O-ring test to determine constitutions

Principle of the O-ring test
I will explain the O-ring test previously mentioned, which many use nowadays to determine constitutions.

The bio-digital O-ring test started by the American doctor of Japanese descent, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, wasn't made originally to determine constitutions. However, Lee Myungbok, a Korean doctor of constitutional medicine and professor of anatomy, had the idea of applying the principle of the test to determine constitutions. As soon as he had published it, this method spread rapidly because of its ease of use.

Here I explain the principle, method, and problems of this test.
In the beginning of the 1960's, the American chiropractor George Goodheart did much clinical research in chiropractics and found the principle of applied kinesiology. From that he developed a new diagnostic method and published his muscle tone test.

This test is based on the principle that when a patient puts his right finger on a part of his body that is supposed to be ill, and holds out his left arm horizontally, the examiner puts downward pressure on his wrist and tests the strength of his arm. When the examiner puts downward pressure on his arm, the patient should try to resist the pressure and hold his arm horizontal. In this way the strength of the arm is measured.

Each time when the patient changes the location of his right fingers, the examiner measures the strength of his arm, and finds out that the arm strength varies according to where the right hand fingers are placed. At some point when the fingers are on a certain part of the body, the arm's muscle tone noticeably weakens. This is the phenomenon, that when the fingers touch an ill part of the body, the arm loses some of it's strength. Applying this phenomenon, one can diagnose illness.

However, diagnosis by this method often was wrong, so the medical world of the time regarded the test as not having objective and scientific basis.

Inspired by the test, Yoshiaki Omura worked out a new diagnostic method. He thought that it would be better to examine small muscles that are less prone to exhaustion and rapidly become normal again even after several tests, instead of the large muscles of the shoulders used for the muscle tone tests.

He used for his test the muscles of the thumb and index finger. He had discovered from his many years of research on the relationship between handshake strength and the circulation of blood in the brain, that the muscles that represent the feeling and movement of the cerebral cortex are those of the fingers.

As a result of that, he measured the muscle strength by opening the ring formed by the thumb and index finger of the patient resisting his opening pressure, instead of pushing down his arm held out horizontally. He realized that the patient's two fingers that form a ring noticeably weaken in relationship to an ill body part, and he finally developed the diagnostic method called the O-ring test in the beginning of the 1980's.

By this O-ring test it is easy to examine whether a specific drug or food is useful or harmful to a human body, and whether the dose is adequate or too much. When you want to know in advance the effects of a specific drug on a patient, you try opening the ring formed by the two fingers of the patient's right hand while he holds the drug in his left hand. If the fingers lose their strength and open easily, the drug is harmful; if the fingers gain strength and are more difficult to open, the drug is useful.

This is very easy to do, so anyone can use the test without special training, and many people use it in various fields. However, on must first have pharmacological, biochemical, physiological, pathological, and anatomical knowledge to medically interpret the results of the O-ring test. For that reason, Omura advises that for medical diagnosis the O-ring test be used only by those with the necessary qualifications.

The O-ring test uses the phenomenon, that the muscle strength of the tested two fingers easily increases or decreases according to the situation. Omura explained this phenomenon by the electromagnetism of a living body, but lately there are those who explain it with a wave theory.

Namely, everything in the world including our body and its organs has its own energy wave, and radiates it. If the wave radiated by an object resonances with that of the human body, the tested muscle strength increases, or if not, decreases. So the O-ring test is a kind of wave test.

Lee Myungbok noticed this O-ring test and applied it to foods that were already classified by constitutions. He found that a food is clearly shown to be beneficial or harmful according to the person's constitution. In that way he became convinced that the O-ring test can be applied to determine constitutions.

Putting the O-ring test into practice
It doesn't matter if the patient is standing, sitting, or lying down, as long as he remains in the same position throughout the test, because it measures changes in the relative strength.

                             

                                                   Illustration. O-ring test

Method and order of the test
(1) The test subject should stretch out his legs a little, straighten up his head and neck, and look straight ahead.
(2) The test subject's elbows should be about 20 cm (8 inches) from his body. If they are next to his body, the results could be influenced by proximity to an ill body part or organ.
(3) Metal ornaments and jewelry such as rings, wristwatches, necklace, earrings can influence the results, so both the subject and the examiner should remove them before starting the test.
(4) The examiner stands facing the subject in a convenient place for testing and asks the subject to form a ring by touching together the tips of the index finger and thumb of his right hand, or if he is left handed, of his left hand.
(5) The examiner forms two rings also, using the same two fingers of both of his hands, with his two rings interlocked with the ring formed by the subject.
(6) The examiner asks the subject to resist as strongly as he can the pressure to open the ring, then with a slow motion he pulls to the right and the left with his fingers formed into two rings until he opens the ring formed by the subject's fingers.
(7) The pulling force must always be along a straight line. During the pulling and the resisting, the examiner measures the subject's finger strength. (See the illustration below.)

