How the Qi-5 Works: The Science of Biological Signaling

In two blogs, I share how this system appeared to help resolve my son’s severe IBD-like symptoms and my own MCAS/histamine intolerance within weeks — and why I decided to bring it into my practice. But how does it actually work? What is the Qi-5? And what can you expect? Let’s explore.

But first — a disclaimer.

The Biolight Qi-5 (and I) do not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That’s the job of your doctor or licensed medical provider. Like any healing modality — from surgery and medication to supplements or lifestyle shifts — the Qi-5 doesn’t work for everyone in exactly the same way. Some people feel a shift almost immediately. Others notice gradual changes over weeks. And for some, it simply isn’t the right tool.

With that said, let’s talk about what the Qi-5 is designed to help your body support — and why.

What Is the Qi-5?

Simply put, the Qi-5 is a compact (and extremely expensive) device that detects your body’s electrical signals to identify incoherence. It does this very simply: through an armband. If your electrical communication isn’t “crossing properly,” potentially contributing to symptoms, the device may detect it.

It then aims to help restore coherence by transmitting a gentle current carrying the “signature” of that trigger (everything in the universe has its own energetic fingerprint, from peanuts to dogs. If you want to read the science on this, see the Notes at the end of this post) while I simultaneously use low-level laser therapy on acupuncture meridians to signal safety and coherence.

This allows your nervous system to a) experience the trigger safely while b) being flooded with even more safety signals from the low-level laser on your meridians. This may offer new information to the nervous system, helping shift an item from a trigger into a normal factor of life and thereby potentially reducing symptoms.

Example: imagine your body is sending a loud signal that it can’t tolerate dust. The Qi-5 reads that electromagnetic pattern from the armband. We then transmit the electromagnetic “signature” of dust through the wand, and as your body picks up that cue, we simultaneously signal safety with the laser. The goal is for the maladapted response — the crossed wire — to have the opportunity to re-pattern.

Explaining How the Qi-5 Works

(Disclaimer repeated for clarity)

The Biolight Qi-5 (and I) do not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That’s the job of your doctor or licensed medical provider. Like any healing modality — from surgery and medication to supplements or lifestyle shifts — the Qi-5 doesn’t work for everyone in exactly the same way. Some people feel a shift almost immediately. Others notice gradual changes over weeks. And for some, it simply isn’t the right tool.

With that said, let’s talk about what the Qi-5 is designed to help your body support — and why.

Right now there isn’t much published research on devices like the Qi-5, AAT, or NAET explaining exactly how they work. As someone who loves evidence, this frustrates me — a lot. I experienced what felt like a profound healing shift from this work, yet there’s no large-scale study I can point to. If you do a quick search, you may even see critics calling work like this pseudoscience — which, honestly, I would have agreed with before my own transformation.

Beyond the “why,” I became fascinated with the “how.” Systems like NAET have been used for decades, and the more advanced modalities like AAT and the Qi-5 as well. The results people report can be remarkable — but the mechanism of action is still not fully mapped out for those of us who love to understand the science.

After seeing how deeply this work impacted me and my son, I wanted to understand the mechanism. That meant looking beyond the traditional view of the body as purely mechanical and chemical — and into its electrical nature.

It turns out the body’s language isn’t just chemical. It’s also electrical. And this information helps to offer a framework for how we might “biohack” the nervous system to influence symptoms with a system like the Qi-5.

We Are More Electric Than We Realize

Every cell in our body lives in a sea of charged particles — sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium — all dissolved in what biophysicist Dr. Gerald Pollack calls structured water. This water isn’t ordinary. It forms a semi-crystalline layer (the Exclusion Zone, or EZ) that stores and transmits electrical energy. When you combine that structured water with electrolytes, proteins, and connective tissue, you get a soft, biological plasma — a living, conductive medium through which information moves almost instantly. That’s what makes something called “bioelectromagnetic signaling” possible within the body:

• The fluids in your body — blood, lymph, interstitial, cerebrospinal — act like highways for charge. This is one reason why balancing minerals (link) can support nervous system change.

• The connective-tissue network (fascia) forms a semi-conductive web that both generates and senses electrical signals through piezoelectricity — where pressure or movement creates voltage. This is why bodywork and movement can be such a powerful support for nervous system regulation as well.

• And the structured water surrounding every cell keeps the whole orchestra in sync — ions, fields, and frequencies dancing together to maintain order.

This helps explain why some frequency-based therapies — like NAAT, AAT, and Qi-5 — may have rapid, sometimes noticeable effects. They aren’t “forcing” anything through solid matter; they’re introducing coherent electromagnetic patterns into a plasma-like medium that’s already designed to carry them — potentially helping the body’s internal communication system reorganize.

