While you are free to do whatever you want with coming in for treatment, we like to remind people that the dosing does matter. We treat so many people and see amazing progress for most of them – we would hate for you to miss out on the benefits of acupuncture because you didn’t come in at the correct frequency for it to work.
General recommendations
Acupuncture treatments are cumulative, so we recommend coming once per week for 8-10 weeks for you to improve as much as possible. After this has occurred we suggest you come once every 2/3 weeks – you can determine this by seeing how long since you’ve seen us until the symptoms return. If it’s 2 weeks until they return, come in once every 2 weeks. If it’s 3 weeks to a month, then come in once every 3 weeks to a month.
After this has occured, we find many of our patients recover faster if they injure themselves again and need to return – for example maybe it took 3 months of once a week to recover from tweaking their back doing outdoor work, but when they injure it again doing outdoor work, it may take only 4 weeks.
Severe/Acute Pain
If your condition is severe/acute we recommend 2x per week for the first 2 weeks and then go to once a week.
General Wellness
If you care coming in for general wellness, we recommend coming in at every season shift, so 4 times a year – September, December, March, June. Our bodies go through adjustments every season shift, and acupuncture can help this process.
Frequency if You Have Allergies
If you have allergies, we recommend you come in once a week the season before you get the allergies. For example, if you get allergies every fall, come in June – August, and then tailor off to once every 2/3 weeks or once a month during fall. It’s much more effective to work to prevent the allergies than to treat them when they’ve already started. Your body still does respond to allergy treatments while you have allergies, but your results will be significantly better if you follow this advice.
Frequency for Pregnancy
If you are going through IUI/IVF:
We recommend acupuncture once a week during this process to harmonize the body. But for best results, it’s also ideal to also get acupuncture the day before/day of your IUI/IVF and the day after.
If you are turning a breach baby:
For best results, we recommend 2x a week acupuncture between weeks 34 to 36. We do like to start at week 32 if you can, for best results, but weeks 34-36 are the most important weeks for this. The goal of this is to gently move the body to do what it wants to do, which is to have the baby naturally turn, without forcing the process if there is a reason it shouldn’t happen. If you have zero time, we recommend coming in once, and we will teach you how to use moxa for breach babies. We also recommend making sure your doctor has given you exercises for this, and we recommend speaking with a chiropractor you trust as well.
If you tend to miscarry:
We especially recommend you come in once a week in the first 3 months. Acupuncture is also idea once a week during a pregnancy, but the first 3 months are the most critical time to do miscarriage prevention.
If you are getting acupuncture to promote fertility:
We recommend once a week for 30 and older. If you are below the age of 30 and not in a hurry to give birth, you can also choose to come in once every 2 weeks. For best results we also recommend taking herbal therapy in addition to acupuncture. We are happy to work with your doctor and provide them info on the formulas we use, which are made to support each week of a woman’s cycle.
Why Does Coming in At A Certain Frequency Matter?
There is no medication on the needles. Acupuncture works because of many reasons, but I notice it helps when I explain its promoting better circulation and wherever this happens, the body has a better chance of healing. It also works because it reduces inflammation. It also seems to calm down pain responses – like the severe pain when a nerve is injured. There is research on it regulating hormones and neurotransmitters and much anecdotal evidence of it having a regulatory impact on patients. Think of acupuncture kind of like an adaptogen. From what I have seen, it seems to help many different systems in the body function better. But all these processes seem to take time – so coming in at the dosing we recommend really does make a difference. We have seen amazing impacts on patients who receive regular acupuncture, and we want you to have the best chance to get these results as well.
When Acupuncture Doesn’t Work
I typically tell people I should see results by treatment 4-6. If by 6 treatments in we don’t see it, we talk about what to do next and why. Sometimes it’s adjusting the treatment strategy. Sometimes patients need a little more than the average number of treatments to get results. From my years of experience, this can happen for different reasons.
- You may be at the point of needing surgery. For example, sometimes there’s just been too much damage at a spine and it’s time for surgery. Or if a tendon or ligament is torn more than 50%, it may be time for surgery.
- You need more than the average amount of treatments: We get alot of people who don’t do acupuncture until they’ve tried everything else and had years of pain. By that time, it’s hard to get the body to respond to acupuncture and will take more than the average treatments. I can estimate this by the length of time it takes their body to respond. So for example (and this is for people in this scenario, with years of pain), we are on treatment 6 and they are only better the evening of the treatment, I know it’s going to be probably the triple the average time of most people. But the fact that they are improving is still progress. We have a talk about is this sustainable for them, because I estimate it will take 6-12 months of acupuncture to get to a 6 level pain instead of 10 level pain and to be able to do certain activities again. I realize this means once a week appointment, may depend on insurance coverage, and is a commitment of time and energy, so it’s important to be honest in these conversations.
- You feel worse after treatments at first and this is unbearable. Sometimes someone has just been through too much. It is unfortunately, usually these patients who feel worse after treatment for the first 4-6 treatments. If they hang in there, between treatments 4-6 things start to improve, but it’s slow. Sometimes people are ready to keep trying. Sometimes they are not. Usually these are the worse cases, and they have already done surgery a few times and are on pain meds that aren’t helping enough. I always support the choice someone makes in this situation because none of this is easy for them.
- You are on a medication, and I am trying to treat the side effects of the medication with acupuncture: For whatever reason, when it is a mediation causing the side effects, I don’t get good results. As soon as a doctor adjusts the medication, the acupuncture starts working.
Acupuncture Nirvana 