Complexity of Symptoms in Prognosis
Your pathology may be one simple symptom with one simple underlying cause which is easy to get to and easy to treat. PMS causing migraines is a very straight ahead problem that responds well to acupuncture and herbal treatments.
However, sometimes getting to your complaint requires that we wade through a variety of other symptoms and relieve them all one or two at a time, till we can finally get down to the one in question. Take for instance diarrhea that is induced by stress. First, we calm you down, then we have to strengthen the digestion to stop the diarrhea. This pathology has just two layers, there can be many more. The more levels, the deeper we have to go, the longer it takes.
I have just the one problem
Depending on what the problem is, this is a better sign than had you come with many more complaints. The one month/one year rule applies here.
I have 2-5 other symptoms
This is really typical and not something to worry about too much, especially if all the symptoms derive from just one cause. A good example of this would be all the symptoms associated with PMS. One cause, many symptoms. This is still a simple issue and easy to treat successfully. The one month/one year rule still applies here.
I have 6-10 other symptoms
Now we're getting just a bit complicated. In cases such as this, we'll likely start out having an affect on the symptoms that most recently arose and in time, after the newer symptoms are out of the way, we'll get down to the problems that have been around the longest time. Depending on how deep your complaint is, the one month/one year rule may have to be extended a bit.
I have 11+ additional symptoms
Chances are that there is more than one disease process happening here at once. There is usually some relationship between the syndromes, but depending on what that relationship is, the other pathology may need to be fixed before we can work on your chief complaint. For instance, treating impotence due to a Kidney Yang deficiency (that's like saying slow metabolism) we're also going to have to treat the affect that this problem has on the digestion so that you can actually absorb the medicinal herbs to benefit the Kidneys and your chief complaint of impotence.
When thinking about how long it will take to treat this condition, we'd have to look at the deepest condition and how long that has been going on, not just the secondary superficial condition that might have brought you to the TCM practitioner.
Probably it is a reasonable goal to manage the symptoms and one by one help them go away. When things get very complicated, it is more difficult to really estimate how long it will take to get everything rectified.
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