Shengrong Liu obtained her Master's degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences in Oakland, Calif. in 2004. She is a California Licensed Acupuncturist and a Diplomate of Chinese Medicine (NCCAOM). She has been practicing Chinese Medicine in Manila, Philippines since 2005. She is a certified Acupuncturist by the Philippine Institute of Traditional & Alternative Health Care – an institution under the Department of Health. She completed her Doctoral degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM) at Five Branches University in San Jose, Calif. in 2015. She is currently organizing a Traditional Chinese Medicine school, the SMIC Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine Inc. in Metro Manila, Philippines.
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.