Dr. Joseph Audette is chief of pain management at Atrius Health in Boston and the current president of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (AAMA). He is a graduate of and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. His research on acupuncture for the treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome has been sponsored by the NIH and was mentioned as a seminal study by The New York Times. He is an internationally recognized investigator in acupuncture, winning the ICMART Science Award (The International Council of Medical Acupuncture and Related Techniques) for the most influential study on acupuncture in 2017. While completing his residency at Columbia University, he attended the Tristate Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine in New York. Dr. Audette is a recognized authority in dry needling techniques for the treatment of pain and point verification methods of acupuncture, and he has been teaching the Kiiko style of acupuncture for over 20 years.
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.