Vega testing is not New Age - it's simply a bogus form of alternative medicine.

For those who have never heard of it, vega testing involves the use of a type of electro-acupuncture machine which proponents claim can diagnose allergies and other health problems. The machine is just another version of the old EAV or electro-acupuncture-according-to-Voll (its inventor) machines which the FDA no longer permit to be imported into the country. The only reason these machines are still in the hands of chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths and the like is because the FDA is doing a poor job of policing the industry for these hokey machines.

I don't make this claim lightly.

According to the NYU Langone Medical Center, in this clinical test of the vega machine, four practitioners with at least 10 years experience each tested 30 volunteers for allergies with their machines. Half of the people had known allergies to things like dust mites, cat dander, etc. while the other half had no known allergies.

"Each participant was tested six items in three separate sessions by each of three different operators of the Vega machine, resulting in a total of more than 1,500 separate allergy tests over the course of the study," Langone reports. "The results showed that the Vega-test practitioners were unable to distinguish between allergic and non-allergic participants. In addition, no individual operator of the machine was more accurate than any other."

Only one study showed any sign of success for the Vega test but one of the authors of the study said it suffered significant flaws and, when corrected, found that the Vega test was not capable of distinguishing between allergens and non-allergens.

"On the basis of this information, the only fair assessment at present is that the Vega test has not been shown to be a meaningful method of identifying allergies to dust mites or cat dander," Langone concludes. "Proponents of the Vega device and other EDT techniques object that identifying respiratory allergens is not the device's primary use. However, at present there is no reliable evidence that the method has validity for any use."

Several major medical associations such as the American Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and similar organizations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have also warned against the use of Vega testing.

This expert, who believes that anyone who uses these machines is "either delusional, dishonest, or both", recommends that you report any device to the practitioner's state licensing board, attorney general, FDA, FBI, the National Fraud Information Center, and any insurance company to which the practitioner submits claims that involve use of the device. (Click here for contact information for any of these agencies.)

Neither psychotherapy nor cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is New Age. Both are proven approaches to the treatment of a variety of emotional and behavioral issues.