Dr. Chyrie Ramirez
D.A.C.M. L. Ac. PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR FOUNDER, AD ASTRA HPA
ORIGIN
I grew up watching people push past their threshold then crumble under pressure. I chose a different path.
I’m a doctor of Chinese medicine, an aerospace medicine researcher, a mother, and a member of the Valley Center community in rural San Diego. I didn’t arrive at any of those identities by accident. Each one is part of the same mission to understand what the human body is actually capable of and to help support people as they discover their own potential.
I earned my Doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine (D.A.C.M.) from Pacific College of Health & Sciences and my clinical work has spanned community health, high-performance athletics and now aerospace medicine. The thread connecting all of them has always been the nervous system, the body’s most powerful and underestimated system.
Through mobile acupuncture, cupping and manual therapy, delivered directly to you, I apply the same nervous system science and approach that I study in extreme environments to the extreme environment of everyday high-demand life.
RESEARCH
What happens to acupuncture at zero gravity?
That’s the question I took to the sky. As Principal Investigator for a IIAS-02 parabolic flight campaign study, I designed and executed a crossover research protocol examining auricular (ear) acupuncture as a crew health countermeasure across microgravity (0G), hypergravity (2G), and standard gravity conditions (1G).
The results: zero adverse events across all gravity phase. The protocol held. The body responded and the door to an entirely new application of Chinese medicine (as a tool for spaceflight crew health) opened wide.
Currently, I am completing the manuscript to this research to be peer reviewed. I’ve submitted an application for the Catalyst Grant to the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a NASA-affiliated funding program.
My North Star: becoming a crew health resource for astronauts and eventually becoming an astronaut myself.
COMMUNITY
Valley Center is not a backdrop. It’s the mission.
I live and practice in Valley Center, a rural community in San Diego County. I’m enrolled for th inaugural Community Leadership Academy to learn the inner working and how to best support our local fire district, sheriff’s office, water district and school systems. I donate to local schools and attend local events. I’m building a monthly community regulation night specifically for our first responders, teahers and parents who are overstimulated and underregulated.
I grew up here and know that the people keeping this community alive deserve the same quality of care I bring to elite athletes and aerospace professionals. Ad Astra HPA is mobile because recovery shouldn’t require a commute into the city.
Ad Astra Human Performance Acupuncture 