Dr. Claudia Citkovitz began her acupuncture studies in a New York kung fu studio in the 1990s, and has been licensed in acupuncture and herbal medicine since 2002. Since 2004 she has led the Acupuncture Service at NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, providing inpatient acupuncture instruction and conducting practice-based research in labor and delivery and acute stroke rehabilitation. In addition to private practice, she is an active educator online and at colleges in the U.S. and abroad, and recently published a book on acupressure and acupuncture during birth. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; a commissioner on the board of ACAOM, the accrediting body for U.S. acupuncture schools; and a Society for Acupuncture Research board member.
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.