Treatment expectations- knowing when enough is enough!

Last week I talked about patience and the power of how “slow and steady” wins the race. This is truly the benefit of Chinese medicine, with its herbal formulations made to custom fit the individual. By sticking with the program, consistently over time, those daily acts of consuming herbal medicine should compound into effective healing.

But how do we know when to actually give up? When do we actually let go of the treatment we are currently trying and either accept our health condition as a way of life, or move onto a different approach/ treatment modality altogether. When will we know that “enough is enough”? -after only a week of treatment, a month, or is one year a better marker to understand the effectiveness of any given treatment.

I remember my wife, Gillian, telling me about her frustrations with all the previous treatments she tried for her eczema. She felt like she had tried everything from Naturopathic, to Homeopathic, to energy healing, and even counseling, and that nothing had proved to be beneficial to her healing. None of the practitioners seemed to give her realistic time frames from which to expect results as well. No wonder she was “done” with treatments and had given over to “living with her condition”. She was frustrated and upset with spending so much time, money, and energy on what turned out to be fruitless results. If you read the page “inspiration”, you will get a bit more of her story, but basically I kept trying to convince Gillian to try Chinese medicine for at least a whole year before she actually decided to do so. A move that proved beneficial to her, as the eczema cleared up within about 3 months time on herbal medicine, and has stayed clear now for over 8 years (after stopping the herbal treatment).

Now I cannot really speak for other modalities like Naturopathic or Homeopathic medicine, but in the style of Chinese Medicine that I have been taught and practice, results are expected after a certain, somewhat set, amount of time. This is of course totally dependent on the disorder being treated. If results are not seen in the alloted time, I as a practitioner have to seriously question whether or not I will be able to help.

For example, when I treat psoriasis I usually want to see some type of clearing of the lesions within the first 7 weeks, and even sooner if external medicines are used at the same time as an internal herbal tea-perhaps 3 to 4 weeks. Vitiligo, the de-pigmentation disorder of the skin that leaves the skin white and blotchy, may take much longer to see initial results- say 3 to 4 months. This is due to the slow process by which melanocytes are produced. With eczema, if it is very itchy, I usually want to see the itch recede within the first 2 to 4 weeks. Acne, particularly if it is pre-menstrual, may take 12 weeks, or 3 menstrual cycles, until noticeable results are seen.

When I treat infertility, depending on what the underlining issue is, I may ask that the patient take treatment for 6 or more months before expecting to see a pregnancy. In fact pregnancy may not even occur for another 6 or so months until after treatment is stopped! This is because the treatment of infertility is often about “nourishing the soil before planting the seed“, a process that may take several months to occur. It is all about creating the most harmonious and healthiest environment for which a gamete (egg or sperm) can grow up in. Once the soil has been nourished the idea is that the patient is now at “ground zero”, and future attempts at trying to conceive will be more enhanced and optimized.

Basically, I believe it is good medicine to educate the patient about the length of time a treatment may take before seeing any noticeable results, which is based on the Doctor’s previous experiences in treating the disorder in question. Thus both practitioner and patient have some realistic goal posts to aim for, making the “slow and steady” treatment approach much easier to follow. Then if change does not happen within the desirable amount of time dedicated to it, switching gears into a different modality makes sense.

Dr Trevor Erikson