Autoimmune and inflammatory conditions
Living with an autoimmune condition often means living with a body whose own intelligence has turned against it. The diagnosis, when it comes, frequently arrives after a long period of something being wrong but not yet named: fatigue that does not make sense, pain that moves, symptoms that do not fit cleanly into any category. By the time most people come to see me, they have been through a great deal.
Conventional medicine has made real advances in managing many of these conditions. What patients are often still looking for is support for everything outside the primary disease markers: the fatigue between flares, the pain, the quality of daily life.
How I approach it
East Asian Medicine does not treat autoimmune disease by diagnosis. It treats the person who has it. In practice, that means looking carefully at the full pattern: where inflammation is most active, what triggers flares, how sleep and digestion and mood are affected, what depletes the body and what restores it.
A 2025 narrative review published in Autoimmunity Reviews, drawing on two decades of randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, found that acupuncture downregulated inflammatory cytokine expression, supported regulatory immune cell differentiation, and engaged the body’s own anti-inflammatory pathways in conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s disease, and Sjogren’s syndrome. These are not peripheral effects. For patients managing complex, long-standing conditions, they can make a meaningful difference in how a day feels, even when the underlying disease remains.
The fatigue associated with autoimmune conditions is worth naming specifically. It is distinct from ordinary tiredness and does not resolve with rest. It is a recognized pattern in East Asian Medicine with a specific treatment approach, and it is often what patients most want addressed, even when it falls outside what their specialist can offer. Many patients report meaningful improvements in energy and daily function over a course of treatment.
Where inflammation and digestive symptoms are closely linked, as they often are in IBD, Crohn’s, and conditions involving gut-immune dysregulation, there is more on how I approach that on the digestive health page.
Working within your existing care
I work regularly alongside rheumatologists, gastroenterologists, and other specialists. My role is to support what their medical team cannot fully address: the fatigue, the pain, the body’s overall resilience. I draw on acupuncture and frequently on Chinese herbal medicine, which has a particularly well-developed framework for addressing inflammation and immune regulation from within. This is integrative care, not an alternative to what you already have in place.
If you are on immunosuppressant medication, acupuncture is safe with appropriate precautions. I will always ask about your current medications and medical history before treatment and am glad to communicate with your specialist when that is useful. Where myofascial restriction is part of your pain pattern, trigger point therapy and dry needling can also be part of the work.
If you are managing an autoimmune or inflammatory condition and looking for more support, the first visit is where we can begin to look at the whole picture.