When doing acupuncture treatment, how long does each treatment take? How many treatments usually take effect? How does the treatment feel?

 Acupuncture treatment takes about 1 hour on average each time (vary from 45 mins to 90 mins). As for how many treatments can be effective, it varies from person to person and from disease to disease. Since acupuncture is different from injection, no medicine enters your body. Whether or how it works depends entirely on each person's response to the stimulus. Therefore, the same kind of disease can have very different effects on different people. For example, for low back pain, some people only need 1 treatment to fully recover, while some people need 5 or more treatments to be effective, and some people even do 10 times and no effect at all. Even if the same person cured the back pain with acupuncture a few years ago, the back pain recurred after a few years, and it took 10 times to get the same treatment effect from the same doctor! Why is this happening? The reason may be that the patient's physical fitness was relatively strong a few years ago, so the response to acupuncture was better. In addition, it was a new injury a few years ago, but now it is an old one, and its recovery is more difficult than before. This situation has occurred. In general, for first-onset illnesses, for young and healthy patients, fewer treatments are needed for rehabilitation. On the contrary, more treatments are needed for chronic diseases, the average number of treatments required to take effect is 5-10 times. Therefore, patients should have enough patience and psychological preparation, and should not give up after doing 1-2 times without results. Instead of doing this, it is better not to start. Because this is not only useless for the disease, but also a waste of your time and money.

 

The response to acupuncture treatment also varies greatly from person to person. Usually after the needle is given, the patient will have the so-called "needle sensation" of soreness, numbness, swelling, and pain. Sometimes I feel that this kind of needle sensation is conducted far away. However, there are also some people who have no feeling after the needle but still work. In some patients with pain, the pain increased in the first two days after treatment, and then the pain gradually disappeared and healed. There were also patients whose symptoms were relieved the day after the injection, and gradually healed later. Some patients improved immediately after treatment, but saw relapses in the future, but the general trend is still to recover gradually. Some people use electro-acupuncture better, some people don't. While some people use strong stimuli to be effective, some people actually make the symptoms worse. Therefore, for the first 1 or 2 treatments, the doctor and the patient must have a period of response and adjustment, and then continue to use the treatment plan that is suitable for the individual patient.

 

If the patient is completely ineffective after 5 consecutive treatments, we can suspect that acupuncture may not help the patient’s problem. At this time, most of the patients will discuss with the patient whether they should continue. Since many patients who came to our clinic had tried various other treatments before acupuncture and moxibustion, this acupuncture was the last attempt before the surgery operation, so even though 5 treatments failed, they were unwilling to give up casually. Some people continue to insist on doing it until 15 times before they see the effect and get alleviated. Two days after stopping treatment because 10 treatments were ineffective, some people suddenly called and said that the pain suddenly disappeared this morning. These phenomena further illustrate the individual differences of acupuncture and the unpredictability of its curative effect.

 

Although in government hospitals in China, acupuncture treatment is usually performed once a day, and the entire course of treatment is completed 10 times or more in consecutive days. However, our experience in private practice in the US over the past ten years has found that patients receive treatment during the first two weeks of treatment. The treatment is twice/three times a week, and then changed to once a week, which can also achieve good results.

 

Many acupuncture and moxibustion advertisements currently on the market claim that many diseases can be "cured". However, according to medical research, there is not much evidence to prove that acupuncture can reverse the damaged tissue structure and return to normal. For example, intervertebral disc herniation or osteoarthritis, acupuncture can relieve the symptoms and improve the function for a long period of time, but this does not mean that acupuncture has "radically cured" the disease, because the herniated disc or worn-out joint cartilage is still There, acupuncture only opened up the meridians, eliminated inflammation and edema, and made the patient "healed" consciously. If the patient does not pay attention to exercise or protection but suffers trauma or is attacked by wind, cold, or dampness, the old disease can recur at any time. And after relapse, it may be more difficult to treat than last time. Therefore, for certain chronic degenerative patients, we often recommend that the patient maintain regular exercise (such as swimming, Tai Chi, etc.) to maintain the efficacy and avoid recurrence. For individual patients in need, we still recommend regular acupuncture and moxibustion (for example, once a month) for maintenance. Facts have proved that many patients can stay in good condition for a long time and avoid surgical treatment as long as they are well protected.