Jennifer Waters started her professional work in health and wellness in 1991. She has studied Chinese medicine, nutritional food cures, yoga and meditation for 15 years. For her undergraduate degree from Friends World College at Long Island University in New York, she studied Chinese medicine in the U.S., and also traveled to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Tibet and East Africa. Jennifer received her acupuncture degree from the Oriental Medical Institute of Hawaii in Honolulu in 1998, and became president of an acupuncture practice in Syracuse, New York, later that year.
The motivation behind the "Talking with the Masters" column, according to Ms. Waters, is to raise awareness within the traditional Chinese medicine community by sharing information from practitioners who have reached a level of mastery, and with this awareness, to identify long-term goals that will ultimately benefit the establishment of TCM in America.
She may be contacted at either www.lifesourceacupuncture.com or www.happyuterus.com.
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.
| Digital Exclusive
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.