“How long does acupuncture take to work for sciatica?”

Instantly

It all depends on the cause of your sciatica. If it's coming from pressure.

We will exam 1st. Then provide dry needling 1st. Patients will find instant results in general.
Depending on patients’ medical histories and conditions, each patient will have different responses. Patients will have to follow up in 3-7days depending on severity.
Patients will be examined again on how much difference they have experienced since the initial acupuncture treatment.
Then we can give patients a plan for symptomatology.
If we find limitations in improvements, we will apply different plans as a holistic approach.

Well, everyone's situation (or cause &/or response) is different so it can take a good while to resolve. When people are treated in my clinic, I tell them you'll know after your first treatment if this is right for you or not. I then recommend a course (or series) of treatment. If you feel
you're not getting the results you had hoped, please communicate this to your practitioner so they may be of the best help to you. You may need a referral out to Ortho or further diagnostic testing to rule out a more serious cause for your sciatic pain, but if you're not communicating your experiences with your Acupuncturist they can't fully help.

It depends on your specific situation, generally, one time will be effective.

Most patients should see some improvement after the first few treatments. Depending on how long you have had the sciatica or how severe it is will affect how long it takes before seeing more lasting relief. Typically chronic conditions (have lasted more than 3 months) take longer to treat. Your provider should give you an estimated timeline for treatment based on your specific condition.

Hello, it depends on the patient and many other factors. If you are seeing an acupuncturist currently I would direct the question to your provider.

Acupuncture, massage and herbs can help relieve sciatica problems. The amount of sessions needed depend on the sessions frequency and severity of your sciatica.

Excellent question, however, some patients respond within 3-5 sessions and for others it takes 10-15 to feel better

it depends sometimes it is one session and sometimes it takes more. Also it can be a chronic condition that may need to keep being addressed over time

It depends on the patient/and their life style but most people feel relief with in one or two treatments. And then some come for maintenance if they have a lifestyle that aggregates it

It depends on the cause of the sciatica but it will range greatly depending on the patient.

I have had improvements with one session, and/or a month - two.

Everyone is different, but it usually takes a series of treatments. Sometimes you can get the pain to stop after the first treatment, but it's not likely to stay gone because no real healing has had a chance to take place. I see my sciatica patients twice a week until the pain stays gone between treatments.

You should try two weeks to see the result.

It's extremely difficult to say how long it might take. For one, I don't understand what constitutes an acceptable end-point for you. Are you wanting reduction of pain? Elimination of pain?

Chinese medicine uses a different diagnostic model that is individuated. In other words the reason you're experiencing this pain is probably different from the reason someone else experiences a similar type of pain. Different people tend to respond to treatment in different ways and at different rates.

Taken together, these two points make it virtually impossible to predict any given treatment outcome. Particularly when I haven't seen or diagnosed you and the basic question doesn't provide enough information to differentiate your issue in the Chinese model.

I'm a nationally board certified, state licensed, doctor of acupuncture, and I specialize in pain management. I treat a lot of low back and leg pain/radiating pain. Unless there's something going on that I don't understand, it's very unusual for me not to get some level of pain relief on an initial treatment. The initial relief usually persists for a day or two and then the pain will either start to come back or it'll feel like the pain has moved somewhere else. A full course of treatment might be somewhere in the 10-12 range. Some people will require less, some may require more, a very few may require much more.

A lot of the time, sciatic patients have a lot more going off the rails in their low back than just the radiating pain. If this is the case for you, it might end up being a lot of treatment that evolves over time to address your other issues.