RBTI Introduction Video - Challen Waychoff

Pip and I will be leaving Wheeling on Friday to tour around New York and New Jersey (starting Friday in Rochester).  Pippa will bring a test kit with her and is willing to swing by and test anyone in the area that is interested, as well as go over all the intricate details of Challen's program for a reasonable fee.  I'll be there to make fart noises in several creative ways, do impressions, say GARRRR every time she looks at the refractometer, and otherwise annoy her.  I'll write more about this tomorrow.  If you are an individual or alternative health practitioner of some kind in the area and know that you are definitely interested you can start the process of lining up an appointment by sending her an email at pipparoni@yahoo.com. 

I say all this now because I probably won't be busting out any big articles while we are gone, but I do hope to keep pumping out short video clips of Challen - the myth, the legend... each day - or when I get a chance.  You can see the first one right here.  I think he did a pretty good job at introducing the basic concept behind the RBTI, the meaning of some of the numbers, and the kind of approach he takes.  

Before you hastily nitpick every phrase or try to bust his balls over the details, realize that no one here is trying to proclaim Challen as the almighty guru of all things health.  He is not.  No one is.  What Challen offers is a powerful tool to add to the toolbox - especially for those in desperate circumstances that simply can't stabilize their body chemistry enough to digest and metabolize food efficiently enough to heal themselves.  The system is, in many ways, very advanced.  And, for the most part, very straightforward, simple, easy, predictable, and oftentimes extraordinarily quick depending on the situation.  Anyway, here's "THE WHIZARD..."

Hypoglycemia – It’s Not All in Your Head, It’s All in Your Urine

While I of course am still very unsure of what to make of my RBTI adventure overall (it’s only been a week, and it is quite a shocking mind funk), I feel comfortable saying that there is at least something of value going on here. How much value? I don’t know. It remains to be seen. I have no doubt that some seriously undesirable body chemistries can be greatly improved, and from the improvement many health problems of all kinds can be improved along with it. This is obviously a very familiar concept here and in the world of nutrition and natural health to begin with.

While I am most skeptical that the ideal urine and saliva pH is 6.4, what I am becoming increasingly certain about is the absolute awesomeness of the tool used in RBTI known as the refractometer. The refractometer is a simple agricultural tool that measures the degree of refraction as light passes through a liquid. The result is a number representing the total amount of dissolved carbohydrate in the liquid (I thought this number was the “Brix” number, but was corrected by DML on that – thanks dude).

What’s so cool about it is that it really is the best measurement of your true sugar levels. The mainstream thinks it’s all about the blood sugar level, and this can be revelatory, but often the carbohydrate levels in the urine and the blood move in completely opposite directions. This is particularly true as it pertains to what people casually refer to as “hypoglycemia.”

Hypoglycemia is a term that drives many in Western Medicine berserk. They go nutty nuts (a technical term used by Martin Short in his role as Clifford – one of the most monumental and inspiring motion pictures in the history of film) because actually having blood sugar levels in the range of hypoglycemia (below 65 mg/dl) is very rare - and you can go below that and sometimes feel just fine, with no signs of an adrenaline surge.



In fact, if most people were to test their blood sugar when feeling that shaky, irritable, lethargic, headachy, mid-afternoon “hypoglycemic" dip, they would find that their blood sugar is actually elevated. And this is where the confusion over what is really physiologically taking place in a person’s body stems from. It is most certainly hypoglycemia, but because the blood sugar is fine or even elevated, in the medical world this is not hypoglycemia but just some psychosomatic crapola. The refractometer settles this.

I’ll explain in a moment. First, let’s look at the “hypoglycemia” experienced by one of the people who turned me onto Challen and the RBTI in the first place.

I had a very difficult time helping this person to rehabilitate herself from a high-protein/low-carb distance running combo that left her completely unable to metabolize food and hospitalized for months. She was a wreck. When carbohydrate was freely available to her system she actually felt pretty good. When it wasn’t, she would tremble and shake, vomit, lay awake sleepless, and deteriorate rapidly. We tried again and again to tweak macronutrient ratios and things like that, but still she would experience these crushing hypoglycemic blows.

