How Does Dry Needling Work?

How Does Dry Needling Work?

If you’ve ever experienced muscle tightness or chronic pain, you may have heard about a technique called dry needling. While it might sound similar to acupuncture, dry needling is a distinct therapeutic approach used by physical therapists and other trained professionals to treat musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. But how exactly does it work? Let’s break it down.

Trigger Point Dry Needling is a treatment option to address pain caused by a trigger point (or “knot”) within a muscle. The treatment involves inserting a very thin needle into the muscle in the area of the body which is causing pain and contains a “trigger point”. It is not acupuncture (though it uses similar tools). The stimulus from the treatment can deactivate or “release” the trigger point leading to decreased muscle tension and pain. Combined with a personalized therapeutic exercise program, TDN can help break the commonly chronic cycle of pain.

Benefits of Trigger Point Dry Needling

1. Increase blood flow
The release of tension allows for improved nutritive blood flow to the previously unhealthy muscle fibers and elicits the body’s natural healing response to a specific area. Doing this can help accelerate the healing process, especially when scar tissue after an injury or surgery is involved. This can help accelerate recovery from overuse injuries.

2. Reduce muscle tension
The stimulus from the treatment can deactivate or “release” the trigger point leading to decreased muscle tension and pain. Often there is a twitch response when the needle is inserted into the trigger point which leads to an immediate release of tension.

3. Relieve pain
It is common to experience some initial soreness during treatment which may develop into a deep ache later in the day, but otherwise TDN should result in a good relief of tension and pain, often with immediate results.

4. Neuromuscular reset
Stimulates nerves and muscle spindles to “reset” normal function.

TDN Helps a Variety of Conditions

There are a variety of conditions that TDN treatment can be helpful for. Some of these conditions include:

– Low back pain
– Neck pain
– Headaches
– TMJ
– Sciatica
– Achilles tendinopathy
– IT band pain
– Plantar fasciitis
– Tennis elbow

Choose Bushnell Therapy for Your Dry Needling Session

TDN should not be used on acute injuries or directly after a surgical procedure. Typical protocol requires an average of 6 weeks after a new injury or no lingering signs of acute inflammation before the use of needles in that area.

Dry needling is a powerful tool in the world of physical therapy. By targeting muscle knots and dysfunction at their source, it can help reduce pain, improve mobility, and accelerate recovery. At Bushnell Physical Therapy we have an experienced team of therapists who are certified in Dry Needling and have hundreds of hours working with various cases and techniques.