the push of a button. Every medical device produces some type of information about the patient that must be interpreted by the practitioner. Final thought: I believe that electrodermal screening is an indispensable tool that no physician in the 21st century should be without. I believe that it can and should be used to help recognize a patient's organ dysfunctions even before physiological symptoms manifest themselves. It can identify pathogens and toxins that are making the patient sick, and ascertain what medicines, supplements and other remedies are helpful, or harmful, to the patient. Electrodermal screening has been around for 50 years and have continually been improved and refined, and is now estimated to be used by more than 100,000 medical doctors and healthcare practitioners around the world. There is still considerable resistance to EDS in mainstream medicine in the United States because it is based on principles of quantum physics and traditions of energy medicine, neither of which is understood or taught in our medical schools.