“Does acupuncture get worse before it gets better?”

Yes, that is possible. Everyone responds differently to treatment.

Usually not
Is your lifestyle making your treatment not work?

INTERESTINGLY, SOME SHOW THAT PATTERN. BUT IT IS NOT ALWAYS THAT WAY.

80% of my patient gets immediate pain relief from an initial acupuncture session. But some patients experience more pain for 1~2 days, then get better. Think about it. Pain is from not moving, stagnation. Once you have better circulation, it moves old stuff, maybe large particles. When these things are moving, it irritates the blood vessels. The matter is you get better after experiencing more pain 1~2 days or not. I suggest my patients, try on 2~3 weeks for acupuncture only because lots of patients try many treatment methods at a time. They don't know which is helping or not helping. It's good to stick with one treatment method at a time so that you can evaluate which treatment method is helping you.

Good afternoon,

Acupuncture treatment does not make people feel worse before they get well, but an experienced practitioner will also detox the patient via acupuncture treatment. Therefore, patient might feel a little bit "worse" before they get well. Talk to your practitioner.

David

Sometimes acupuncture stimulates a detox response. We call it a healing crisis. Drink plenty of warm and rest if needed after treatment.

90% of the time, it’s a gradual improvement. May be in some patients that musculoskeletal pain could get worse.

Thank you for asking the questions,

In my practice of acupuncture for over thirty-five years, it's never happened where patients get worse before they get better.

Not necessary. But in some cases, you may get some reaction, which are old symptoms flaring up while balancing your systems.

Zhen

Usually, one feels improvement with each treatment. It may appear to “get worse before it gets better” if the person’s condition is declining when they first seek acupuncture.

Hello,

Thank you for your question. Generally speaking, when you get acupuncture, there are 3 possible responses:

a. Improvement of condition
b. Worsening of condition
c. No change in condition

However, this all depends on what you are getting acupuncture for, how often you get acupuncture, and the style of acupuncture used. For example, let’s say you are getting acupuncture for low back pain. If acupuncture is directly applied to the painful area, sometimes, the pain will flare up for a day or two and then subside. From a patient perspective, you might view this as being worse, but this is part of the normal healing response. Now, on the other hand, if the pain after acupuncture hasn’t subsided after 2-3 days and you have less low back mobility, then acupuncture technique might be the reason for the lack of pain relief.
Having said this, I don’t know your medical history, which makes it difficult to give you a clear answer.

Aroop Banerji ND, LAc

Thank you for your question. I don't know the chief complaint is, but with musculoskeletal issues some patients experience some soreness the day after, then feel better in 24 hours.

Thank you,

Deborah

Not usually but can happen

I have had a handful of cases where the patient got worse after first or second treatments before improvement was seen. I feel like that is not really the normal response and perhaps I administered the wrong treatment in those moments, but that's just my personal take on it. Acupuncturists do make mistakes.... for sure. Thankfully, our mistakes almost never, if ever, cause serious complications or death. But yes, this occasionally and very rarely does occur. Best of luck in your search for health and wellness. If you are not happy with your results, my suggestion would be to find a different acupuncturist to try if your intuition is telling you that it is not helping. First and foremost, many states allow people to call themselves acupuncturists who are not adequately trained to be such--especially chiropractors, doctors, and physical therapists (called "dry needling") where they can do what I do with 20-300 hours of training. Whereas a fully trained acupuncturist with a master's degree has 700 hours of just treating patients under supervision of an experienced practitioner and thousands of hours of education. This is an important distinction! And I personally would never let any of these folks inadequately trained near me with an acupuncture needle!

This is my answer: the worse inflammation, the more possibility is

The acupuncture itself should remain unchanged overall. If you are asking if your condition will worsen before it gets better with acupuncture, that is possible with certain conditions. Tell to your acupuncturist what you are feeling and they can better explain if it is a "worse before it's better" situation, and why it's happening.

Not necessarily, treatment will repsonse different on every individual. If a person is naturally sensitive, she or he will feel little sensitive once the needles are applied. After the treatment, he or she will feel relax.

no

No, it won't happen, it won't get worse before it gets better.

I’m not sure I understand the question as acupuncture is not the problem. Your pain may get a little worse before it gets better, especially if you have carried the pain for a long time. Acupuncture typically makes one feel much better. If your experience is not good then you may have a block that needs to be cleared and you should talk to your acupuncturist about it.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Are you wondering about needle sensitivity getting worse before it gets better or are you wondering about your health issue getting worse before it gets better?

Let's assume the second case. Health issues do sometimes get worse before they get better. Ideally we want a nice smooth reduction in symptoms until either the patients' issue resolves or we hit some tolerable level which we then maintain with sporadic treatment.

Sometimes what we get is spiky behavior in the symptoms with an overall trend towards reduction. If patients and providers aren't keeping an eye on where they started, where they are now, and what the overall trend line looks like, it can sometimes feel like they're just treading water or the symptoms are getting worse.

There are also times when a "healing crises" might occur. If this happens, usually the patient's symptoms increase dramatically for 24-48 hours and then rapidly drop off to virtually zero. I try to avoid this with my patients, but different individuals respond in different ways to treatment and sometimes this is unavoidable.

Lastly, acupuncture is somewhat unique in the medical world in that there are providers who can technically offer "acupuncture" without having attended school for Chinese medicine. Usually these people have a fraction the training of a licensed acupuncturist and where they generally fall down is in the Chinese diagnostic methods. Imagine someone trying to treat you for a broken bone without being able to use x-rays and you have the general idea. I've had patients who received "acupuncture" from a non-licensed acupuncturist for several visits; their symptoms never got better and sometimes they do get worse.

Please make sure your provider has one of the following credentials: L.Ac./R.Ac. and/or Dipl Ac./Dipl OM. This is the only way to ensure you're being treated by someone who attended and graduated from an accredited program of Chinese medicine. If you're having trouble finding someone with these credentials in your area, you can use the "Find a Practitioner" lookup at NCCAOM.org.