Dr. Sherry Mizumoto is an experienced doctor of Chinese medicine, acupuncturist and herbologist licensed in Hawaii, California and nationally. She has been an educator at Pacific College of Health and Science, served in the oncology department at University of California San Diego, and is now committed to her private practice in Lahaina. She received earned a Master of Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine (MSTOM) and Doctorate of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM), and studied and trained abroad at the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chengdu, China. In addition, she was fortunate to visit Tibet and engage and observe their unique form of medicine.
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.