What she was experiencing, without a doubt, was the symptoms of her adrenal glands kicking into hyperdrive in order to elevate sugar levels in the body. That’s where the shaking, psychological and mood disturbances, cold hands and feet, and so forth stem from. Not exactly rocket science.

And she was at her worst early in the morning. 4am is a very common time of day to enter into a hypoglycemic state and it progresses throughout the early dawn hours if no food is ingested. This person had a glucose meter, so she tested. During this hardcore (and I mean hardcore) hypoglycemic episode, her blood sugar levels would soar to 130 mg/dl (technically hyperglycemia!) – a diabetic fasting level. But this person was definitely no diabetic. In fact, eating would immediately make her feel better and send the blood sugar plummeting to 75-ish.

What’s going on here is that the adrenals keep blood sugar elevated – trying to deliver sugar to the system somehow, and when food is ingested insulin rises, shuts down the adrenal glands, and stops the release of glycogen coming from the muscles and liver (which is the source of the hyperglycemia during fasting).

There is always a push-pull going on between the primary sugar raising and sugar lowering forces in the body. In the most simplistic sense, activation of the sympathetic nervous system causes the body to release sugar from within, and when food is ingested the body switches into a parasympathetic state that allows the sugar to be stored and stops the release of sugar from within.

In someone with hypoglycemic tendencies, the sympathetic nervous system goes wild to continually try to make carbohydrate available.

You may be a little confused at this point. Is hypoglycemia really hyperglycemia and how can I call someone with hyperglycemia (blood glucose 130mg/dl) “in a hypoglycemic state?”

The almighty refractometer tells the real story. If you want a tool that will tell you whether you lack carbohydrate or have too much, blood sugar testing ain’t gonna do it for you. The refractometer, however, is extremely reliable from what I’ve seen thus far. During those hypoglycemic dips, so common in the wee hours of the morning and in the early afternoon, the refractometer reading of the urine will tell you all you need to know.

Now, when this person tests the sugar levels of her urine, it will confirm if she is hypoglycemic or not (but of course, by now, she knows exactly what it feels like to have the sugar level dipping too low – hypoglycemic symptoms emerge like clockwork). The reading will be 1.2 or less, and in her case, with a severe problem, it is often much lower (like 0.5). Yet, her blood sugar often moves in the exact opposite direction.

Part of the RBTI program is keeping the sugar levels stable in a small range instead of a large, chaotic roller coaster range. And many years ago, when I first ate to keep my sugar levels as stable as possible by eating precise amounts of carbohydrates at precise and consistent meal times, I no doubt experienced the benefits.

If you know, even after doing RRARF (which can increase your glycogen storage capacity, improve glucose clearance, and other things that are helpful in keeping sugar levels stable), that you still have some lingering sugar swings that are causing you problems with energy, sleep, mood, focus, appetite and cravings, and more – there’s no question that using a refractometer and figuring out the precise times of day, number of minutes after meals, and so forth that your sugar levels tend to tank could be a huge game changer. Then, by simply eating a piece of fruit or two during that time, you may in turn be able to keep your sugar stable enough to reap the many potential rewards of keeping this stable (and keeping the stress response dormant).

From what I have gathered so far, Challen’s rules regarding hypoglycemia couldn’t be simpler. Whenever sugar levels are below 1.5 on the refractometer, eat a piece of fruit or have a sip of juice (and get to know at about what time that is going to happen). If you have sugar crashes in the wee hours of the morning, make sure not to eat heavy in the evening and keep an apple or glass of juice by your bedside. That’s it. Complicated stuff I know.

But seriously, Challen strongly thinks that the refractomer alone would be enough to really improve people’s health. I tend to agree. For self-care and dietary fine-tuning, it shows a lot of potential. Seeing how unstable some people’s sugar levels are with the use of the refractometer, more medical folk would really understand hypoglycemia, and realize that the problems are not just all in people’s head when the problem doesn’t show up in the unreliable glucose tolerance test.