Healing with Electric Signaling vs. Chemistry

What this really means is that the body is far more electric than most of us realize. We’re taught that our biology runs on chemistry — hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, immune cells — and so Western and even functional medicine focus on those mechanical and chemical aspects of healing: supplements, diets, medications, protocols.

And while all of that matters, chemistry only works because of electricity.

Every cell in your body runs on voltage. Your heart produces a measurable electromagnetic field detectable several feet away. Nerves carry current like wires. Even connective tissue and bone act as semiconductors, conducting charge and light. Receptors are dynamic structures that shift and vibrate; cells exchange information not just chemically, but also electrically — through voltage changes, ionic flows, and even faint bursts of light called biophotons (ultra-weak photon emissions from living cells; see NOTES for references).

This means that the plasma-like water inside us behaves like a liquid crystal (literally, like a crystalline structure), carrying current and storing light. Microtubules within our cells act like tiny antennas, picking up and sending out frequencies. We are, at our core, electrical beings — and when that bioelectromagnetic signaling system becomes disorganized by chronic stress, trauma, inflammation, or unprocessed emotion, the whole field may lose coherence.

What is this similar to: Exposure Therapy

If you have heard of therapies such as tapping, NET, or exposure therapy, this work is built on simlar footing: expose your body to the trigger or memory in a safe environment and slowly re-wire the knee-jerk response.

It’s Not Woo Woo, It’s Science

Seen through this lens, what happens during this work may not be mystical at all. The body isn’t reacting to “woo-woo waves”; it’s responding to coherence being reintroduced into its electrical network. When that network becomes disordered, the body may lose coherence — systems miscommunicate — and we feel it as fatigue, pain, anxiety, or hypersensitivity. When the signal is restored, the body may find its rhythm once more (again, read the NOTES for more science).

When that happens, inflammation may quiet, communication may clear, and the body may begin to regulate itself more effectively. It’s why these types of systems are being explored as supportive tools for mental and behavioral challenges in kids, ADHD, and certain aspects of autism, as well as digestive distress, food sensitivities, histamine intolerance, MCAS, and environmental allergies. They may also support people experiencing chronic fatigue, anxiety, or insomnia.

It’s not to say it’s a cure-all for all things — yet it’s remarkable just how much the body may be able to rebalance when the wires are no longer “crossed.”

What Does the Research Say?

As I’ve mentioned before, there is very little research on the healing processes of Qi-5, AAT, and NAET (similar healing techniques). There are no large randomized controlled trials proving (or disproving) its efficacy or effectiveness that I could find. Why? It takes a lot of money to fund large-scale studies, so we’re left here with a few cool, smaller-scale studies and observations. Here is a bit of what I could find:

• 3‑Year‑Old Child with Multiple Food Intolerances Healed
  A 3-year-old girl severely intolerant to foods like milk, sugar, egg white, and pork was completely healed in just seven NAET sessions over four weeks. Remarkably, she remained symptom-free and able to eat all previously intolerable foods—even after three years. [This is almost the EXACT same story as my son, 3 years later he is still clear] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2556663/

• Anaphalaxis Peanut Allergy Healed with No Reaction on Oral Challenge
  A woman with a serious peanut allergy (anaphalaxis) saw significant reductions in immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels and lost all reactivity after 18 months of NAET treatments. She did an oral challene after 18 months of eating 1g peanut protein with no reaction. The paper states there was a "successful desensitization toward food allergies using NAET." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25105076/

• NAET’s Promising Role in Supporting Health
  While not a clinical study, The Nambudripad’s Allergy Research Foundation (NARF) has gathered outcome data from NAET practitioners treating patients with a range of chronic symptoms with the following outcomes: https://www.naet.com/pdfs/NAET_Booklet_new.pdf

  • Abdominal bloating: Out of 980 patients, 74% (720 people) experienced full resolution of symptoms after 15 NAET visits. About 25% required more than 25 visits for improvement, while only 1% did not respond or failed to follow up.

  • Flatulence: Among 669 cases, 65% (436 people) had resolution after 15 sessions, 34% improved after 25+ visits, and just 1% did not respond or were lost to follow-up.

  • Constipation: In a group of 775 patients, 67% (523 people) saw relief within 15 visits, while the remaining 33% responded after extended treatment. Only a fraction of a percent did not improve or follow up.

  • Diarrhea: Out of 2,424 patients, 69% (1,679 people) achieved resolution within 15 sessions, with under 1% failing to respond or complete the program.

