Christine Dionese, a graduate of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine works bi-coastal in both California and New York. She is an integrative health specialist, medical and food journalist and co-founder of Garden Eats, an organic gardening and food therapy business. Christine's private practice highlights the field of psychoneuroendocrinology which explores the dynamic connections between neuropsychology, endocrinology and immunology. Her devotion to patient awareness and advocacy is evidenced through this result-driven, multi-disciplinary practice style which integrates Chinese medicine, functional environmental medicine, acupuncture and clinical nutrition. Currently, Christine is working on a medicinal culinary therapy book incorporating Chinese herbal medicine and kitchen garden wisdom for the modern eater. Visit Christine at her website christinedionese.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.