4 Insider Tips for Choosing the Best Acupuncturist for You

Looking for an acupuncturist? Here are four tips (not the generic advice found online) for choosing the best acupuncturist for you, and getting the most out of your treatments.

As someone who studied acupuncture and who is also plugged into a network of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) experts, I wanted to share the best tips to pick an acupuncturist so that you can get the best results from your acupuncture treatments. Choosing the right acupuncturist can make a huge difference in the success of your treatment.

When people don’t pick the right acupuncturist for their health condition, they might not get the results they want. It might take longer to see improvements, or they might not notice any difference at all. What’s worse is that they’ve spent a bunch of money, invested a lot of time going to their appointments, and they’re still struggling with their health.

As a result, they write off all acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, thinking it doesn’t work. But it does! You just have to find the right fit for you!

Follow these guidelines to find the right acupuncturist for you and get the most benefit from your acupuncture treatments.

1. Find an Acupuncturist Who Specializes in Your Health Concern

Most people don’t realize that acupuncture is a very specialized field, so choosing the right acupuncturist is going to make a huge difference in your treatment.

You have to pick an acupuncturist based on what they specialize in treating.

Similar to how you wouldn’t go see a urologist if you have an ear infection, it’s important to find an acupuncturist who specializes in the health condition that you need help with.

If your friends or family recommend a great acupuncturist, that’s awesome!

But you have to delicately ask them about what they got treated for—because you need to get a recommendation for acupuncturists who treat a health issue similar to yours. If their acupuncturist helped them with a sore shoulder, that’s totally different than seeing an acupuncturist for fertility or digestive issues.

Acupuncturists specialize just like in Western medicine. You could get help from a general practitioner, but they might not have the specialized knowledge and experience that would make a big difference for health issues that are severe or more complicated.

Generally speaking, the majority of licensed acupuncturist will be very effective at treating sprains, injuries, and localized pain. The insertion of needles in the affected area helps to stimulate the flow of qi and blood, which significantly helps recovery.

However, for things other than aches and pains, I’d recommend doing your best to find someone who specializes in your particular health condition.

Read online reviews and look for what health issues were resolved in the reviews. If you see something similar to what you need help with, that’s a potentially good lead.

If you find a five-star rated acupuncturist, but the reviewers kept their health details private, call the acupuncturist and ask questions. Don’t ask if they treat xyz disease/condition because of course, they’ll say yes.

Anyone who is trained and licensed can treat all conditions using the textbook recommendations. However, it’s much better to see an acupuncturist with experience in treating your condition because acupuncture’s effectiveness depends on tailoring the treatment to the individual.

There are hundreds of acupuncture points, so an acupuncturist has to choose which points to needle. They can’t put needles in every point, which is why they have to decide on a course of treatment. As a result, someone with specialized experience will be more effective. They’ve seen this before, they’ve tweaked the textbook prescriptions, and as a result, they get better results.

Instead of asking, “Do you treat xyz?,” ask, “Have you treated many patients with my health condition?” Then note how they answer your question. Do they answer you directly and give details, or do they give you a generic answer?

Even better than online reviews is to get a personal recommendation from someone you know and trust. Just remember it should be for a similar health issue.

2. Consider the Acupuncturist’s Education and Training

Yes, there’s licensing for acupuncture, but there can be a world of difference. In the U.S., there’s a national board for certifying acupuncturists. But in California, there’s a state board for certification and the standards are higher.

Even amongst the different Chinese Medicine schools in California, there’s a big variation in the quality of instruction. Some schools have high pass rates for their students for the licensing exam. Others, not as high.

I’ve also seen huge variances with regards to the experience, expertise, and ability to teach for instructors at the same school.

Acupuncture is like martial arts. The better the lineage, the better the acupuncture.

One additional thing to mention is that an acupuncturist trained and licensed in China must also be trained as a Western medical doctor. Personally, I would prefer someone with this level of skill and knowledge to stick needles in my body over someone who took a weekend workshop on “dry needling.”

