Are You Ready to Thrive?

People often ask me how long it will take to treat their current health problem.  And my answer is always this:  It depends.  On many things.

• How quickly your body responds to acupuncture (some people's energy just changes quicker than others')
• How quickly your body responds to MY acupuncture (every patient will respond differently to different practitioners)
• How often you receive treatment (more frequent treatments mean less backsliding, and more steps forward)
• Are you interested in being treated with herbs as well?  (Herbs really help speed the healing process)

And to me, one of the most important questions is:

• How deep is your health hole?

I know... this sounds like a really weird question.  Let me explain myself.

There are two basic types of health complaints - acute and chronic.

Acute health complaints are something that has shown up quickly, won't last that long if left to its own healing, but you'd really like to get through as quickly as possible.  That sprained ankle, or recovering from surgery, or a cold or flu.

Chronic complaints are those that have taken time to build up.  Yeah, you had allergies as a kid, but as you've aged they just seem worse year after year.  Or you used to only have 2 headaches a month, but over the last couple of years you're up to 10!

Chronic complaints are usually due to this "Health Hole."  We've spent time not addressing the cause of the health concern, and it just seems to keep getting worse.  And I'm not saying that we haven't addressed the problem at all.  If we're talking about allergies, sure we've taken antihistamines, we vacuum our house rather than sweep to keep the dust amounts down, etc.  But these don't address the underlying cause of the disease process, and so year after year, that hole keeps getting bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper until we're absolutely miserable.

Acupuncture and Chinese herbs are a great way to start filling in your health hole, and depending on how deep your health hole is, is how long it'll take for you to be truly healthy.  The deeper the hole, the more time it'll take.

So, be patient with yourself and your practitioner if your healing seems to be going a little slower than you'd like.  As long as your general trend is toward health, you're going in the right direction.  It takes time to regain our health after leaving that health hole to its own devices!