What is Dry Needling?

Dry needling is a physical therapy technique that decreases pain in your muscles. Alliance Physio Solution’s trained physical therapists adhere to a western medicine approach and are not performing acupuncture. Our goal, as musculoskeletal specialists, is to restore normal muscle and joint function. The dry needling technique is used in conjunction with a comprehensive evaluation that complements other treatment techniques to decrease pain and restore function.

Dry needling physical therapy uses a solid filament needle to treat muscle trigger points. These points are a highly localized, hyper-irritable spot in a taught band of skeletal muscle fibers. These muscle trigger points play a role in producing and maintaining the pain cycle. They can alter muscle performance, as well as generate pain along common referral patterns. These points develop in muscle for various reasons, including referred or local pain, inflammation, athletic injury or other causes.

How does Dry Needling works?

The mechanical stimulation of the muscle produces a local twitch response or rapid depolarization of muscle fibers. After this process, the muscle activity dramatically reduces, which results in relaxation and decreased pain and dysfunction. This decrease in pain is related to the removal of muscular compression on your joint, nerve, and vascular tissue. Sometimes, the insertion of the needle also reproduces “referred pain” symptoms. This is a positive sign confirming the trigger point as the source of the pain. Dry needling is highly effective for chronic muscle and repetitive sport injuries.