It wasn’t until I went to acupuncture school that I learned that chiropractors and physical therapists can take weekend courses on “dry needling” (can’t call it acupuncture because it’s not acupuncture), and treat people with needles.

As I mentioned above, the insertion of acupuncture needles improves the flow of qi and blood to an area of the body. This helps alleviate pain and aid with healing, which is fabulous for sprains and injuries. It’s good for headaches too, and there are Chinese Reflexology points you can massage for migraine and headache relief. Aches and pains are easy to treat because the root problem is a block in circulation. When you improve the circulation, the issue resolves quickly.

But if someone has a history of chronic knee or back pain, or chronic migarines, then simply getting needles in the affected area is insufficient. For true healing, they would need to find an acupuncturist who specializes in treating chronic issues because it requires a whole body holistic approach to treat the root imbalances in their body’s organs and energy meridians. This is what’s causing the symptoms to appear. Eliminating the symptoms does not fix the problem.

3. Location, Location, Location – It Matters When You Look for an Acupuncturist

Why am I trotting out a real estate slogan when it comes to choosing an acupuncturist? Is it because I recently recommended an acupuncturist to a real estate agent? Nope, LOL! BTW, I learned today that LOL is passe and has been replaced with IJBOL. Personally, LOL is easier to type, and I’m not 20 years old, so I’m totally cool with it.

In order for acupuncture to be effective for chronic issues, you need see your acupuncturist regularly. By regularly, I mean weekly at the very least. But to really maximize the effectiveness of the treatment, I would recommend twice a week, and you might even need to see them three times a week.

As a result, location matters because if the acupuncturist is far and difficult to get to, it’s going to be really hard to make the time to see them consistently. Why stack the deck against yourself?

Follow your acupuncturist’s recommendations for how often to see them, but expect to go regularly—at least for a few weeks, and possibly for a few months—especially if you have a long-standing health condition such as high blood pressure, chronic insomnia, hormonal imbalances, etc.

If someone tells you otherwise, it’s because you have a minor problem, or they’re sugarcoating the truth so that you won’t be scared off by the length of treatment.

Basically, anything other than a simple musculoskeletal ache or pain is going to need consistent treatment. But if you have a history of throwing out your back or spraining your ankle, it will take time to address what’s really going on in your body that is causing that area to be weak and more susceptible to injury.

Chinese Medicine isn’t like Western medicine where you see instant results. E.g. take a pain relief pill and your headache is gone.

With Traditional Chinese Medicine, you’re not simply making the symptoms disappear. You’re healing the root cause of the symptoms. As a result, it takes time to restore balance in your body.

But healing the root is a much more powerful, sustainable, and lasting path for health, vitality, quality of life, and even longevity. If you treat only the symptoms, the imbalances get worse over time. That’s the reason why people might not have any issues when they’re younger, but start having problems as they get older.

In addition to going regularly and consistently, you may also need to take Chinese medicinal herbs. They’re very potent for replenishing depleted life force, so they’re good for burnout, fatigue, exhaustion, muscle weakness, etc. But it is very important to get a custom herbal formula prescribed for you by a licensed acupuncturist. Because Chinese herbs are so powerful, if you take the wrong herbs for your body constitution, it can actually worsen your health.

That’s why I recommend strongly against DIY herbs—buying herbs on your own and making up your own herbal concoction, or buying TCM herbal pills based on the description on the bottle.

While we’re on the topic of Chinese medicinal herbs, those little round black pills in the bottle, and the powdered herbs are not as potent as getting dried herbs and boiling them down to make Chinese herbal tea. While it is cumbersome to boil the herbs for an hour every couple of days (and they’re super stinky), it’s totally worth doing.

When my husband and I decided to have a child, we were late to the party. I was in my late 30s. In the school’s acupuncture clinic, I had seen many women come for fertility treatments. They came for acupuncture after years of trying, suffering miscarriages, and having exhausted all possible Western avenues such as IVF. After they got three months of acupuncture treatments, they easily conceived, and had a healthy baby.

