Auricular seed therapy

Regardless of various practitioners opinions of the overall effectiveness of seed therapy, the base of your question is somewhat incorrect. Ideally you look more at how your conditions are related and try to treat the base issues instead of following symptoms (for more on the generally, read “What Does Acupuncture Treat?”).

Now some aspects of auricular acupuncture are setup in a condition/issue to point - but that is very limited.

For example, I’m just guessing, not knowing your medical history at all, but frozen shoulder almost always has a hormonal basis to it (i.e. the “kidney” system in Chinese Medicine terms). Edema more than likely has this as well. And your constipation is more than likely a kidney system issue as well. Now this certainly doesn’t mean you treat the kidney point in the auricular system - as that point is for physical kidney issues which have little or nothing to do with the kidney system in Chinese Medicine terms. What might be helpful, again just showing a more Chinese Medicine way of thinking which may or may not be applicable to your individual case, would be shen men for downregulating the nervous system (i.e. kidney yin deficiency) and perhaps the ovaries point or something along those lines for hormonal balance.

In most cases auricular seed therapy is prescribed by some Chinese Medicine practitioners as a way to prolong or more simply continue the messaging you want the body to respond to between treatments. So you might receive acupuncture weekly for anxiety, as an example, and your practitioner puts a seed on shen men for you to massage during the week to continue reminding the brain to calm.

There are practitioners who treat only auricular points using needles and/or lasers, but they are few and far between amongst fully trained Chinese Medicine practitioners.

To learn more, I suggest you read this very lengthy study and meta-analysis on auricular acupuncture with lasers. It’s not entirely relevant to your question but does a good job of discussing many of the relevant systems for auricular approaches including how it helps stimulate the body. There is much more in that article that just a discussion about laser techniques.

For further reading this has many of the major systems and protocols.

So the answer to your question is that it can’t be answered really. You can technically treat multiple conditions at once - but it matters whether they are related (common) or entirely separate (less common). And how many treatments you might need would depend greatly on the skill of the practitioner, the clarity to your body about what you are asking it to do, the stimulation techniques used, how long you’ve had the conditions, etc.

Generally speaking most people would see some change in more common conditions within 3-12 treatments.