Amy Mager graduated from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1989 and was first licensed to practice acupuncture in CA. Amy has been licensed in MA since 1992. She serves on the AOMSM Board  and serves as its secretary as well as the ASA Board. Amy works on the legislative committee in MA and serves as the Co-Chair of the AOMSM Dry Needling committee as well as serving as a Board Representative to the ASA Dry Needling Committee. She earned her doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine from PCOM in 2018.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) affects more than 15% of the U.S. population but evades most practitioners’ radar. Just five years ago, it wasn’t even on my radar, despite already having 20 years of experience as a clinician at that time. The more I dug (similar to leaky gut and post-COVID syndrome), the more I found my patients were suffering from this disorder.
Research supports the effectiveness of selecting the distal acupuncture points for the treatment of microtrauma and for relieving pain, particularly in cases of chronic shoulder pain. But to make the treatment results long-lasting, clinical experience and research suggest that instead of treating the most painful structure first, we identify the inhibited driver, restore reliable recruitment, confirm it with immediate re-testing, and only then address the painful area as a branch of a deeper pattern.
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The motivation behind our practice of medicine is important, impacting not just our experience but also the experiences of those we treat. It is perhaps for this reason that the aspiration to help not just some, but all beings heal, has historically been an important part of the medical tradition. To explain this, we need to consider how medicine is interwoven with other social domains.