Acupuncture for IBS, Reflux, & Gut Health in Sydney

Do you worry about where the toilets will be when you go out?

Understanding IBS, Reflux, & Gut Health

Symptoms can range from mild to severe, requiring hospitalisation in extreme cases. It can really impact your quality of life when you’re not sure how you’re going to react when eating out or travelling. Some people will explore restrictive diets and find themselves stuck in an endless cycle of becoming increasingly reactive and cutting out more foods.

There are a variety of ways our digestion can cause issues, such as:

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)

Constipation

Diarrhoea

Reflux

Bloating

Gut issues

Nausea

Difficulties with weight

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)

Crohn's disease

Ulcerative colitis

Just to name a few.

Certain medications and treatment of specific parasitic or bacterial issues can be an important part of getting relief, but many will feel like they’ve tried it all and yet are still stuck in a cycle of chronic digestive problems. Ideally it would be great to not just symptom manage or figure out what long list of foods to avoid, but to actually find lasting change that gives you your life back.

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How do we use acupuncture for IBS, reflux & digestion?

Addressing the Gut Ecosystem

Digestion plays a central role in health from a Chinese medicine perspective. Our digestion is responsible for breaking down and providing essential nutrients and building blocks required for life, and so if this is compromised, it can affect all other areas of our health. There is an increasing amount of research into the importance of the gut microbiome that supports this, however, there is an important distinction between how modern medicine and Chinese medicine interpret this and approach treatment.

Modern medicine will tend to look at wiping out “bad” microbes with antibacterial or antiparasitic agents, and increase “good” microbes with things like probiotics. While this can be a necessary and useful approach in certain situations, Chinese medicine instead looks at our gut like an ecosystem that has been neglected and needs to be supported in the right way. When there are too many “bad” microbes and not enough “good” ones, it’s because the internal environment has been conducive to this imbalance. Your acupuncturist’s job is to try to help your body restore an internal environment that nurtures healthy digestive function again.

At Acupuncture Grove in Bondi Junction Sydney, we use acupuncture for IBS, reflux and digestion tailored specifically to you. Typically if it’s going to be helpful for you, we will know very early on within the first 4-6 treatments (often earlier). That doesn’t mean that it will be completely better in that time, usually chronic conditions will take some time to unravel and may need ongoing maintenance, but you should feel some early signs of relief or improvement from the acupuncture if it’s going to help.

Once we know how you’re responding to the acupuncture, we’ll then work out a treatment plan for you. The ultimate goal would be to get you to a place where you don’t need acupuncture anymore, or it’s just something you do for maintenance.

If you're interested in learning more about the specific acupuncture techniques I specialise in, you can take a look at our dedicated acupuncture page for more details.

Tailored Treatment for Each Individual

Chinese herbal medicine can also be a very useful adjunct when working with digestion. This allows us to keep the treatment going daily and directly interfaces with the gut. It’s the same idea as acupuncture, we use it for a period to help address certain imbalances, but as you improve, we aim to get to a point where it’s no longer necessary. If it’s something that we feel will help you along, we’ll discuss it as part of the treatment plan.

If you would like to try acupuncture for IBS, reflux or digestion in Sydney, then book your appointment now, or contact us with any questions.

Chinese Herbal Medicine

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Frequently Asked Questions

Individual results will vary and success depends on many factors. The best way to find out if it will help your IBS is to try a series of treatments. There is also research to support the use of acupuncture for IBS, but larger studies are still needed. See here.
Heartburn and reflux is certainly something that acupuncture has strategies for. It is seen as a reversal of the healthy movement of the stomach, which should be downwards. This may be caused by various imbalances within the body and treatment is tailored to addressing and correcting those underlying imbalances.
Bloating and gas is a very common complaint of a dysregulated gut. Acupuncture focuses on restoring a more optimal internal environment for your gut microbiome to address digestive concerns. To do this, a personalised approach is taken according to what your body needs. There is no single cause for bloating and gas in Chinese medicine.
That is often a very important component to address for chronic gut issues, one that is often overlooked in a health culture that focuses so much on what and what not to eat. Regulating the nervous system will be a part of acupuncture treatment for digestive complaints.
This will depend on many factors, but a good starting benchmark would be 6-12 sessions to provide you a chance to benefit from the accumulative effects of acupuncture. Seeing through a series of treatments also allows your practitioner to interpret feedback from how you respond to early treatments and either continue with what’s working or pivot to other strategies as needed. Further treatments may be advisable if you’re responding well to the initial series of sessions.
Chinese herbal medicine may be helpful to incorporate into your treatment plan. The benefit would be that it acts as a form of daily treatment, working from the inside to transform the gut microbiome. However, if you’d prefer not to take herbs, that’s okay too, we will figure out the best way forward that works for you.