Nutritional Microscopy is the Latest Medical Quackery
How “Live Blood Analysis” is having a COVID fueled resurgence
There’s still a huge amount of misinformation online about COVID-19, the vaccines against this virus, and how they affect our health. Anti-vaccine advocates will grab onto nearly any condition, real or imagined, and attempt to link it to the vaccine.
Here’s a recent, viral Facebook post, passing on third-hand, unattributed information and making false claims about the dangers of the vaccine:
Here’s the text of the post:
I have a friend who is a Nutrition Microscopist. She is an expert in her field and has helped me immensely! She had many clients who received the so-called Vax and asked them to come in for a free analysis! To her horror this is what she saw! The top picture is completely healthy cells before the vax. The progression of the cells changed drastically in the next few days! The third picture (white specs) shows the foreign nano particles that show up in your blood! Your body can NEVER detox from it and eventually those particles will go into every cell of your body!!!
My friend weeps over this because she understands blood! The repercussions over this will affect the health of that individual for the remainder of their life!!!
THIS EXPERIMENTAL VACCINATION IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY!!!
Wow.
First, there is a lot wrong with this from a medicine/biology perspective. I’ll get to those issues in a moment.
But second, the unnamed “expert” from this post claims the credentials of a nutritional microscopist. I’ve never heard of this position, and initially thought it would be something similar to a lab tech.
I was wrong, and it took me down a rabbit hole of scientific quackery, used to spread dangerous misinformation.
Let’s first break apart this post, and then see why nutritional microscopy, and the associated live blood analysis that they do, has little to no scientific merit.
The incorrect information in this viral Facebook post
Right, let’s start from the top.
First, the credentials of this unnamed person (and we should be concerned from the start; why would you trust the advice of someone who won’t even attach their name to that advice?) are a nutritional microscopist. We’ll get to that in a moment, but rest assured that this person, if they even exist, is unlikely to possess an accredited medical doctorate.
Next, we’re looking at “cells.” That doesn’t mean much. Imagine that you’re shopping for a diamond ring. You find one at a price that seems too good to be true. You ask the jeweler, and he assures you that it’s a “genuine rock.”
Or you’re given a burger at a restaurant and assured that it’s made with “genuine meat.” Cow? Horse? Pigeon? Look, it’s meat, what more do you want?
Based on the picture, and the rest of the comment, I’ll assume that these are red blood cells.
Next, the photos claim to “show the foreign nano particles that show up in the blood”. However, these white specks definitely aren’t nanoparticles.
A red blood cell is 6–8 micrometers across. You can see them under a tabletop microscope, especially at the highest zoom setting (1,000x).
A nanoparticle is considered to be between 0.001 to 0.1 micrometers across. These white dots are far too big to be nanoparticles — because they aren’t.
They’re dust on a badly prepared microscope slide.
See, you put blood onto a glass slide when you’re going to view it under a microscope. You want to flatten out the droplet of blood, so you add a glass coverslip to press it down. If that coverslip is dirty, and you don’t focus your microscope properly, you’ll see the dirt on the coverslip as little blotches on your field of view.
That’s what we’re seeing in the third picture. Notice how the cells in that third picture are blurry? That’s because the microscope is focused partially on the dust on top of them, not on the cells themselves.
Finally, in the last picture, the cells are weirdly contorted, lumpy and bumpy instead of smooth and round. Are these cells diseased? Are they sick, filled with toxic evil mind control particles that make us feel the need to buy Microsoft products?
No. These are red blood cells that are dehydrated.
See, the cells of our body — all of them, but red blood cells in this particular case — are like little sponges. If you put them in water, they swell up. And if you let them dry out, they shrivel.
When you put blood on a glass slide, to look at it under a microscope, you usually add some water. Add too much, and the cells puff up like little balloons, or those animal-shaped sponges that swell up in the bath. Add too little, or let the blood dry out before you look at it, and the cells shrivel up to look a bit lumpy.
