Acupuncture, the practice of inserting tiny, monofilament needles to improve pain, healing, recovery, and promote overall wellness has been in practice for over 3,000 years in Eastern civilizations. Dry needling, which uses the same acupuncture needles with more of a Western-medicine philosophy, has been practiced by physical therapists since the 1980s but has recently exploded in popularity in the last 10-15 years. In my clinical experience, it is one of the most powerful tools in our tool boxes to effect structural change in tissues and significantly decrease both acute and chronic pain. 

If you're interested in some of the nitty gritty science, I briefly touch upon just a few of the many mechanisms through which dry needling is so powerful in my article comparing dry needling to opioid prescription. Put simply, dry needling tricks your body into healing an old injury by making it think you have a new one. The needles promote vasodilation to increase blood flow and bring healing growth factors to an area that may have been "ignored" for a long time if we've not taken the time to properly rehab an injury. When we injure, let's say, a ligament, our body throws down a messy bundle of collagen that looks a lot like messy spaghetti. Typically, input like load and tension through muscle contraction and stretching at the proper points in the healing timeline help to re-organize this collagen from spaghetti junction into a strong, uniform cable. Injuries like this may become chronic if they've been subjected to too much activity too soon or too little too late when we get busy and can't prioritize our own recoveries. Dry needling does an amazing job of re-organizing this collagen when combined with winding (or turning) techniques, which also releases a hormone called adenosine. Adenosine, which is famously known to be blocked by our morning cup of coffee, not only makes us relaxed and sleepy but also increases our endogenous opioids (aka our internal, natural pain killer). 

Dry needling combined with electrical stimulation (think: your home TENS unit) also boosts endogenous opioid production to help promote improvements in pain. Through many complex biochemical cascades, dry needling decreases pain at both the level of the central nervous system (our brain/spinal cord) and in the periphery (out in the tissues that are hurting). If you love a good literature dive, check out this article for a fantastic summary of all of the cool ways needles trick out bodies into feeling better: (Butts et al., 2016). 

To my patients, the most important effects of dry needling seem to be the immediate reduction in muscle tension and soreness. Through both physical and chemical processes, the needles help "break up" trigger points, which are just taught, partially contracted bands of muscle. They will go from having a super "tight" and sore muscle (think of the muscle at the top of your shoulder/base of your neck that you're probably rubbing right now while reading this) to a muscle that is more pliable and soft with a single needle. Instead of painful, heavy massage or foam rolling the life out of it at home, a single needling session can make the difference in your muscle tension and pain. This makes needling a fantastic tool to get fast and significant improvements for headaches/migraines, jaw pain, IT band syndrome, sciatica, etc.