Healthy Perspective – House of Hope

Dr. Holly Ruocco administers an AAT treatment - digital signals combined with spine stimulation - to a patient at her Salem, NH offices. The treatment can relieve up to 110,000 allergies or sensitivities. Photo by Kevin Harkins.

From the outside, 202 Main St. doesn’t look like a house of hope. Like most structures on this busy stretch in Salem, N.H., it’s a nondescript office building that’s easy to miss. But inside a sunny suite, down a flight of stairs, something extraordinary is taking place. For some, lifetimes of allergies are starting to disappear with a few clicks of a mouse.

Aided by new technology from Australia, Dr. Holly Ruocco is helping patients eat, sleep and breathe again.

“At first I didn’t believe it would help,” Ruocco said of the treatment known as Advanced Allergy Therapeutics (AAT).

Then the chiropractor tried it on herself. Determined to find out why heartburn had haunted her since her pregnancy five years ago, she had a colleague administer the test. Turns out she was allergic to eggs and her own stomach acid. After undergoing the treatment, the painful sensation in her chest vanished.

From that day forward, her practice shifted. “I want people to know there is hope beyond medication and shots,” said Ruocco, who believes prevention is the key to health.

Developed 14 years ago, AAT claims an 87 percent success rate, with 13 percent of patients not responding to the therapy. AAT merges homeopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture with science and technology, Ruocco explains. By exposing the skin to digital signals, combined with spinal stimulation, AAT claims it can relieve up to 110,000 allergies or sensitivities. Anaphylactic allergies such as those related to nuts or shellfish cannot be treated with AAT.

Ruocco describes an allergy as an error that the body has made. AAT tries to correct this by creating a positive association to the offending substance. “We are flipping the error,” she said. To begin, the AAT program targets areas where allergies manifest, such as the eyes and the skin or the digestive or respiratory systems.

A cuff, attached to a patient’s arm, acts as a digital conduit. To determine specific allergies, Ruocco conducts a muscle response test by applying pressure on the patient’s free arm while scrolling through individual substances on the screen. One by one she runs through the possibilities while the patient tries to resist. An allergy/sensitivity is detected when the patient can’t resist.

The second part of the treatment involves the spine. She works on eliminating the allergy by rolling a standard chiropractic tool up and down the vertebrae in quick bursts. This stimulates the body’s acupuncture meridians. While this is happening, signals are sent through the arm cuff.

“We are introducing a positive stimulus so that the body interprets it as good, not bad,” she said. “It’s that simple. It’s not a complicated procedure.” For 80 percent of her patients she is able to relieve an allergy family in one visit, but because she can only treat one family at a time, 20 percent have to return for further treatment.

Ruocco is invested in AAT because of its ability to reverse maladies without medication. “Antibiotics wipe out the good immune system. … Drugs cause further problems.”

Marion Forest of Windham, N.H., understands this. Burdened with sinus infections for most of her life, the 47-year-old took antibiotics for a decade. Still, she had not been able to breathe through her nose for 10 years. A year and a half ago she tried AAT.

“This has changed my life,” Forest said. “I couldn’t be around wood smoke or be outside in the yard before. Now I poke around, do yard work. I feel great. I’m not tired. I used to be tired all the time.”

“We are working with the body, instead of against the body, to bring it back to its maximum potential. If we looked at these types of treatments as prevention, we would be a healthy society,” Ruocco said.

Advanced Allergy Treatment Centers of New England
202 Main Street, Suite G-2   Salem, N.H.
100 Shattuck Way   Newington, N.H.(603) 894-0656
www.advancedallergytreatment.com