Well, no, it shouldn’t.
You should feel the treatment though. Does that make sense? Let me back up a bit.
Asking whether acupuncture hurts is probably the most common question I hear. I’m also including similar questions like “what does it feel like?” into the same category. I get it – acupuncture can seem like a weird medicine, so trying to understand what sensations to expect can help ease a person’s anxiety when they think about treatment for themselves.
Since acupuncture involves needles, you might think it is painful. But it’s important to realize that acupuncture needles are not like any other kind of needle someone might have run into. They are very thin, about the thickness of a human hair, and will not set off a pain response the same way a hollow-bore needle will (the ones used for injections). Nor do they feel like the scratching of getting a tattoo.
The other thing that’s important to realize is that acupuncture treatment causes changes in the body’s blood flow and surrounding connective tissue. This is how acupuncture can treat so many things. Those changes, when they happen, can cause odd sensations that patients usually describe as heaviness, fullness, body temperature changes, or a feeling of movement.
When a person asks me “does acupuncture hurt?“, sometimes what they want to know is whether they will feel anything at all, and they are hoping that the answer is “no”. When these people hear that they can feel changes in their body from treatment, in their mind these people jump straight to thoughts of pain, even when what they should expect to feel is completely different. You should expect to feel the effects of treatment changing the body – becoming relaxed, comfortable, and as though you were covered by a heavy blanket. That’s not a pain sensation like you would get if you hit your head or fell and smashed up your body, but it is a sensation.
If you’ve had acupuncture before and felt nothing, then you should ask yourself if treatment gave you any results. And if you have mainly felt pain, then you should talk with your acupuncturist to figure out why that is and what can be done to change it. Either one of these cases likely means that treatment hasn’t properly been tailored for what you need.
For anyone that’s been scared of acupuncture because you’re concerned it will hurt, I hope you’ll decide to go for it anyway. We make sure that our patients feel confident and relaxed through their treatment, so please contact us and we will work to ensure you feel the same.