This pulse test was first published in 1956 by immunologist Dr. Arthur Coca. It, is sometimes known as the Coca Pulse Test.

Test Procedure

1. Wait at least two hours since you have eaten.
2. You need to be relaxed for a few minutes before starting the test and throughout the test.
3. Take your pulse for a full 60 seconds. We need a full minute because we don’t want any rounding errors. (Do not take it for 15 seconds and multiply by 4, or 30 seconds x 2).
4. Put a piece of food in your mouth. Chew it for 30 seconds to 1 minute, but do not swallow any of it.
5. Take your pulse again, for a full minute, with the food in your mouth but without swallowing any of it. If you want to test another food, continue with steps 6-7, otherwise you’re done.
6. Spit out the food. Rinse out your mouth with water and spit out the rinse.
7. Let your pulse return to your baseline before testing another food. Then repeat.

If your pulse increased by 6 beats or more, you had a stress reaction to that food. Avoid it for at least a month, and then test it again.

Why it Works

When you taste a food, your taste buds will send a signal to your brain. If you eat this food regularly, your brain will recognize the food you are eating, and start a series of physiological processes. If your body has been consistently having an allergy, or a sensitivity to that food, your brain will start a stress reaction in your body. That stress reaction causes your pulse to increase.

Your body recognizes certain foods as being hostile to it. Often, this is because of a condition called Intestinal Permeability, aka Leaky Gut. We will cover this in detail later in our class. In simplified terms, your small intestine is like a very tight-mesh net. When you digest food, you break it down into microscopically small particles. These very small particles pass through the “intestinal net” and into the bloodstream. This is how we absorb nutrients. It’s how it’s supposed to work. Your immune system recognizes the nutrients as invited guests, so there is no adverse reaction. But, if you have a poor diet, your intestinal cells don’t have the building blocks they need to maintain their integrity, and if your intestinal bacteria gets out of whack, those small holes can start to enlarge. It’s like small tears in the net. Over time, these small tears get big enough that undigested proteins can pass through your intestine and into the bloodstream. Your body’s immune system treats these undigested proteins as foreign invaders. It attacks them. This is what causes the stress reaction, also known as inflammation, in your body. We refer to this as food allergies.

The good news is that our Aggressive Health Solutions Workshop is designed to remove the damaging foods and replace them with foods that feed your cells, so if you follow the homework, your body should start healing itself of this process, kind of like sewing up the holes in the netting. Once your body heals, those undigested proteins won’t be able to get into the bloodstream until they are fully digested. This eliminates the inflammation that we described above.

Often, food allergies go away once the body restores itself. So, if it’s a healthy food that you’re allergic to, retest it after a few months. If you do your part, your body will be able to do its part, and there’s a good chance you will no longer be sensitive to those foods.

There are some things that obscure the results of the test.

Stimulants like sugar, caffeine, and many over-the-counter and prescription drugs will partially mask your body’s response and may make the results of this test indeterminant. Emotional stress also causes your body to already be in a stressed state and may hide the additional stress of the food.

If you have not regularly eaten the food you’re testing, your body will not anticipate the stress response. Also, if you have eaten this food in the recent past, you may already be stressed by this food so no additional stress will be exhibited. What do I mean by “recent past”? Unfortunately, that really depends on your body. For many people, a few days may be enough for your body to settle back down. But some people can take a few weeks. When a person has multiple, significant food allergies I will sometimes put them on a very restrictive diet with only a few foods. They stay on this diet until their symptoms quiet down. Then every couple of days they add one of their old foods back into their diet. I always recommend the Pulse Test as part of introducing the new foods.