Dr. Heming Zhu is a professor of acupuncture & Oriental medicine and integrative health sciences at the Maryland University of Integrative Health (MUIH); and maintains a private practice in Columbia, Md. He holds a PhD in anatomy and neuroscience, and an MD (China) in neurology, and a Master of Acupuncture from MUIH. He has published more than 20 peer reviewed research articles, authored the book Surface Anatomy of Acupuncture; and is an editor of Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion, 4th Edition.
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.
For those of you unfamiliar with alpha-gal syndrome, it’s been in the news recently for causing Americans to be allergic to meat. It is an acquired allergy to galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, or alpha-gal, a carbohydrate found in mammalian meat and many mammal-derived products. A new case series on auricular acupuncture is so intriguing points toward a viable treatment strategy rather than lifelong dietary restriction alone.
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.