“How Long Do the Effects of Acupuncture Last?”
© 2020 by Dr. David B. Meredith, D.Ac.
Acupuncture does not quite line up with the paradigms of other medicine that Americans are more familiar with.
The needles are solid stainless steel and don't inject you with medicine like a hypodermic needle. (In fact, about twenty acupuncture needles can fit into the hole of one hypodermic needle, so even if they could inject something, it wouldn't be very much.) So the effects are not as predictable as a chemical reaction in the body.
Acupuncture is a therapy, which means it leads progressively to a healthy goal, but it's not a physical or talk therapy where, under guidance, the patient does all the active work to get the results.
The results, however, can depend upon the patient's lifestyle, age, physical condition, and habits . . . and they definitely depend upon the length of time the symptom has been present. Acute issues clear up before chronic ones, for example. People who eat a certain way can have some kinds of symptoms resolve faster than people who eat a different way. Younger people's immune symptoms usually respond more strongly than older people's.
I think of acupuncture as a balance between, on the one hand, all of those things the patient is bringing to the table and, on the other hand, the intervention I am able to make with acupuncture in the allotted hour. I almost always get a noticeable result during a treatment or in the couple of days afterward . . . but what does it mean to get a result, and how long does it last?
I consider a result to be some percentage of improvement (even 100 percent) of the symptom as a result of the treatment, but due to the balance I mentioned above, this improvement is usually either incomplete or temporary, maybe lasting a few days. That's where the therapy aspect comes in, because next time we do that treatment, it may last longer, and then longer still. So instead of "How long do the effects of acupuncture last?" some more useful questions may be "How long will I need acupuncture therapy to completely resolve this issue?" or "How can I modify my lifestyle and habits to facilitate the balance of the acupuncture treatment away from the symptom?"
The good news is that, once we gauge the results of a couple of treatments, it becomes much easier to generate a prognosis for the course of the therapy, and it usually becomes clear which lifestyle changes may be useful to help shorten the recovery time. If the symptom reduces two days the first time, then three, then five, then nine (patterns of improvement like this are common), then we can predict what sort of treatment and maintenance plan it will take to keep it gone full time. If on the other hand, if you feel better for three days after every treatment, we need to either look for another acupuncture style or see what other interventions are necessary.
All of this may sound more complicated than a physician telling you how long a painkiller will last, but the benefit of this approach is that we are usually talking about a true healing of the issue, not just a masking of the symptoms.