“How many acupuncture sessions are needed for back pain?”
I have back pain. How many acupuncture sessions are needed for back pain?
13 Answers
Good afternoon, 1. Received. Thank you. 2. Usually, it takes about 8 visits to treat lower back pain via acupuncture therapy. 3. Please contact your acupuncture practitioner for further information. If you shall have any questions, please feel free to contact my office at (562) 698-3008. David
It will be effective once.
Minimum 12 visits but there are lots of variables.
The amount of sessions will depend upon the underlying cause of the back pain. You will feel relief after each session but it is impossible to predict without more information. Regards
It depends on the case, health history. The typical protocol would be 5-6 times, but, again it all depends on the case
Steve Lim
Acupuncturist
It depends on how does the symptom serious. However it takes 5-6 treatments in usual before a patient feels a lot better.
Mr. Anthony James Lorenzo
Acupuncturist
Hard to estimate knowing almost nothing about you. Some people respond to 3-5 treatments, and some take months of weekly treatment and sometimes 2x weekly treatments.
Two-three sessions are needed for back pain.
It's hard to predict the number of sessions needed for back pain without seeing and assessing the patient. Acupuncture combined with massage and herbs is a very effective treatment for back pain, and you should see relief gradually.
4 treatments per year of problem
It depends. If it's acute for under three months, I usually recommend 6 sessions. For chronic, 12 sessions, but after 6 sessions, I would reassess and make a decision on what to do. Depending on the pain scale, I would recommend getting the tx twice a week for the first three weeks.
There is no set number of treatments to treat anything. It all depends on your body and how it responds. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Unfortunately, it's hard to give a concrete answer to the "how many sessions" question. Chinese medicine is an individualized system - this means that Chinese medicine recognizes that not everyone experiences a symptom like back pain for the same reason and not everyone responds to treatment at the same rate.
Some very generalized numbers for you: studies show, across all types of pain, an average number of total treatments in the 8-10 range. Keep in mind this is a population average, there will be people who respond in fewer than 8 treatments and people who require greater than 10.
On top of this, there is roughly a 5% non-response rate at the population level. This means that about 5% of the population do not respond to acupuncture at all. We don't know why this happens and the only way to know if you're in the 5% who don't respond is to try acupuncture. Of course, this also means there is a 95% chance acupuncture will work for any given person.
My general rule of thumb for pain patients is to come for three treatments spaced one week apart. If the patient isn't noticing a difference by the 3rd treatment then either I'm not understanding the problem well enough to apply the correct treatment, or they're in the 5% who aren't going to respond.
Some very generalized numbers for you: studies show, across all types of pain, an average number of total treatments in the 8-10 range. Keep in mind this is a population average, there will be people who respond in fewer than 8 treatments and people who require greater than 10.
On top of this, there is roughly a 5% non-response rate at the population level. This means that about 5% of the population do not respond to acupuncture at all. We don't know why this happens and the only way to know if you're in the 5% who don't respond is to try acupuncture. Of course, this also means there is a 95% chance acupuncture will work for any given person.
My general rule of thumb for pain patients is to come for three treatments spaced one week apart. If the patient isn't noticing a difference by the 3rd treatment then either I'm not understanding the problem well enough to apply the correct treatment, or they're in the 5% who aren't going to respond.
