Coca Pulse Testing. Back to basics… When I was in naturopathic med school, I learned about a very simple method to discern how the body feels about certain foods. It’s called Coca Pulse Testing, and I consider it a golden nugget gleaned from one of my naturopathic elders.
The premise of Coca Pulse Testing is simple: if the body is ok with the food, the radial pulse (your pulse at the wrist) stays more or less the same after ingesting the food. If it balks at the food, your pulse will change.
Up for trying out the Coca Pulse Testing?
Here’s what you do:
- Sit down in a comfortable chair, by the table on which are placed the food items that you would like to test. They have to be single foods, such as a slice of cheese, a sip of milk, a piece of fruit, a single cooked/uncooked veggie bite, a piece of unseasoned prepared meat).
- Once you have been sitting for two minutes, take your pulse x 60 seconds and record the number of beats in that minute. This is your “resting pulse rate.”
- Put a single piece of food in your mouth. Hold it there x 60 seconds. Do not swallow it.
- Retake your pulse x 60 secs with the food still in your mouth, and record the number of beats.
- A change of 4 or more beats (greater or less than your resting pulse rate) is considered a sensitive reaction. Typically, the greater the change in pulse, the higher the sensitivity reaction.
- Spit out the tested food, and rinse out your mouth.
- When your pulse returns to its resting pulse rate, you can proceed to the next food, repeating steps 1-6 again.
Note: Coca Pulse Testing results may not be valid if you are taking a medication that controls heart rate, such as a beta blocker or a calcium channel blocker. Also, this testing procedures cannot be applied to foods that would normally induce a change in pulse rate, such as sugar and caffeine-containing foods.
Let me know how it goes, or if you have questions…
