When acupuncture doesn’t work
September 25, 2012 by Kristen Horner Warren
Filed under Blog
This article piggy-backs on my last post about How Many Acupuncture Treatments Will I Need? I couldn’t have summarized things any better than Mei Li has, so I will just link directly to her article — I highly recommend that you take the time to read it:
By the time people make it through my door, they are generally exasperated and desperate. This is because the acupuncturist isn’t the first stop for most Americans when they develop a health problem. Most new patients that I see have seen multiple (sometimes even dozens) of MDs, have tried lots of medications, have been to physical therapy, and have undergone a course of chiropractic care; some have already tried (and failed to find relief from) surgery. Understandably, these people want relief and they want it NOW.
But acupuncture generally doesn’t work that way. Certainly there are a handful of people who are such strong responders to acupuncture that a single treatment makes a dramatic and lasting difference. But a much more common response is gradual improvement that takes place over the course of several weeks. This is especially true when a problem is long-standing and/or in patients whose systems are already taxed by a number of health problems.
You see, as exotic as it seems to most Westerners, acupuncture is not magic. The way acupuncture works is by focusing and consolidating your body’s innate healing healing capacity. For this reason, a young person or a person who is generally in excellent health would be expected to respond more quickly and thoroughly to acupuncture than a person who is elderly or a person whose healing capacity is already overwhelmed by numerous chronic health concerns.
