Dr. LiMing Tseng is the chair of American Society of Acupuncturists (ASA) Conference Committee. She is a licensed acupuncturist and national leader in the acupuncture profession with 25 years of experience. She has served in various leadership roles, including past founding secretary of the ASA, ASA Conference Committee chair, and co-chair of the ASA & NCCAOM Cultural Competency Task Force. LiMing is an adjunct professor at the New England School of Acupuncture at MCPHS. She is dedicated to advancing inclusive diversity, equity, and access within health care. She has presented talks at numerous conferences and webinars. When not volunteering or teaching, LiMing provides acupuncture medicine care for her patients in the small resort town of Stowe, Vt.
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.