Granted, this article is really an oversimplification of the whole picture of sugar regulation and how sugar levels interact with the pH and salt levels.  But like I said, I do suspect that the refractometer does have a medical value aside from the strict practicing of the full RBTI program.  I can't wait to get one and play with it.   

RBTI – Challen Waychoff Delivers

I went to see Challen Waychoff because I was told he could look at a basic set of numbers ascertained from a series of simple urine tests and tell what was wrong with a person, what they ate and even when they ate it, and precisely what course of action to take to fix their body chemistry. This seemed like incredibly powerful knowledge, and hinted at a more sophisticated understanding of nutrition than anyone else in the world possesses.

On the first day I watched a few clients come in. The first was an average construction worker kind of guy. He had a big gut and was just a regular Joe. He had a heart attack at which point he decided to pay Challen a visit. Within 48 hours his chest pain was gone. He had no problems whatsoever, including having energy, which he had suffered from to the point he could hardly get out of bed, until he deviated from the diet. When he did, his problems returned. Nervous about having another heart attack, he went back to Challen and once again, within a couple of days, chest pressure was gone and things back to normal. No trouble since, and he reports feeling great.

The second and third client came in after that. The 2nd was about to try yet another round of chemotherapy, but really felt like she didn’t have the strength left to survive another chemo serving. She tried the RBTI once again. And in 3 months all her tumors were completely gone without a trace.

The third client was a very attractive young girl who started out working with Challen and looking pale, sunken-cheeked, and bulimic according to Challen’s description – with acne. Radiant would be a huge understatement of her physical presence. She has gained 10 pounds since she started, and honestly had one of the best female figures I have ever seen. I don’t mean that in a creepy way. Just reporting here.

Her acne was still slightly visible, but she mentioned how much better it had gotten. She had just come back from vacation, so her “numbers” were all over the place. She had already begun drinking lots of distilled water in anticipation of what her numbers would be. She was right. Her urine brix (a reading of carbohydrate content) was roughly 400% higher than the ideal. Drinking distilled water in a systematic way lowers the urine brix. If you have low urine brix, drinking plain water is strictly forbidden.

And then of course, it was my turn. I went into the bathroom, whipped out the magic Johnson, and hit the little pee cup with a strong burst of embarrassingly-dark urine (I had not had much to drink that day – it was my first day and I had sort of forgotten about my physical needs).

Challen and his office diva laughed at how dark it was, and then Challen proceeded to run the tests on it. With a little dish he added a few drops of various solutions, had me spit in one part, mixed a drop of Matt whiz and stirred it around with something 120 times, put 15 drops into a big test tube full of distilled water, held my urine up and eclipsed the light with it (and had the skin color of an Oompa Loompa briefly), put some kid whiz on the refractomer and had me look at the reading, and 5 minutes later I had my “numbers.”

Urine brix = 4.2
Urine pH = 7.4
Saliva pH = 7.6
Salts = 28c
Albumin = 4m
Nitrate Urea = 8
Ammonia Urea = 12

And there ya have it.

He looks at my numbers for 15 seconds or so before he starts to talk. I’m waiting for a John Edward psychic moment to spill out of him. He says, “Do you take any medications?”

I say, “fool you crazy!!!”

He says, “Well, how about some herbs or supplements?”

“You betta ax somebody sucka!”

I’m thinking, “Wow, this is a disappointment.” But he insists there’s gotta be something causing the pattern he is seeing. As if he barely believes it, he says, “Well, do you eat a lot of bananas?”

I laughed and said “oh snap!”

“Well how many do you eat?!!” he asked as if I must be eating an amount of bananas that he’s never seen someone eat. And in fact, I had been. In June I ate 2 entire cases of bananas (roughly 170 bananas in 30 days). The day before I had eaten 4 in one sitting. My nickname to the 5-year old daughter of my Florida gal is “banana” because of all the bananas I eat.

