Dry needling is a mainstay of my treatment practice. It isn't necessarily the new kid on the block anymore, but while many people have heard about dry needling, you might not know exactly how it works.
Let's break it down a little bit.
When I'm dry needling, I'm thinking "Do I want to turn this muscle off or do I want to turn it on?" Meaning, is this muscle having trouble firing and I need to turn it on or does this person have so much tension and tightness in their muscles that we need to help turn these muscles off.
A lot of you really might identify with one or another, but for today, let's talk about the second group: having difficulty turning a muscle "off".
In the video, I picked one of the most common muscles people have difficulty turning off, and that's the upper trapezius. This muscle goes from the outside of your shoulder to the base of your head and is responsible for the shoulder shrugging movement.
Many MANY people carry stress and tension in this muscle group, and there are two main ways that I like to treat it.
1. The first is by deactivating the trigger points. Trigger points are taut, hyperirritable bands of muscle that can cause pain, tenderness, and lack of mobility. They are the points in your muscle that you press on that feel ropey, tender and painful.
When the dry needle goes into the muscle and contacts a trigger point, you will feel a jump or a twitch (this is normal!). That muscle is contracting and then relaxing even further than it was able to at the beginning. We can move the needle around, we call it pistoning, to find different trigger points to deactivate within the muscle without having to re-stick the patient every time!
2. The second way is by decreasing tension in the muscle through electrical stimulation. I still find those same trigger points as in #1, but once we are right on the trigger point, I apply electrical stimulation that causes that muscle to jump at a rhythmic beat.
Why do we do this? If a muscle is able to fire between 0 to 10, and it's staying constantly on at like a 3-4, it's not able to relax down to a 0 on its own, because your brain thinks that a 3 or 4 is its "0" or baseline now. Also, because it's expending energy to stay a little bit contracted all the time, it doesn't have the energy to maximally fire at a "10" like it used to.
So by applying electrical stimulation, we are able to re-teach that muscle what on and off now look like again with the use of external stimulation. This stimulation to the nerves and muscles sends a signal to the brain that resets what its baseline is.
Pretty cool, right?
Then after getting that reset with the needling, what's the best thing to do? Move and exercise to "save" that new baseline.
Let me know if you have any questions and share with a friend who you think might benefit from some dry needling!
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