Muscle spasms and pain can upend your day-to-day activities, making it hard to work or focus. Charlie Piermarini, PA-C, MSPAS, MS, MPH, and his team at Complete Injury and Wellness in Phoenix, Arizona, offer dry needling treatments that tackle your frustrating muscle pain. Dry needling procedures target trigger points in your muscles and release knots that cause tension and discomfort. If you’ve experienced an injury causing this type of pain and are seeking individualized treatment, contact Complete Injury and Wellness and book an appointment online or over the phone to discuss your options today.
Dry needling is a newer treatment that you could compare with acupuncture. Similarly, dry needling involves using small needles to target trigger points in your muscles. Your provider inserts filiform needles, thin and short stainless steel needles, into your skin and irritated muscle.
Unlike acupuncture, which focuses more on restoring energy flow through the body, dry needling involves using fewer needles and focuses only on musculoskeletal and neuromuscular pain.
Dry needling is sometimes paired with a form of gentle electrical stimulation — this causes a small contraction of your muscle which causes them to fatigue and relax and then you feel calm relaxation of the muscle.
Dry needling may be a great treatment option if you experience neck, back, foot, hip, or shoulder issues affecting your movement capabilities. Dry needling helps reduce pain in these areas, removes trigger points or knots, and helps your muscles function properly again.
Although dry needling is not a cure, it’s used to treat acute workplace, sports, and personal injuries and chronic pain like fibromyalgia caused by a past injury.
Your provider discusses your current health and healing goals with you to determine if other forms of treatment need to accompany a dry needling procedure. Dry needling, along with injections or lifestyle changes, can restore muscle flexibility and range of motion and get you back on your feet faster.
Your provider conducts a thorough medical evaluation to determine if dry needling is a good choice for you, and if it is, they locate trigger points in your muscles. You lie down on your stomach or back, depending on the specific target muscles.
During the dry needling, your provider inserts several tiny filiform or monofilament needles into your skin. Depending on the level of tension, your muscle may experience contractions, but overall it should be painless. Be assured your provider uses sterile needles and disposes of them after each procedure.
Providers call the needles “dry” because they don’t inject any type of fluid into your skin and instead target the knots and hard muscle points. Your provider determines how long the needles should stay in your skin, but it is normally a short period of time.
You can return to your daily activities immediately and may experience temporary bruising or limited soreness.
To discuss a dry needling treatment, reach out to Complete Injury & Wellness today over the phone or schedule an appointment online and discover if the procedure is right for you.