Your acupuncturist will always recommend a course of treatment. This is your “dose” of the medicine (acupuncture) that will get you the best results. A typical course of treatments is around 10-20 sessions for adults and 6-12 sessions for children.

There are a variety of factors that will determine what would be best for you, such as the severity of the condition you are coming in for and how long you have had said condition. In general, the more severe your condition, the more acupuncture you will want to get in a short period of time. Less severe conditions generally require fewer acupuncture treatments to get relief. Also, the more acute something is, the shorter it is to resolve it and the more chronic something is, the longer it takes to resolve it.

The effects of acupuncture treatments build upon themselves, so it is especially important in the beginning to get treatments as close together as possible. Spacing your acupuncture treatments too far apart can hinder momentum and cause your condition to return back to where it originally was.

Typically, an acupuncturist will recommend 1-2 treatments per week for a couple of weeks to get the issue under control, and then once symptoms begin to resolve, you will come in less frequently, perhaps once a week or once every 2 weeks for a time as the issue continues to resolve. You do not need to get frequent treatment forever, just until the symptoms are under control, then you can taper off.