Have you ever had tension in your muscles that caused you pain? Did you know that studies show that 85% of people will suffer from myofascial tension at some point in their lives?
It is therefore important to find solutions to this problem. Conventional physiotherapy can be very beneficial, but when combined with dry needling physiotherapy punctures, it can be even more effective. Here is the benefit of working with dry needling for pain relief.
What is the difference between acupuncture and dry needling physiotherapy?
In both physiotherapy and acupuncture, we work with the same dry needles. The needles are defined as dry, because there is no possibility of injecting liquid. They are all sterile and single use. So yes, we have the same tools, but our goals and our way of using them differ. A quick comparison is that in acupuncture, the needle is used to stimulate the energy that flows through the meridians to the different systems and organs that correspond to chi. In physiotherapy, we work locally in the muscle to manage inflammation and pain.
What is myofascial pain?
The etymology of the word, myo (muscle) and fascial (muscle’s envelope), means that myofascial pain comes from increased tension in the muscle or its envelope. With our needles, we will insert into these tensions/nodes that are formed in the muscle.
Have you ever wondered what a knot or trigger point is? To understand it, visualize a cross-section of your muscle. You see all the bundles in the muscle that line up well. In these bundles, in a smaller way, we will find action and myosin fibers. These fibers slide over each other and allow the muscle to contract and expand so that it can relax. This is what we see when everything is going well. Bad posture, trauma, or even repeated movements cause the action and myosin fibers to remain activated. This is how the famous trigger point is formed. This is also where the problem starts and where we want to address it to minimize the pain. So, why not go directly to the source with a needle?
What happens when we insert a needle into a muscle?
We will first pass through the fascia by manipulating the needle in order to find the trigger point of the muscle. By finding this tension, parts of the muscle bundles, or even the entire muscle, can give a “twitch” type vibration also known as an involuntary muscle contraction. And that’s fantastic, because immediately after the twitch, we observe a significant decrease in stiffness and tension in the muscle and its envelope. This is great, but the analgesic effect starts long before this reaction.
From the moment the needle enters the skin, mechanisms are activated in the nervous system that are responsible for transmitting messages to our brain. The nervous system is therefore activated to block the pain signals. Locally, we increase the circulation with the needle and bring oxygen to the muscle, because we have released the injured area of muscle tension. In addition, with the increased local circulation, the residues of the inflammatory reaction are cleaned up. This whole process brings relief from the pain caused by the trigger point.
Physiotherapy dry needling can therefore work well locally, but they can also have an effect on the central nervous system to reduce pain.
Why not give it a try? It’s up to you to see how your body reacts to the dry needle puncture treatments. Make an appointment with Célia!