We’re not looking at nanoparticles taking over and subverting red blood cells. We’re looking at badly prepared slides of blood, like what a high school freshman might make in their bio class.
The text claims that this unnamed friend “understands blood.” Clearly, that’s not the case.
But this leads to the second chilling part of misinformation here: the title of “nutritional microscopist.”
Nutritional microscopy, live blood cell analysis — it’s bullshit to sell you useless supplements
Imagine this setting:
You’re referred to a “live blood analysis specialist” by a friend. You enter a medical office, where a practitioner in a white lab coat takes a sample of your blood and puts it on a microscope slide, then projects that image up so you both can view it.
“Ah, see there?” he says, pointing at some cells that look a bit misshapen. “That’s a clot malfunction. That puts you at increased risk for a wide range of diseases, from obesity to cancer to arthritis to metabolic issues.”
“What do I do?” you ask, suddenly concerned.
“We can start you on some supplements to counteract it and restore your blood’s anti-clotting properties,” he assures you. “We sell the supplements here, in fact. It’ll be $250 for your first month’s batch.”
Is your bullshit meter screaming?
I totally understand if it’s not; this all seems very professional. They’re showing you your own blood, after all! And those are some scary diseases. It seems to be sensible…
…but it’s not. The simple truth is that blood, especially just a drop of it, is a terrible way to try and diagnose anything. The shape of red blood cells won’t tell you anything about if you have cancer, arthritis, or almost any disease beyond sickle cell anemia.
(In fact, a whole company, Theranos, went bankrupt because they fraudulently claimed that they could diagnose various conditions with blood tests on a handheld machine!)
Your red blood cells are important. They carry oxygen throughout your body, and help you get rid of carbon dioxide.
But red blood cells don’t have information about other diseases. They’re not a magical barometer for your overall health.
Imagine if you took your car to an auto mechanic. He pulls on your turn signal indicator to dispense some windshield washer fluid, tastes a few drops of it, and then tells you that your engine block is cracked and he’ll need to do $10,000 of repairs. He never even looked at the engine, but he claims that “your windshield washing fluid carries all the signs of what is wrong, since it’s flowing through to the rest of the car.”
Bullshit.
Here’s a site claiming that live blood analysis (which they call “dark field analysis”, because they use “special light”) helps detect all sorts of toxins, cholesterol issues, free radical damage, and more. This is, of course, bullshit.
In fact, in 2017, researchers looked at those weird shapes and patterns formed in blood, the sort that these nutritional microscopists claim are due to inflammation, or sometimes claim are from the presence of harmful bacteria. (Show the same blood picture to two different practitioners, and they’ll give different answers, which should already raise concerns.)
In fact, it turns out that these different patterns or shapes of blood cells happen over time as human blood is incubated. There’s protein in blood, too, and the protein tends to aggregate and stick/clump together as the blood sample is left to sit out.
So once again, these different shapes, that a live blood analysis practitioner might claim are a sign of illness? It’s just the blood breaking down as it sits out, like how an oil-based dressing will separate if left to sit out on the counter.
Sum it up: what to not blindly trust
You wouldn’t trust an auto mechanic who diagnosed your engine problems just by looking at your windshield washer fluid. You wouldn’t trust a stylist who picked out clothes for you based just on your height, without asking about your body shape or style preferences. They don’t have enough information.
Blood tests can be great diagnostic tests — for things like hormone levels, diabetes, STDs, vitamin deficiencies, liver function, and some inflammation. However, these tests are based on chemical signals, not on looking at the blood.
And they aren’t about the red blood cells themselves. So looking at the red blood cells, especially under a traditional microscope, won’t reveal useful information.
So if someone’s credentials are:
- Live blood analysis
- Nutritional microscopist
- Darkfield analysis
Or others related to this, tread with caution. Don’t agree to immediately purchase anything, especially if they are selling the supplement to cure the disease that they’ve just diagnosed. You can always get a second opinion.
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