Well played sir. I’m very attentive now. I take out my corn rows and remove the red bandana from my head and roll down the one pant leg I had up to my knee so I could hear dis fool betta. (Sorry, this gangsta spoof is a little out of sync with Wheeling. I should have said I got off my sister – who had a picture of Sarah Palin taped to her face as an aphrodisiac, put down my Moon Pie, and turned down the romantic sounds of the Georgia Satellites for a minute to listen more carefully…)

He then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with me starting at my feet (which have been hurting like hell this year – especially walking barefoot on hard surfaces), and working his way up. He mentioned feet, then lower back (one of my most chronic conditions – a major problem for me since the age of 16 when I began seeking treatment for it), and pain in the center of the chest (my most recent health problem that began after a year or so of being on a low-carbohydrate diet). He didn’t mention pet allergies, but I was still pretty damn impressed.

Challen, and the RBTI is not part of the psychic network. It’s just simple analysis. Anyone can do it. Challen is the first to systematize basic patterns in the numbers and their relationship with one another. For example, if your urine pH is low – like 5.5, and your Nitrate urea is higher than your ammonia urea (forgive me if I’m saying anything incorrectly, it’s only my 2nd day for Pete’s sake), then you have consumed pork in some form. This is one of the recognized patterns of which Challen has formulated dozens, hundreds maybe I don’t know, and has them all in a 3-ring binder.

It’s just very diligent investigative work that he has put together. No one on earth has done this. Other supposed practitioners of the RBTI deny that it’s even possible. Oh it’s possible alright, and freakishly accurate. So accurate, in fact, that I think it’s kind of scaring people away. I can sort of relate. I mean, this knowledge is making me have a complete identity crisis. It’s hard to explain why exactly. I feel like the hitchhiker in There’s Something About Mary when Ben Stiller suggests that 7-Minute Abs sounds like a good business idea, but warns about the potential of someone releasing 6-Minute Abs as a competing product…



For example, if you are taking dolomite as a supplement and the total of your urea numbers is 13 or less, your neck stiffens up. Then you stop taking the dolomite and it clears up right away. Likewise, if he sees your ureas getting closer to the low levels and you are taking dolomite, he can say, “You might get a stiff neck sometime this week. If you do, stop taking the dolomite.” He said this to a 180 follower that switched to the RBTI “dark side” and it happened like clock work. Earlier today someone (another 180 follower that has been working with Challen for 2 months) self-reported a total of 10 and was taking dolomite and didn’t have a stiff neck. Challen then knew that she had mis-reported her number, which she had. The total was 14, not 10.

A lady today came in (wearing a Beavis and Butthead t-shirt - I'm being totally serious) and Challen looked at her numbers for no more than 10 seconds before he said, "You eat some chocolate?"

"Yes, last night."

"And some nuts 6 days ago?"

"Yes, cashews." 

That’s how crazy this stuff is. And as you are reading this you are thinking the same way I thought when I first heard about it – that it is sounding like some super-creepy guru bullshit. That’s why I had to come here. I had to see it for myself, and I didn’t want to be one of those db’s who negates something just to protect his own ego, which just took a cold shower by the way, and will be quite raisin-like if my health problems substantially improve in the days, weeks, and months ahead (and more 180 followers continue to get much better results with the Challen-ator than I am capable of delivering to them).

We’ll see how things go as the bigger question is answered – “Does it work?”

Why RBTI?

So why exactly have I journeyed up to the dilapidated town in West Virginia known as Wheeling, where tattooed rednecks walk around with no shirt through city streets, where the Klopeks would be scared of their neighbors – and would have the best kept house in town...

...where cars like the one shot with my phone are parked on lawns, where some of the world’s most unnattractive and physically debilitated Americans can be found “wheeling” up and down the streets in wheel chairs like a scene out of Wall-E?

Well, because Carey Reams (who looked a lot like Harry Caray, coincidentally – maybe I’ll start calling him Harry Carey Reams) spoke to God and God gave him an equation for the numbers you should score on a bunch of pee pee tests, that’s why! Reassuring isn’t it?  Holy Cow! 

