New patients sometimes ask me, “Why do I have to come to acupuncture so often?” It is a particularly relevant question in a society like ours where doctors are visited to ‘fix’ a broken part but play very little role in keeping us healthy. Traditional Chinese Medicine has a different philosophy as well as a different practice.Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs and Cupping are healing and they do a wonderful job of repairing you, but my philosophy is not that you are broken, but that you are out of balance. In Chinese Medicine, the onset of serious or uncomfortable symptoms indicates that you’ve been unhealthy and out of balance prior to your uncomfortable symptom – maybe for a long time!
To answer the original question, “Why do I have to come to acupuncture appointments so often?” I have explained that my goal is to return you to a healthy state of being, where symptoms don't return. This takes time. Your body has work to do to reclaim and sustain health. Think of it as similar to taking a course of antibiotics regularly for a period of time in order to kill the infection; one strong pill is not enough to last. Acupuncture often will give you relief quickly, sometimes immediately, but to sustain the results, you need treatments over time.
The number of acupuncture treatments needed depends on you and on the length of time that your problem has existed. If your difficulty has bothered you for years, you will need a good deal more treatment than someone else who wrenched their back last week. In the latter case, maybe only a couple of treatments are needed. It will depend on the extent of the imbalance and how quickly their body responds. Even then, treatments are still more effective when you have them closer together. The most effective way to use acupuncture is to start with appointments that are scheduled close together and slow them down as you feel the results.
Here is a common example: a patient who has suffered from intense sciatica for 4 months might start treatment at 2 appointments per week. Often, this patient will feel relief after 1 or 2 sessions but needs to continue coming in 2 times a week for the first 2-4 weeks. After that, as the relief continues, we reduce appointments to 1 time per week, moving to alternate weeks and continuing to taper off sessions as the pain is lessened and the pain relief lasts longer and longer until it is hopefully gone for good.