Lloyd Wright is the current vice president and former president of the Asian Medicine Acupuncturists of Arizona and has served on the California Acupuncture Board, the board of directors of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Arizona Society of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture, and the California Acupuncture Association. He holds a diplomate from the National Board of Acupuncture Orthopedics and served as a qualified medical evaluator for the California workers comp system, as academic dean for two acupuncture colleges, and participated in numerous site visits for school accreditation for the Accreditation Commission of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He is currently in private practice in Scottsdale, Ariz., and in the process of completing his Doctorate of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine at Pacific College of Health Sciences.
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.