Clinic-goers in Manchester,

Thank you very much for your patience with the extended parking crunch at Dow Street Plaza, our home in Manchester for the past four years.

We know it's been frustrating for you and has even limited your access to acupuncture treatments here at times.

We know you've had to park in places that have required extra effort for you to enter the clinic.

For what it's worth, it's been a taxing eighteen months for all of us in different ways, once the parking lot became available to a large number of off-site vehicles.

Because of this situation, we've made the decision to move MAS Manchester operations in order to ensure plenty of free parking available to you, period.

When we say we will always work to provide you with access to affordable, acupuncture treatments, we aren't kidding.

This will always come first here.

As it turns out, not only will the next MAS Manchester home clinic offer lots of free, convenient parking – it also sits right on a bus route.

Look for announcements for the date of the grand opening at the East Side Plaza on Hanover Street over the next weeks.

Until then, thanks again for sticking with us.

It's a long-held truism in the realm of Chinese medicine, that Springtime is a favorable time of year to include natural sour-flavored foods to one's plate in small amounts at each meal.

The thinking here is it's an advantage to do so for the parts of our system that are involved in clearing the heavier residues of the winter diet and assisting getting things moving anew upward and outward. 

Read more about recommendations the Chinese medical classics make for us down below.   

Aside from citrus juices like lemons and grapefruit, a number of natural sour-flavored foods can be found among those that are fermented.  Fermented foods are produced or preserved by the action of microorganisms.

Think pickles or sauerkraut or kimchi as common examples. 

Adding to the case for fermented foods in the Springtime, or any time of year for that matter, is information like this that comes out of modern research. This research from the National Institute of Health suggests fermented foods have the measurable effect of aiding the beneficial bacteria in the lower digestive system, but also improves our ability to perform various mental processes such as memory recall, orientation to the outside world, learning and furthering language skills.

The transition from operating as a for-profit for 10 years, to non-profit for the past 2 has been interesting in many ways. In fact, we're planning to write a about this in more length over the next few weeks, here on the blog.
In the meantime, we'll offer up a quick-format review of the year that was 2018 at MAS in the form of an executive summary.
Full-color printed copies are currently available at MAS Manchester & Nashua clinics, in case your heart desires a copy to hold in your hands.

As always, comments, questions and compliments are welcomed via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

At MAS, we know that acupuncture only works when people have access to it. As part of the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture (POCA) our mission is to make acupuncture affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.

That is why we are happy to know New Hampshire now offers tiered-licensing for providers of acupuncture. Lay practitioners such as recovery coaches, peer counselors, and other health professionals can now be certified as Acupuncture Detoxification Specialists, providing a very helpful and specific ear acupuncture point combination.

Last week, the Governor's Recovery Task Force voted unanimously to support this expansion of access to ear acupuncture. You can read more about it here.

This fascinating new research courtesy of the journal Nature. 
It seems to have been determined by gene-engineering zebrafish (naturally), the cellular mechanisms responsible for DNA repair are moving twice as much during sleep as when awake.
Sleep, this suggests, is the time when animals prioritize putting ourselves back together.

(edit: good timing, as this is National Sleep Week, according to those who know things like this!)