Tender muscular spots called trigger points can be sources of intense pain, but dry needling is an effective way of relieving your discomfort. If you have trigger point pain, the team at Boston Pain Clinic in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, can help. They have many years of experience in using dry needling to relieve pelvic and lower back pain. Call Boston Pain Clinic to learn more, or request an appointment online today.
Dry needling is a valuable treatment for soft tissue pain. Other names for dry needling include functional dry needling (FND), trigger point dry needling, and myofascial trigger point dry needling.
Your muscles may develop tightly knotted areas known as trigger points. These are extremely sensitive and often painful to touch.
Trigger points can also be responsible for referred pain, where you feel discomfort in a different part of your body.
Myofascial tissue connects your muscles, covering them in a web of flexible, fine fibers. Myofascial pain arises when the tissues become inflamed. Dry needling can help resolve trigger point and myofascial pain.
Dry needling can help treat many musculoskeletal conditions. Boston Pain Clinic uses it to treat:
Dry needling typically forms part of a comprehensive treatment plan that could include other forms of physical therapy, such as special exercises, stretching, manual therapy, and heat therapy.
To perform dry needling, your provider at Boston Pain Clinic inserts thin needles into your trigger points through your skin. Unlike a hollow hypodermic needle used to inject medication, dry needling needles are solid and their purpose is to stimulate the knotted, inflamed tissues.
This stimulation helps the muscle fibers relax and changes how your brain communicates with the muscles, restoring healthier movement. You might feel sensations like muscle soreness and aches during dry needling treatment, or muscle twitches when the needle enters a trigger point.
Administering trigger point therapy requires specialized training so your provider can judge whether to insert the needles deeply or close to the surface. The length of time the needle needs to stay in place varies from a few seconds to 15 minutes.
The number of dry needling treatments you need depends on the severity of your condition and how well you respond to the treatment. Some people only need one or two treatments, while others need several.
The team at Boston Pain Clinic advises you on when you should return for further treatments.
To benefit from the Boston Pain Clinic team’s expertise in dry needling, call the office or request an appointment online today.