Brian Lau is certified in both sports medicine acupuncture and structural integration. He has been on faculty since 2013 with the Sports Medicine Acupuncture Certification (SMAC) program, where he teaches anatomy and physiology, assessment and treatment of the channel sinews (jingjin), and myofascial release. He leads regular dissection for students, both within SMAC and in other venues. Brian is also a veteran tai chi and qigong instructor, teaching local, regional and online classes. In addition to teaching, he owns and operates Ideal Balance Center for Sports Medicine Acupuncture in Tampa, Fla. For more information, visit https://www.sinewchannels.com/.
Fertility acupuncture sometimes gets presented as a narrow protocol: a handful of reproductive points applied uniformly across patients. What this case reinforced for me: The most powerful work happens when we read the whole picture. The hormone data, the constitutional tendency, the sleep, the digestion, and the menstrual pattern, so we can treat the environment the ovaries live inside.
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.
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.