Acupuncture for Pain

Let’s talk about pain – unfortunately it’s a fact of life that most of us experience. If you have not yet tried acupuncture for pain, you should definitely give it a chance.

I’m not talking about just going in for 1 treatment here, because as much as I’d like it to be true, there is no magic needle. However it is not uncommon (and wonderful) that a patient feels better after 1 or 2 treatments, but since acupuncture works cumulatively, it typically takes a series of treatments to truly affect the underlying cause of pain.

For people with minor pain or pain that has just started, it can take around 5-6 acupuncture treatments to get pain free. Typically seeing a more permanent shift in pain around the 3rd or 4th treatment.

For people with more chronic (1 year +) or challenging pain cases can take 10 or more treatments. Usually starting to see a more significant shift in symptoms around the 6th treatment. Everybody responds slightly differently.

With acupuncture, there are multiple ways to treat the body. Acupuncture is definitely not a one-size-fits-all medicine and sometimes it takes more than a single approach to get it right.

In managing expectations, I often give the analogy that working out for one day doesn’t give you the body of a pro-athlete. Nor does eating healthy for one day reverse years of damaging foods. So if you tried acupuncture for pain once and didn’t get relief I urge you to try it again and to stick with it for 4 or 5 treatments.

Unlike Western medicine, which mostly gives prescription drugs for pain, acupuncture can help address the underlying causes of the pain AND treat the pain itself without side effects. That’s definitely worth a try in my book.