  • Eczema: In 76 patients treated for skin symptoms, 50% (38 people) improved within 15 visits, while 2.5% did not respond or complete the program

• Autism-Related Improvements Linked to NAET Intervention
  A randomized, controlled study of 60 autistic children (ages 2.5–10) tested whether treating food and nutrient sensitivities with Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Techniques (NAET) could improve autism outcomes. Thirty children received a year of NAET targeting 50 key allergens, while 30 served as untreated controls. Results showed that 23 of 30 treated children were able to attend regular school classes (wow!!), compared with none in the control group, and the NAET group demonstrated statistically and clinically significant improvements across all four autism-related outcome measures (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/complementary-medicine/201204/new-study-explores-naet-possible-treatment-autism)

• The Doctor who Did that Autism Study above was cured of his allergies … why he did the autism study in the first place
  "I first encountered NAET when my severe hay fever symptoms were eliminated by a 20-minute NAET treatment—and they never recurred! This is what spurred my interest in exploring NAET." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/complementary-medicine/201204/new-study-explores-naet-possible-treatment-autism

• And on a personal note, my son and I were both treated successfully for truly radical allergies and food intolerances.

What the Qi-5 May support — and not

How the Qi-5 May Support the Body

When we talk about “crossed wires,” what we’re really describing is miscommunication within the body’s electrical network. Stress, trauma, inflammation, and chronic overload can scramble those signals — leaving the nervous system stuck in defense mode. In that state, your body thinks it’s under threat. It shifts its energy toward survival, not healing. Inflammation goes up, repair goes down. You might feel this as pain, exhaustion, anxiety, digestive issues, brain fog, or a thousand other “mystery symptoms.” What the Qi-5 does is suggest coherence — it aims to remind your system what safety feels like when confronted by a trigger (albeit an energetic one). When the nervous system feels coherence, it may relax and return to parasympathetic mode — the state of rest, repair, digestion, and regeneration. This is where inflammation drops, tissues repair, hormones rebalance, digestion improves, and mood stabilizes.

In essence, the Qi-5 doesn’t force healing; it sets the stage for it — creating the conditions in which your body can do what it’s always known how to do: heal itself. Because let’s be honest: no healer, device, or supplement can knit your tissues, oxygenate your cells, or repair your gut lining for you. Your body does that. Always has. The best we can do is support it — offer better information, better resources, and a better environment to remember how.

What You may Notice

Results vary, but these are some of the shifts you may see:

• Diminished food Intolerances: Reactions to dairy, wheat, fermented foods, fruit acids (like oranges or apples), or “mystery foods” may calm as the body stops misreading them as threats.

• Diminished environmental allergies: Seasonal allergies, dust sensitivities, or skin reactions to certain plants (like mango rash) may improve as the immune system re-learns what’s safe.

• Improved digestive function: When the nervous system is on high alert, it can overreact to its own stomach acid or enzymes. Once that hypervigilance settles, digestion may become smoother and calmer.

• Improved energy and fatigue: Mounting an inflammatory response is exhausting. When the body stops wasting energy fighting safe foods or emotions, that energy may become available again — for repair, focus, joy, and life.

• Improved emotional and mental regulation: Clients may feel calmer, less reactive, more emotionally stable, and less “wired-and-tired.” The brain fog may lift; the mental spirals may quiet.

In short: when coherence returns to the body’s electrical system, everything that depends on that communication may work better.

What the Qi-5 may not Do

The Qi-5 is not a magic wand or cure-all. It’s one tool among many.

• It cannot kill pathogens or clear infections.
  The Qi-5 supports the terrain and immune system but doesn’t act like an antibiotic or antifungal.

• It cannot change a response to a food because of a diagnosis

  For example, if you have celiac, don’t expect to remove gluten from your dietary list of no-nos.

• It cannot fix mechanical injuries or dysfunctions
  Torn muscles or structural issues need physical repair or therapy.

• It cannot replace nourishment.
  Your body still needs nutrients, minerals, amino acids, healthy fats, hydration, and rest. Think of the Qi-5 as supporting the blueprint and nutrition as supplying the building blocks.

• It cannot override patterns you refuse to change.
  Qi-5 work can support the body, but the environment in which you live, eat, think, and feel still matters. If you’re tired because you’re up all night watching Netflix, it won’t help much with energy. If you’re stomach is sensitive because you drink 3 cups of coffee on an empty stomach in the morning, it may not stop the sensitivity until you change that habit. Healing is a partnership :)

The Bottom Line

The Qi-5 doesn’t do the healing — your body does! What it offers is coherence, clarity, and communication — the ingredients your nervous system needs to remember how to heal, or at least reduce symptoms. When your body receives clear information instead of static, it naturally begins to reorganize toward health. And that’s when the magic happens.

