Dr. Juan Liu received a Master of Science in Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City in 2011. She is a licensed Oriental medicine practitioner in the state of New York. Prior to studying Chinese medicine, Juan earned a bachelor's degree in medical technology from the University of St. Louis at Baguio City, The Philippines. After she graduated, as a missionary she went back to the Philippines to join the mission of her sister, Shengrong Liu, LAc, to practice Chinese medicine at the St. Francis Natural Health Care Center in Quezon City, Metro Manila, The Philippines. In 2016, they started the first comprehensive Chinese medicine school, the SMIC institute of Chinese Medicine Inc. Currently, there are two courses being offered: one is TCM, the other is acupuncture. Juan received her doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in 2020.
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.