Modern medicine is always looking for ways to advance the practice and help more people in Singapore. As the modern era has heralded an epidemic of repetitive stress injuries, researchers and doctors have expanded how they approach treating these conditions. A number of therapies and procedures from traditional Chinese medicine have grown in application recently, and one of them is dry needling. It is now common to see dry needling used as a means to help people with repetitive stress injuries and musculoskeletal pain. You can learn more about dry needling to see if this specific therapy is something that might help you.
What Is Dry Needling and How Does It Work?
Dry needling is a form of physical therapy. It works by triggering neuromusculoskeletal muscle points to treat energy channels, muscle pain, and movement problems. In simpler terms, the technique uses needles to target tight or dysfunctional bits of muscle length and related tissue.
This involves pushing small needles through the skin in order to hit trigger points. Those points can be targeted muscles, ligaments, or tendons. The needles are intended to trigger a natural twitch response and healing in the affected area. By bringing in the foreign object, the body notices a problem and will respond by increasing blood flow and a stream of productive hormones to help the region. This can mitigate and even help cure a number of musculoskeletal issues.
What Are the Benefits of Dry Needling?
It is primarily used as a therapy to help patients with pain related to musculoskeletal issues. It can alleviate pain and help restore mobility issues related to such problems. It also improves blood flow, initiating a new healing process — particularly in targeted areas — that comes with a number of natural benefits.
Additionally, dry needling can reduce tightness in muscle fibers, tendons, and ligaments to help with pain and mobility problems. The benefits are reduced physical stress, pain relief, restored mobility, and reduced inflammation. These benefits have now been seen under ultrasound elastography (a type of imaging) where the muscle fibers are seen to re-align.
What Kind of Pain Is Dry Needling Most Effective in Treating?
Musculoskeletal pain is the primary target of needling. This is pain caused by tightness and disruptive muscle fibres in or around muscular and fascial tissue. It’s a great treatment for many common sources of pain in the back, neck, shoulder, hip, and heel. Needling tendons in patients can also assist in the healing of conditions such as Achilles tendinopathy and tennis elbow.
What Are the Side Effects of Dry Needling?
As a medical procedure, dry needling does have potential side-effects. The most common is a temporary increase in pain. According to a study conducted by Duke, increased pain is a side-effect in roughly 60 percent of cases. The good news is that this pain is temporary, and in 24 to 48 hours, it tends to subside.
Less common side effects include skin reactions to the needles. This can come in the form of bruising, bleeding, and outbreaks on the skin, but these issues are only present in about 20 percent of cases.
Even less common are fatigue, fainting, and tiredness. The problems arose in less than one percent of patients. Of course, very rare side effects have occurred with any kind of invasive needling technique to other tissues but these are extremely rare and your health practitioner should be able to explain signs to look out for during your consultation.
Is Dry Needling the Same As Acupuncture?
The short answer is no. While the two techniques may seem similar on the surface, they are incredibly different practices. Acupuncture is based on Eastern medicine and is designed to affect a person's "chi".
Dry needling treatment has nothing to do with traditional Eastern medicine. Instead, it is a Western medical technique that is based on scientific rigor. It uses needles to target specific musculoskeletal problems like muscle tension, trigger point pain, stimulate blood circulation, pain reduction, and natural healing mechanisms by “tricking” the body into thinking it has sustained a new injury.
Perhaps most importantly, dry needling is not a standalone procedure. It is used as one part of an entire complement of procedures and health treatments that can be used to overcome musculoskeletal issues like shoulder pain.
What Happens After Dry Needling?
After this treatment session, it is common to experience some side-effects. As stated above, the most common is soreness, and it can last up to two days. The purpose of the procedure is to stimulate energy flow and healing response in your body. This means the treatment has to convince your body that there is something to heal and that often comes with soreness and minor pain.
You may experience other side-effects listed above.
All of that considered, your treatment session is intended as physical therapy. The expectation is to see some improvement in the original source of pain. If you compound the effects of needling with light exercise or prescribed physical therapy, you can see substantial improvements from this treatment. Of course, you should always follow the directions of your doctors, physiotherapists, and healthcare professionals. Immediately after a needling session, they will tell you to keep physical activity light and normal. You should avoid strenuous activity for a few days after the procedure.
Who Benefits From Dry Needling?
Anyone who is suffering from pain that is related to musculoskeletal conditions such as shoulder pain can potentially benefit from this procedure. People with specific mobility issues may also see some benefit from this treatment. The common causes of these kinds of pain and restricted movement can often be treated partially or totally by dry needling.
If you want to know if you are a candidate for dry needling treatment, the best place to start is by asking physiotherapists. They can review your condition and diagnosis to see if dry needling is a good fit for your treatment.
Why See Integrative Physio For Dry Needling?
Whilst there are many practitioners in Singapore now advertising dry needling their levels of experience will vary greatly. Minimum coaching requirements are currently 16 hours of tuition. Matthew Winter at Integrative Physio has close to 300 hours of formal training from the UK, Singapore, and Australia including training with the founder of dry needling Dr. Jan Dommerholt (Physiotherapist). Matthew was one of the first to practice dry needling in Singapore and has been providing this technique daily for almost a decade.