What to Expect

Your first visit will begin with an in depth assessment of your condition and an initial treatment. The intake and treatment may take up to 1 hour. Typical treatments afterwards last approximately 45 minutes.

During the assessment, I may ask you about some things that you might not think are connected to your chief complaint, for example, your emotions, sleeping patterns, and eating habits. Chinese medicine considers the whole person, not just one isolated symptom. When put together, the myriad of symptoms and signs you are experiencing reveal patterns of disharmony. Although treatment will focus on your chief complaint, your whole being must be considered in order to develop the most appropriate course of treatment. Chinese medicine is unique in that it appreciates that illnesses may be identical, but the persons suffering from them are individuals.

Pulse and Tongue Diagnosis

As part of your intake, viewing your tongue and feeling your pulse can provide a Chinese Medical practitioner with a great deal of information about your body to help guide the treatment.

Treatment

My needling technique is very gentle. Although people experience different levels of sensitivity, I work very closely with you to make sure your experience is comfortable and positive.

My approach is always to use the fewest needles possible to achieve therapeutic results. With acupuncture, more needles does not always mean better results, but accurate selection of specific acupuncture points and placement are really the keys giving a excellent treatment.

What to Expect After Treatment

Your relief may be immediate, but the peak effects of treatment usually occur between 3-4 days after treatment. It is important to recognize that we are all individuals. Individual response to treatment varies.

Course of Treatment

As part of your first visit, I will discuss with a proposed course of treatment. Since individuals vary, it is difficult to state definitively at the time of your first visit how many treatments will be required. In general, acute conditions of recent onset generally require fewer treatments, while chronic conditions usually require more treatments to achieve sustained results.

The ideal approach to illness is to begin treatment as soon as possible. The sooner you seek help, the easier it is to treat. For longstanding illnesses, weekly treatments may be required for several months in order to have a curative effect.

Once you initiate a healing process, it is important to follow through on treatments. The more consistent you are, the better the likelihood of results. The effects of acupuncture tend to be cumulative.