Acupuncture can be a powerful treatment for a wide range of health concerns. Some patients come to me for help with everyday ailments brought on by our stressful modern lifestyle such as fatigue, headaches, and insomnia. Others consult me for expert care with serious issues like gastrointestinal disorders, back pain, and side effects of cancer and its treatment. Often, people turn to acupuncture after countless visits to other doctors and practitioners. Whatever the reason behind their decision to seek acupuncture treatment, however, patients should understand beforehand how they can get the most out of it.
If you come to acupuncture after trying to address your ailment with medicine and other forms of treatment, it will be unrealistic to expect acupuncture to fix your problem in one visit. Acupuncture, an ancient form of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), takes a holistic approach to resolving illnesses in the body. As such, depending on the situation, it may require time in order to fully address the underlying issues that are impacting a patient’s health. Only in that way can acupuncture treatments be optimally effective and restore the patient to a state of balanced wellness.
Generally speaking, where acupuncture is concerned the rule of thumb is that acute conditions may require between one and three treatments in total. Chronic issues that are more complex and difficult to resolve will likely require closer to ten treatments. Some patients who are suffering from a mystery illness or a difficult to diagnose condition come to me after exhausting all their other options. It’s important that they understand that, just as with many forms of Western medicine, acupuncture is not a magic wand that can cure them in a single session. If a patient discontinues treatment after one session they will likely be disappointed with the results. And, even more importantly, they will be back to square one when they could have seen considerable improvement had they simply allowed the treatment to run its proper course.
Acupuncture can deliver profound and long lasting health benefits. It can even help point the way toward a diagnosis that has been difficult to achieve. But it can only deliver its best results if a patient is committed to seeing the treatment through from start to finish. When everyone is on the same page about this, we are most likely to enjoy success in the form of a happy, healthy, and energetic patient who is ready to enjoy his or her life to the fullest once more.
