25/11/2025
Acupuncture – Dose and Frequency for Pain Relief
How long and how often should acupuncture be applied for chronic pain?
This can be a tricky question, as pain is subjective, emotionally tethered, and often influenced by factors such as repetitive strain or past injury/ surgeries.
Pain relief can present as a reduction in sensations such as dullness, aching, throbbing, sensitivity, or sharpness. However, to truly measure improvement, we should also consider function, mobility, and overall quality of life - how a person moves, sleeps, and engages in daily activities as pain subsides.
A review on appropriate acupuncture treatment schedules for chronic pain found that higher pain relief rates occurred with treatments delivered at least twice per week for around 30 minutes per session, over an average course of 8 weeks.
Evidence also showed that pain relief often lasted up to 18 weeks before gradually diminishing, suggesting that the effects of acupuncture are cumulative and best maintained through consistent, ongoing treatment.
In practice, most people experience the greatest benefit with regular sessions early on (for example, once or twice weekly), followed by maintenance treatments spaced further apart as symptoms improve and stabilise.
PMID: 31316572
