Clare Foley

Clare Foley is a biophysicist and a licenced naturopathic acupuncturist. She advises on healthcare that integrates the best of all evidence-based techniques.

She trained as an acupuncturist and naturopath with the College for Naturopathic Medicine in Dublin for four years. After spending a month in Beijing doing intensive training in acupuncture with the Beijing University for Traditional Chinese Medicine, she was so impressed with the medical system, which fully integrated TCM with conventional medical care, that she decided to return for a longer period. She spent a further six months in China training at the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing. She learned to speak Mandarin Chinese at an elementary level to communicate with doctors and patients and received one-on-one training from expert doctors using acupuncture in a wide range of hospital departments.

While running a practice in Ireland, she was plagued with idea that the exact mechanisms of acupuncture were unknown although the effects were clear in her patients. Realising that biological research was somewhat unequipped to address the true mechanisms of acupuncture, she went on to study biophysics. She received her undergraduate science degree in Experimental Physics and Biology from Maynooth University, Ireland in 2015. She followed that with a two-year Masters in Biophysics at the KU Leuven in Belgium, 2018. Doing fundamental research on single neurons in live animals gave her insight into global brain dynamics, the cutting-edge of neuroscience research today. She has developed an understanding of the mechanisms of acupuncture to a depth that is rare in the field. She continues to develop and publish her theories to date