Bob Flaws received training at Shanghai College of Chinese Medicine in acupuncture, tuina and herbal medicine. He currently is the main editor and translator for Blue Poppy Press. He is also a founder, past president and Lifetime Fellow of the Acupuncture Association of Colorado, a founding member of the National Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance, and a Fellow of the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the UK. He has also served as the editor of the Colorado Acupuncturist and the Journal of the National Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He is also a coauthor of an NIH-funded acupuncture research protocol on AIDS-related peripheral neuropathy, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
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.