Today, for the first time, I meet with Challen Waychoff II, practitioner of a very purist form of RBTI – Reams Biological Theory of Ionization. And trust me, I’ve got more red flags flying than China during a big parade. More red flags flying than even Canadians visiting a foreign country to distinguish themselves from Americans (we really hate it when you do that by the way).

So why in the name of all that’s Holy would I make such a great effort to check this wacky stuff out?

I’m making the effort because Challen has such great mastery over the RBTI that he can look at some pee pee test values from anyone on earth, near or far, recite their medical history more or less, and then proceed to bring their “numbers” to the “healing range” within a week. This has been a consistent report from the people I know who have been working with him this year, which includes one of my most trusted informants – ol’ Pippa Galea, who is one of my best personal friends on the planet, and who has been following my writing since before I even began blogging (although, after seeing Wheeling I'm thinking of ending the friendship!). 

But none of that really impressed me. What really got me was that Challen could reliably tell when a person deviated from the eating regimen he laid out for them, and even tell what they ate to cheat and roughly what time of day they ate it – even if it was just a miniscule amount of something forbidden on the Reams program (like say, chocolate or canola oil).

I mean think about the power in that? With RBTI you are looking at a slew of tests that can be ascertained with home testing equipment. Using an agricultural tool called a refractometer you get a measurement of overall carbohydrate in your urine. With pH strips you get your saliva and urine pH levels and see what they are in relation to one another. You test other things as well, such as dissolved “salts” and albumin.

So Challen, looking at what these numbers are and the relationship to one another, sees sort of a fingerprint that is unique to each individual but at the same time shows a host of general and, depending on level of mastery and understanding of this cultish RBTI, specific information.

“Looks like you had some chocolate 5 days ago.”


“Yes, I had two chocolate chip cookies that night.”

Not only that, but using this information he can forecast a lot of what a person is going to go through as they undergo the healing process – also with freakish and difficult-to-believe accuracy.

Anyway, I’m keeping my skepticism flying mightily. As should any readers of the many articles I will soon write on my Wheeling dealings. But, knowing how powerful this knowledge could really be, and that he clearly possesses knowledge in an area of using nutrition that I do not, I’m eager to learn as much as I can and hopefully discover something very useful.

I’m attracted to the idea because of the general mantra of Reams, which is “Why guess when you can know?”

To me, gathering real observable data and using nutrition with surgical precision to bring that data into a harmonious balance is the ultimate use of nutrition. It’s basically doing what Western Medicine attempts to do with their endless array of blood and hormone tests, but foolishly and unecessarily using medication in isolation to tweak those “numbers.” With the human body, this doesn’t work very well, and comes with consequences. The RBTI, however, is about bringing several markers of good function into a synergistic alignment, stepping back, and watching how well the body heals itself from illness under those ideal conditions. At least that’s it in theory.

And, if the theory works even slightly like it ideally is supposed to, it would really be amazing. To me, the concept behind taking real numbers and, like I said, tweaking them with “surgical precision” using nutrition would be by far the most sophisticated, scientific, and reliable use of nutrition out there. Otherwise people just keep volleying back and forth between diets getting relief in some areas but causing problems in others, only to reshuffle the deck with a totally different diet and get a very different, but still mixed, mediocre hand.

And I think what is one of the potentially coolest things about it all, is that RBTI was designed specifically to achieve the type of healing a person might get from truly eating the perfect food grown in the perfect soil, but doing so using supermarket food. Regular old plain stuff that anyone can access.

And if Reams is right – that all disease stems from an imbalance or lack of minerals in the body to stimulate proper energy production (not a bad argument as we know how instrumental minerals are for the pH and productivity of soil, the basis of all life, and how this directly translates to the health of the animals that eat food from that soil), then that would certainly provide a better explanation for why refined, mineral-stripped carbohydrates always seem to be there at the onset of modern disease.

Most importantly, it’s going to be spectacularly fun and interesting for yours nerdingly. I’ve never done anything quite like this. It was time for a good shock to the groin, and hopefully Challen is the man to deliver the voltage.