Dry needling is a treatment strategy that releases the tension in painful knots in your muscles called trigger points. It involves pressing fine needles into specific pressure points. These needles do not have any medicine on them and are not used to inject any medication, which is why the treatment is called dry needling.
After Jonathan presses the needles into trigger points, he leaves them in place for a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on how long you’ve had the pain. If you’ve had the pain for a short time, dry needling lasts only a few seconds.
When you’re in pain because of some musculoskeletal injury or condition, the pain affects how your muscles move. Dry needling seeks to restore your muscles to a more typical level of function by deactivating and desensitizing the trigger point. The needling process also stimulates a healing response to reduce pain and restore function.
There are numerous injuries and conditions affecting many parts of your body that can benefit from dry needling. When you first visit Advantage Physical Therapy, Jonathan performs a brief evaluation and can recommend suitable treatments. He might suggest dry needling for:
Alongside dry needling, your course of treatment might also involve therapeutic exercises or manual therapy, such as massage or joint mobilization.
The individual results of dry needling vary. However, you can expect to go through a few dry needling sessions before you experience your desired improvements. Many people experience an immediate improvement in the function of the injured body part. You might also experience a noticeable improvement in your pain as early as your first session.
After two or three sessions or as many as five or six for severe pain, you can experience lasting pain relief. This may come after a brief 24- to 48-hour period of discomfort immediately after your dry needling session. Fortunately, this discomfort diminishes rapidly.
Find out if dry needling can improve your musculoskeletal pain by scheduling a treatment consultation over the phone or online at Advantage Physical Therapy today.
