Recently I’ve been reading what may be the best Chinese medicine textbook I’ve read thus far: Applied Channel Theory in Chinese Medicine. This book is superb both in terms of how it is written and its content and has been upgrading my understanding of the meridians, their functions and how to use acupuncture points therapeutically.

One of the great things about this book are the case studies, and one of them stood out to me as worth discussing on this blog. I want to look it at is less as a way to explore the details of theory and techniques used, and more to illustrate how acupuncture works and what patients can expect in terms of the rate and quality of their healing process.

The patient at hand is a 50 year-old male with chronic intestinal inflammation (colitis). The patient had been experiencing fatigue and diarrhea for 5 years, but in the past year they became worse and accompanied by weight loss. The patient was treated for 12 weeks; twice weekly for the first 3 weeks and once-a-week after that.

“His appetite started to recover by the 3rd treatment. The diarrhea decreased in frequency and volume throughout the first month, with stabilization of bowel movements by the fifth week. The patient showed considerable weight gain by the end of the second month of treatment, and was able to discontinue treatment 12 weeks after initial presentation.”

One of the main things I wanted to show was how acupuncture worked for something akin to IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), aproblem many Americans suffer from with little support from Western medicine. In fact Robertson and Wang exclaim that this case “represent one of the most effective disease categories for acupuncture treatment.” However, it’s also important to note that it took 12 weeks (3 months) for full recovery, and he was going twice a week for the first 3 weeks. Is that a long time? It depends what your expectations are, and what your point of view is, and how you choose to weigh in the fact that the patient had been experiencing symptoms for 5 years. It’s also worth considering that during and after the treatment, the patient was not dependent on medication, and that the issue was fully resolved, he was truly better.

My impression is that many Americans don’t necessarily have the patience (or the financial resources when unfamiliar with community acupuncture) to follow through with a complete treatment and see full results. I’m not trying to make generalizations or put blame on anyone, I just want to explore a different cultural paradigm and how whether or not Acupuncture has a chance to work is influenced by that. If somebody is familiar with how acupuncture works, knows what to expect, and is willing to be patient and committed, one can see results. However, if somebody expects one or two treatments to fix whatever ailment their experiencing (like taking a pill to make the pain go away), they may end up disappointed (this of course does depend the on disease at hand, some problems can be resolved in one or two treatments). That said, one should see some improvement within 2 or 3 treatments, and if they’re not, they may want to consider another acupuncturist or a different modality of healing.

Hopefully this is helpful to those of you out there wondering what to expect from acupuncture and trying to decided whether or not it’s for you.