Caroline La, a graduate of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (now PCHS), has more than a decade of experience treating patients. She has worked alongside naturopathic doctors, integrative functional medical doctors and reproductive endocrinologists, and specializes in treating infertility, women's health, digestive disorders, and difficult-to-treat chronic illnesses with herbal medicine and acupuncture. Caroline is also the owner of Longevity CBD, offering products that combine CBD with other minor cannabinoids such as CBG, CBN and CBC with researched backed botanicals. For more information, visit www.longevitycbd.co.
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.