What is Dry Needling? Dry needling is an all-encompassing term that means we are not injecting a foreign substance into the body.  Traditionally pain management doctors will do what is called wet needling and inject pain medication into a trigger point. Research now shows that dry needling is just as, if not more effective than injections.

Our office specializes in Trigger point Dry Needling, originally developed by Dr. Janet Travell M.D. and Dr. David Simons M.D.  Do you have knots and tightness you constantly feel in your traps? Those are trigger points! Trigger points are a sustained contracture in a muscle, causing tightness in muscle and even pain. Trigger points can develop due to injuries, repetitive motions, uneven loads on muscles due to compensations and even digestive stress!

When we are treating a trigger point, we palpate the area feeling for the tight fibers, you as the patient may even tell us that the area is sore or painful to touch. Once the trigger point is found we will treat that area trying to elicit a local twitch response. If we tap the needle into regular muscle tissue nothing will happen and typically as a patient, you do not feel anything at all.  However, when we tap the needle in and are exactly in a trigger point, the body lets us know by twitching that muscle. Dry needling works as a neurological reset to that muscle tissue. By causing the local twitch we are trying to tell the body that whatever was the cause of the trigger point, it is now gone and the muscle can relax.

Dry Needling FAQs

Is Dry needling the same as Acupuncture?

Acupuncture is a form of dry needling.  However, acupuncture is more about balancing energy in the body and its organ systems vs treating the muscles in the body.

I had dry needling done and it did not work. How is this different?

At last count there were roughly 11 Dry Needling seminars being offered all of them teaching a different way of treating the body. We feel that our technique is more effective as we actively treat the trigger point aka knot itself vs treating around the area of discomfort and tightness.

Does dry needling hurt?

Everyone’s perception of discomfort is different. Most of our patients describe it as “weird” with reference to the local twitch of the muscle. However, if you yourself were to press on the painful area it would not feel more painful than that.