John Scott is a doctor of Oriental medicine currently in practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has been in private practice since 1982. He is the founder and president of Golden Flower Chinese Herbs Inc. John has been active in promoting oriental medicine on a local, state, national and international level. He has taught classes in the field and has been active in research. His particular passion for Chinese herbal medicine has guided his writing and teaching. He has continued to combine acupuncture with Chinese herbal medicine in his private practice. He was also awarded "Acupuncturist of The Year" by the American Association of Oriental Medicine in 1997.
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.