Mariola Strahlberg spent 25 years in the corporate information technology world (Bell Laboratories and Telecom Italia) with its crazy hours, high stress, unhealthy diet, and difficult relationships. In 1999, she earned a Master of Science in Acupuncture with honors from Tri-State College of Acupuncture in NYC with a specialty in Japanese acupuncture, then became a certified enzyme nutritional therapist, licensed Brain Gym consultant/instructor, a certified color acu-light therapy (Colorpuncture) practitioner. She also has extensive training in the application of therapeutic-grade essential oils and tuning forks in Oriental medicine. She works with both adults and children who experience difficulties in their lives.
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.