Notes for the scientist

As I mentioned previously, I went on a research mission to better understand how this work

How everything has its own “energetic fingerprint”

Physics Perspective

Everything in the universe really does carry its own energetic fingerprint — not in a mystical way, but in a deeply physical, measurable way. At the atomic and molecular levels, matter interacts with electromagnetic fields — light, infrared, ultraviolet — in ways determined by its structure: the atoms, bonds, and charge distribution. When light or electromagnetic waves hit a molecule, it absorbs or scatters specific frequencies depending on its molecular shape, bonding, and electronic configuration. In fact, vibrational spectroscopy techniques like Raman and infrared (IR) spectroscopy are precisely built on this — they read the “fingerprint region” (often 400–1,500 cm⁻¹) that is unique to each molecule. 1

For example, a peanut molecule will absorb or scatter electromagnetic energy in different patterns than a water molecule or a protein. Those patterns are consistent and reproducible — like a signature. Techniques like Raman spectroscopy can distinguish molecules even at the level of specific functional groups or edge geometries. 2

So in that sense, yes — everything does have a unique energetic imprint, and our scientific tools already use that principle to identify substances, measure purity, and understand structure.

Biological / Living Systems

When we shift the lens from inert matter to living organisms, things become even more fascinating. Living systems don’t just passively carry energetic signatures — they actively generate, modulate, and communicate via bioelectric fields and ion flows. At the cellular level, ion channels and pumps establish membrane potentials (voltages across the cell membrane) and regulate how cells behave: divide, migrate, differentiate, or die. These electrical gradients serve as instructions on how to behave, not just background noise. 3, 4

Cells are also interconnected through gap junctions and electrical synapses, forming networks that let voltage potentials ripple across tissues. In fact, patterns of membrane voltage guide processes like limb regeneration, organ formation, and spatial organization during development. 5, Some researchers argue that bioelectric fields are fundamental to life — that they provide a kind of organizing scaffold or “electrical skeleton” layered atop the biochemical machinery. 6

So living beings don’t just have energetic fingerprints — their biological functioning is an energetic dance: ions flowing, voltages shifting, fields interacting across tissues. That’s the deeper bridge between “energy medicine” ideas and real physiology.

How Cells Communicate energetically:

Cellular Receptors and Vibration

It’s well established in molecular biology that proteins, including cell receptors, are not rigid structures. They constantly shift, oscillate, and change conformation! This is actually central to how they function: a receptor’s shape determines which molecule can bind, and it actually shape shifts (way cool) when it’s activated. In biophysics, we see that these proteins also have natural vibrational modes — essentially, they “resonate” at certain frequencies depending on their structure.

Electrical Signals and Frequencies

Cells also communicate electrically. Ion channels open and close in response to voltage changes, and cell membranes maintain electrical potentials. This is obvious in neurons, but it’s also true in immune cells, fibroblasts, epithelial cells, etc. There’s an entire field called bioelectromagnetics exploring how weak electromagnetic fields influence cell behavior and development. That’s right, energy and frequency alone can change how a cell behaves! This is why new technology, such as low-level laser therapy, is making such a significant impact right now, as it can help induce healing at the cellular level with simple light and frequency (talk about non-invasive healing!).

Biophotons — Light-Based Communication

The idea that living cells emit light is measurable. All living organisms give off ultraweak photon emissions (UPE), often called biophotons. These are spontaneous bursts of light produced by metabolic and oxidative processes in the body — light little chemical reaction explosions — so faint they’re invisible to the eye but not with sensitive photomultiplier equipment. Caught ya! In fact, we now know that biophotons are a universal property of living cells — found in humans, animals, plants, and microbes alike. (7, 8).

What’s even more fascinating is that UPE intensity and pattern appear to reflect physiological state and health — increasing with oxidative stress, aging, or inflammation, and decreasing with antioxidant balance or recovery. This to me, is incredible. Studies have documented measurable differences in photon emission in models of Alzheimer’s disease (9), Type 2 diabetes(10), and during meditation or stress recovery (11).

There’s also preliminary evidence suggesting that biophotons could play a role in cell-to-cell communication or “radiation-induced bystander effects” — how one cell’s stress might influence another nearby without direct contact (12). This field is still emerging and debated, but the fact that living systems radiate faint, structured light — and that this light correlates with physiological balance — opens a profound window into how “energy” and biology may be more intertwined than we’ve realized.