Currently, dry needling is being practiced in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world. While dry needling can offer significant benefits for many individuals experiencing musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction, we don’t encourage anyone to participate in a modality that they are uncomfortable with. As a result, the effectiveness of dry needling for specific conditions or patient populations may vary, and more high-quality research is needed to establish its efficacy definitively. While there is growing evidence supporting the effectiveness of dry needling for certain musculoskeletal conditions, the research in this area is still evolving. While dry needling has gained popularity as a therapeutic technique for managing musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction, not every patient we have falls in love with this modality.
These sensations are normal and a sign that your muscles are responding to the treatment. For instance, they may use up to 10 to 15 needles along your spine for a back treatment. Your provider may only use one to two needles during your first treatment. When the needle is in the trigger point, it can be painful and cause a twitch response. Stimulating a trigger point with a needle helps draw normal blood supply back to flush out the area and release tension.
It’s easy to plop down on the couch and binge-watch your favorite show after a dry needling session. Plus, mixing alcohol with post-treatment fatigue can leave you feeling even worse. While a glass of wine or beer might sound like a nice way to unwind after your session, it’s not doing your body any favors. Gentle heat can help soothe soreness and promote blood flow to aid recovery. You might feel sore, bruised, or even a bit tender after dry needling.
Following dry needling to burn-injured mice, and when compared with conventional dressing, Lee et al.170 found significantly greater basic fibroblastic growth factor and accelerated tissue healing rates. However, the results of Foster et al.84 should be viewed cautiously due to the limited number of treatment sessions in the acupuncture protocol compared to other studies,53,81,88,90 which may have rendered the true acupuncture intervention suboptimal, a concession that the authors independently made. The data from Foster et al.84 also failed to demonstrate a significant relationship between patient treatment preferences and clinical outcomes or patient expectations and pain at 6 and 12 months. The biomechanical,70–72,158 chemical,141,159 and vascular129,138,140,160–162 effects of needling either superficial55 subcutaneous tissue (non-muscular) or deep23,24,73,74 intramuscular tissue without injectate have been well documented. In another recent literature review, Myburgh et al.22 found poor inter-examiner reliability of manual palpation of TrPs in various muscle groups. The existing data on reliability pertain only to agreeing if a muscle has the signs of a trigger point and not the exact location of the taut band or the nodule within the taut band.144
The activation of the endogenous opioids is for an analgesic effect using the gate control theory of pain. Dry needling that elicits LTRs improves treatment outcomes, and may work by activating endogenous opioids. However, dry needling theory only begins to describe the complex sensation referral patterns that have been documented as "channels" or "meridians" in Chinese Medicine. The founder of Integrative Systemic Dry Needling (ISDN), Yun-Tao Ma, has spearheaded the "dry needling" movement in the United States. Dry needling using such a needle contrasts with the use of a hollow hypodermic needle to inject substances such as saline solution, botox or corticosteroids to the same point. It’s highly likely that you’ll benefit greatly from dry needling if your healthcare provider is suggesting it.