                      

                                    Right way                               Wrong way

                                    Illustration. The way to pull for the O-ring test

*  Note: Both the examiner and the subject must form O-rings by touching the tips of their index fingers to the tips of their thumbs.

O-ring test used to determine constitution
If you already understand how to do the O-ring test, now it's time to learn how to apply it to distinguishing constitutions. A material appropriate for a constitution gives the same result regardless of whether it is an herbal medicine or a food. Therefore you can use whichever is opportune. Here are some foods useful for the test that are easily obtained.

Materials
Chinese cabbage or banana (foods good for teyangin)
Carrot or radish (foods good for teumin)
Cucumber or melon (foods good for soyangin)
Potato or orange (foods good for soumin)

Order
(1) The examiner first measures the normal strength of the subject's ring-forming fingers of the right hand while his left hand is empty.
(2) The subject holds in his left hand one of the materials, for example, a banana. Now the examiner measures the muscle strength, pulling the ring-forming fingers of the subject's right hand, and compares it to the strength of the fingers when he held nothing in his left hand.
(3) The examiner in this way measures and compares the muscle strength, exchanging the materials one by one.
(4) The examiner finds with which materials the fingers are strongest, and with which they are weakest.
(5) For example, if the ring-forming fingers are strongest with a carrot, that is the best food for the subject. Carrot is good for teumin, so the subject must be teumin.
(6) But to decide only on that basis that the subject is a teumin is still premature. To be more certain, the examiner tests again for banana or cabbage, which are good for teyangin, the opposite of teumin. The strength should be much weaker with banana compared to carrot.
(7) If the examiner again finds that the strength increases greatly with food for teumin and decreases with food for teyangin, he can finally determine that the subject is teumin.
(8) In this case, the strength is neither increased nor decreased with cucumber, food for soyangin, or potato, food for soumin.
(9) In summary, the examiner first measures the respective strength with all four foods, then decides the ones that give the most and the least strength; to confirm the conclusion, he tests with the foods of the opposite constitution.
(10) The examiner confirms that other foods that are good for the same constitution bring the same result.

Results
Here are the results of the O-ring test for the four foods.
(1) If cabbage or banana bring on the most strength, he is teyangin.
(2) If carrot or radish bring on the most strength, he is teumin.
(3) If cucumber or melon bring on the most strength, he is soyangin.
(4) If potato or orange bring on the most strength, he is soumin.

Problems with the O-ring test
The O-ring test is in fact very useful for determining constitution, even though the examiners use different materials for the tests. Nevertheless, determining a human constitution only by the O-ring test has its clear limits. In other words, this means that the O-ring test should be regarded as only one of the various ways of determining, and depending on it completely is very dangerous.

The biggest problem with the O-ring test is that the results can be influenced by the thinking of the subject and the examiner. If the examiner does the test with prejudice, the result may vary according to his prejudice. If the examiner were to think that for this subject the result will be a certain way, the result is quite likely to be close to that way.

Similarly, if the subject thinks that he has that constitution and that food is good or bad for him, the result is likely to come out as he thinks it will. Therefore in order to get the correct result, it is most important that the examiner and the subject be free of any thoughts and prejudices before and during the test. This, however, is not as simple as it seems, because it isn't easy to control one's thoughts by will.

Another problem with the O-ring test is that the result can vary according to the person's condition at the time of the test. If a soyangin is tested for ginseng, normally harmful for him, ginseng will usually show up as bad for him. But if at the time of the test the soyangin is very weak from an illness or exhaustion, ginseng can test as good for him, because his body is in a condition where it needs ginseng.

There are also other various hindrances to getting the right results. Research has shown that the results of the O-ring test can vary from metal ornaments on the body, which can influence the electromagnetic fields, or if the subject is wearing clothing or underwear in primary colors, or also according to which direction the subject is looking and which colors or figures he is looking at.

Moreover, the results can vary with who does the testing, or when the test is done, even by the same tester. For these reasons, there are some who think that the O-ring test is nonsense and not trustworthy. In spite of these clear limitations, I describe the O-ring test in this book because it does indeed have a certain usefulness. If we are well aware of the problems and limitations of this test and use it prudently, we can benefit from it considerably for determining constitutions.