FAQ for Acupuncture Treatment

Question 1: What conditions can acupuncture be used to treat?
Answer: Acupuncture is an independent branch of medicine that can be used to treat essentially all medical conditions, ranging from cold to cancer; it is not just limited to treating pain symptoms, that is really an entry level understanding of the practice.

Question 2: How does the treatment work?
Answer: To make it easy to understand, the human body has a number of channels for energy flow. When these channels are blocked, there are symptoms of disease, such as pain, infection, or dysfunctions of various kinds. On the other hand, if you restore the flow of energy, the symptoms go away. The goal of acupuncture treatment is to unblock the energy flow by stimulating the body with needles.

Question 3: How soon should we expect to see a change?
Answer: If you do it right, for pain symptoms, you should see changes in a matter of minutes, or less, unless it is an extreme condition.

Question 4: How many sessions are needed for my condition?
Answer: It depends on the severity of your condition. The best way to make a prediction is to extrapolate from progress made already.

Question 5: Are there any risks with acupuncture treatment?
Answer: There could be minor bleeding/bruising, which is rare. Some patients experiences pain, but it does not last a long time, it should be gone in a few hours. In cases where patients are extremely nervous, they may experience light-headedness, which happens to probably 1% of patients.

Question 6: How long does a session of treatment last?
Answer: It is recommended to leave the needles in for 30 minutes to achieve good results. Usually the longer you leave them in the better.

Question 7: How often should I get treated?
Answer: For minor issues, once every other day would be good. If you experience serious problems, best to have treatment done daily. If you wait for a long time in between sessions, some improvement could fade away, unless of course after a session of treatment all your problems got resolved.

Question 8: Is it painful?
Answer: It is just like a mosquito bite. In fact, even 6-year olds can take them, so there is not much to worry.
Unlike others, we use minimal number of needles to achieve the same results whenever possible, so there is less pain for treatment compared to at other places.

Question 9: How long does the effect of the treatment last?
Answer: If you problems is corrected in one session, which does happen often here, you do not need to worry, unless you have another episode of the same problem.
Depending on how your problem started in the first place, we have different expectation of the situation. If it is the result of an accident, when you symptoms go away, unless you have another accident, you should not get your problems back; however if your problem is related to your diet or lifestyle, unless you have the root corrected also, likely eventually the problem will come back. We do assist our patients to overcome these problems also.

Question 10: Any precautions after the treatment?
Answer: No food or drinks within one hour after the treatment, if possible. No spicy food or alcohol before your next session.

Question 11: How about before treatment, any preparation needed?
Answer: Best not to eat or drink too much before the appointment.

Question 12: My previous acupuncturist placed a number of needles near where I had pain, do you do the same?
Answer: That style is typical of entry level expertise. The original Chinese acupuncture system utilizes the energy flow in the body to treat different symptoms, usually that is away from the site of the problems. Also if you do it right, you do not need to use many needles, one or a couple should be sufficient, but you get far better results. The modern school of acupuncture treatment is an extension of the thoughts from electro-physiology, rather than from ancient Chinese philosophy, with mostly Taoist thoughts. That is why not only the methods are drastically different, but also the results.