Acupuncture Experience What to Expect

Haultain Health Centre offers a calm, relaxed atmosphere dedicated to healing.
Our acupuncture treatments involve a patient-centred, collaborative and trauma-informed approach, wherein patient safety and comfort are the top priority, with treatments proceeding along the basis of ongoing informed consent.

Our treatment rooms are warm, softly lit, and quiet. For some, time in such a room, away from work and/or family demands is therapeutic in itself.

All acupuncture is performed using industry standard, single-use, sterile stainless-steel needles of varying lengths and gauges appropriate to the needs of the particular treatment. Acupuncture needles are much closer to the width of a human hair than to the width of the more culturally familiar needles used to draw blood.

Treatment is often painless but can produce minor temporary discomfort. More significantly, during treatment patients will experience what is termed the ‘de qi’ sensation upon gentle needle manipulation. This sensation can be difficult to describe, but words such as ‘heaviness’, ‘pressure’, and ‘numbness’ are often used. The ‘de qi’ sensation is considered to be indicative of point location accuracy, and therapeutic value.

In the case of treatment of musculoskeletal or sports injuries, which often involves the use of orthopedic acupuncture in addition to traditional acupuncture, the acupuncture experience can be more intense, involving intentional fasciculations (twitch responses) of muscles. As these twitches are not voluntary, they can be surprising or startling to the patient but are rarely painful. Their therapeutic value lies in their ability to reset muscle lengths and establish improved range of motion and muscular recruitment and balance.

Most commonly during treatment patients report feelings of deep relaxation and well-being, with it not being uncommon for a patient to even fall asleep. This owes to acupuncture’s ability to modulate the parasympathetic nervous system.

For some, it can take a few treatments to be able to reach this level of relaxation, as the novelty and perceived strangeness of the acupuncture experience takes time to become familiar.

The required amount of treatment can vary widely between individuals and is dependent upon many factors. Acute conditions are best treated a few times per week for a few weeks in order to obtain results, while more chronic, long-standing conditions can require long-term, regular ongoing treatment. Treatment for some conditions is best understood and approached as management of symptoms, while other conditions can involve recovery. Expectations and treatment planning that works with patient life schedules are discussed in the initial and subsequent treatments.

It is common for a condition to be treated 6-8 times initially as one course of treatment after which a reassessment and evaluation of progress takes place, with the goal of treating as often as necessary, yet as infrequently as possible.

In some cases, it can take 3-4 treatments to cause a noticeable change, while in others a significant change can, though rarely, take place in a single treatment.

Expecting acupuncture to solve an issue in a single treatment is unrealistic and is similar to expecting incredible results from a single workout at a gym.

Acupuncture is slow medicine. It takes time. It’s neither magical nor mystical.