Dry needling is the practice of placing a thin needle into muscle and tissues aiming to go as deep as the bone. When needling, we typically aim to hit muscle knots, trigger points, inflamed fascia, or areas where blood flow can be restricted. This can be very useful in conjunction with chiropractic and as a treatment alone due to the effect it has on the nerve and furthermore the nervous system. When a needle is placed into the areas described above it essentially overrides the body’s natural pain response to help reset the nerve affected and allow the muscle to relax and lessen the signal of pain overall.
There are many uses for dry needling: the most common are listed below:
Dry needling to release trigger points: the needle is placed into the tightened muscle fibers forcing these muscle fibers to open up and release the trigger point. Imagine holding your hands together with your fingers interwoven and squeezing hard; now imagine someone forcing a pen or pencil in between your interwoven fingers; eventually to allow the pen or pencil to go past your fingers, you have to start to relax the tension in your hands and separate your hands and fingers. Same idea with the dry needle! When those muscle fibers open up that trigger point releases the tension and in turn can reduce the pain to include referred pain patterns that are common with trigger points.
Referred pain patterns are when you have one area of pain but you apply pressure to a different area and it recreates that same pain in the same area- think of that pesky headache behind your eyes and forehead, if you were to apply pressure to a spot on your shoulder and upper back you could eventually find a trigger point with that referred pain to the same spot as your headache. That’s a tried-and-true trigger point with referral pain! Now imagine placing a needle in that trigger point and feeling that pain slowly melt away, sounds heavenly right?!
Dry needling to release muscle knots and tension: the needles are placed in a muscle or area with restricted range of motion and the antagonist muscle to allow full relaxation of the motion that is restricted. Typically these needles are left in the muscle until that muscle grouping completely relaxes allowing the body to regain more range of motion in that region due to the lack of tension thus lessening pain responses and inflammation in the fascia.
Dry needling to increase blood flow: when muscles are tense or have trigger points this can create restriction in the blood vessels in that area. Think of a kink in your garden hose… that kink represents a muscle knot or trigger point. The water coming out of the hose will be significantly less than if that kink wasn’t there. The needles are similar to you untwisting and straightening out the hose to make sure that water can run as effectively as possible. By placing the needles in the muscle knots or trigger points, and manipulating the needle in the area we can free up the blood flow which will help increase circulation of not just blood, but oxygen and nutrients to the muscle as well! The other effect clearing out those “hose kinks” is flushing out inflammation that was sitting stagnant in that area.
A typical dry needle session can take anywhere from 7 minutes to 25 minutes depending upon the severity and the body’s response to the needle. During that session the skin will be cleaned and the practitioner will map out the needle locations on the body that provide the most benefit and are in a safe location. The single-use sterile needle will then be placed into the tissues and allowed to sit for 2-15 minutes depending upon the issue. At this point it is common to feel the referred pain pattern, a needle prick, the sensation of “heaviness” similar to a weighted blanket, or at times nothing at all. Once the desired result is reached, the needle will then be carefully removed and disposed of. Afterwards you and the practitioner will talk about the session and what to expect in the next few hours and the overall desired benefit.
If this is something you think you may benefit from or would like to try, ask one of our providers if this is right for you!
