Treatment Sessions

Acupuncture Treatment Sessions

Of course, there’s no one size- fits all answer to anything when it comes to healthcare – each patient needs a treatment plan that’s geared for their exact needs. During the first visit, we are concerned with all aspects of your health. Details of medical, surgical, and family history and other lifestyle habits need to be collected. Next, a general physical examination is conducted, like your pulse, abdomen, and tongue will all be assessed. Your first acupuncture treatment session will usually involve the needling of the front and back of the body or a specific local area of the body, depending on the circumstances.

There are three normal levels of care – each with its own treatment frequency. We will first figure out where you are and then develop a customized treatment plan for you.

Acute-Care

Acute-Care focuses on the here and now – mainly dealing with more current conditions or shorter-term care. Here’s a few examples where you would need Acute-Care treatment. Suppose you suffered a recent injury or are dealing with a short-term ailment. Maybe you came down with travelers diarrhea, sprained your ankle in the last few days, or recently you got pregnant and are dealing with morning sickness. You’re having an acute flare-up of a chronic condition or a condition that was previously in remission. You’ve been dealing with your symptoms for a long time, but you’re new to Acupuncture. In the Acute-Care phase, your treatment plan would be a little more aggressive. You could expect to come in for Acupuncture treatment at once a week for a few weeks. Someone with a severe injury will need more frequent treatments for a shorter period. But individuals working on chronic conditions might have their treatments spaced further apart but should expect to commit to a longer process. We need to remember, it’s usually taken years for our chronic symptoms to manifest. The acute care phase lasts until your symptoms are relieved or your health goals are met. Then we move on to the transitional care phase.

Transitional-Care

So, at this point, your symptoms have improved to the point that you’ve met your immediate health goals. Now what? You can’t just quit cold turkey. Right. In the transitional care phase, we start to spread the appointments further out – but not so far that the symptoms begin to come back! If that happens, it means that your body can’t go that long between treatments right now. So, we’ll keep pushing your appointments out further and further until we find your sweet spot. Then you can choose to move on to the third level – maintenance care.

Maintenance-Care

Maintenance care is continued things that should be routine, like changing your car’s oil filter to stay out of other or recurring chronic conditions. What’s your sweet spot? It’s the time that you can go between appointments before your body gets out of balance and trouble arises. Everyone’s sweet spot is going to be different. Many of our patients do best when they come in for monthly or bimonthly treatments. Others can go once every 3 months in order to feel great!

Unfortunately, most of us take better care of our cars and bikes than we do ourselves. We’re conditioned to remember to get oil changes every 3,000 miles on our vehicles. But when it comes to getting our own tune-ups! Using Acupuncture as preventative Medicine and self-care can save you lots of time, money, energy, and lots of pain in the long run.