I decided rather than go through the stress of trying, and then getting acupuncture, I would get the acupuncture first. So that’s what I did. I went to see the best acupuncturist who was a fourth generation Chinese Medicine doctor, trained in China, and a specialist in fertility. I went 2 to 3 times a week for three months. I boiled two days’ worth of Chinese herbs every other day, and drank the murky bitter concoction three times a day.

The tea was a dark brown color, and I drank so much of it that it stained my teeth. I had to get strips to whiten my teeth at the end of my treatment. But that’s how dedicated I was, and it worked! When my husband and I decided it was time to try conceiving, I went to see an OB/GYN and brought up my age concerns with her.

We booked an appointment to test my hormones in about a week’s time. But before the appointment, I had a positive pregnancy test. Now my “baby boy” is a healthy and strong teenager!

What if you can only find an acupuncture specialist who isn’t nearby?

If you have to choose between an acupuncturist who has vastly more experience, or one who is nearby, my suggestion is to go see the one with more experience. Try to go as often as you can, and get herbs prescribed for in between treatments.

I would also recommend adding a general self-care practice for strengthening and balancing your body’s energy meridians. Chinese Reflexology is a good one! So is meridian massage.

Even if your acupuncturist is conveniently located, it’s good to do things to strengthen, balance, and cultivate your qi (body’s life force energy). It’s like giving yourself an additional boost of energy to help your body heal.

If you think of poor health like a canoe heading in the wrong direction, getting acupuncture helps steer your boat onto the right path. After the acupuncture treatment, the boat can lose momentum. Once you learn how to tend to your own qi, you can augment the effects of your acupuncture session in between treatments.

Practicing a qi-boosting self-care practice like Chinese Reflexology or meridian massage helps stay the course, and helps maintain the healing momentum. It’s like dipping an oar into the lake to continue steering the canoe in the right direction, and the occasional paddle also helps maintain your speed.

4. Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover When Choosing an Acupuncturist

I have seen acupuncturists with wonderful bedside manner, greeting their patients with a cheery smile, and serving zen tea in a beautiful oasis of an office. One of these acupuncturists even won awards for being the best acupuncturist in their area.

Were they? No.

As I mentioned in this article, it’s easy to treat aches and pains, which is probably why this acupuncturist did so well. However, they regularly inserted dozens of needles into their patients (Generally speaking, master acupuncturists tend to use the fewest number of needles because they choose the most potent points).

This acupuncturist also rushed the treatments so that they could maximize the number of people they treated (aka make money to pay for the expensive rent and decor). The acupuncturist was all smiles and pleasantries when talking to clients, but spoke harshly to their staff.

On the other hand, I’ve seen acupuncturists with the bedside manner of a cactus who are master healers. I recommended one of these acupuncturists to a friend. She told me that on her initial phone call, the acupuncturist was rude and abrupt. Based on first impressions, my friend did not want to see this acupuncturist.

The only reason she went was because of my recommendation. I told her that, “I would trust this acupuncturist with my life.”

Over the course of going twice a week, my friend got to know the acupuncturist, and realized that beneath the gruff exterior was a heart of gold. This doctor cared deeply about their patients, and was focused on a successful outcome.

It wasn’t about making money, having a pretty office, or serving fancy tea. It was about helping people get better.

When choosing an acupuncturist, take time to find the right one, and look below the surface. With acupuncture treatments costing between $75 to $150 per session, it’s a significant investment of your time and money. Thus, it’s worthwhile to make the effort to find the best acupuncturist for you.

I hope these tips were helpful. If you’re interested in learning qi-cultivating and qi-harmonizing self-care practices to support your health and vitality, check out the FREE workshop on meridian massage. It’s part of my annual free course giveaway event to thank readers like you for your continued support.

My good friend, David Wei, an expert in Traditional Chinese healing and martial arts, will be co-hosting the event with me. He’s a 16th generation master from a martial arts lineage with its roots in the Wudang Mountain in China. That’s the birthplace of Taoism!

David will be introducing us to the powerful self-care practice of meridian massage, sharing sacred teachings he learned from a lineage of blind healing masters. Meridian massage is a way to harmonize your health from the inside out, and get the benefits of acupuncture without the needles.