Dr. Yiwei Wang is a veteran in the field of Chinese medicine, despite his age. He had been reciting herb poems and TCM classics since 6th grade and studying Chinese medicine for 10 years before becoming a TCM physician in China at age 25. He earned a diploma and bachelor's degree in acupuncture and tuina from Jiangsu Union Technique school and the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, respectively; a master's degree in integrative medicine of TCM and biomedicine from Wannan Medical College; and as of 2023 is pursuing his doctoral degree at AOMA Graduate School of Integrative 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.