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"Unpacking the Science Behind Dry Needling: Does it Really Work for Muscle Pain?"

Updated: Mar 11


If the thought of lying on a table and being poked by tiny needles makes you feel uneasy, you’re not alone. But a growing number of people – from athletes to people with injuries or chronic pain – swear by its ability to provide sweet relief for intense muscle pain and mobility issues.


Dry needling trigger point therapy has been used for decades, but it’s become an increasingly popular drug-free way to treat musculoskeletal pain.


It’s almost always used as part of a larger pain management plan that could include exercise, stretching, massage, and other techniques, but it can play an important role in muscle recovery and pain relief.


Dry Needling is often applied to muscles with trigger points, alleviating the trigger point itself and the taught band associated with it. There are a number of Dry Needling techniques that can be used to alter the state of the tissue; hence the technique will vary according to your presentation.


Also known as myofascial trigger point dry needling, is an alternative medicine technique similar to acupuncture. It involves the use of either solid filiform needles or hollow-core hypodermic needles for the therapy of muscle pain, including pain related to myofascial pain syndrome.

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Dry needling is mainly used to treat myofascial trigger points, but it is also used to target connective tissue, neural ailments, and muscular ailments. It is a technique used to treat dysfunction of skeletal muscle and connective tissue, minimize peripheral nociception (pain), and improve or regulate structural or functional damage.


Dry Needling Versus Acupuncture


Is dry needling acupuncture? No, but it is very similar. The same needles are used, however, acupuncture is more superficial on the skin, going no deeper than 1mm, whereas with dry needling, you can go anywhere from 30mm to 100mm deep into a muscle. Dry needling benefits compared to acupuncture is that you can dry needle pretty much any muscle in the body, whereas with acupuncture, you target more pressure points instead of trigger points.


Dry Needling How Does It Work?


A technique that is very well suited to use for a range of presenting musculoskeletal conditions.

Whether you're an Office worker, tradie, elite or amateur athlete. Giving great results to acute and chronic conditions.


The aims of dry needling is to decrease local muscle tightness and tension that has been identified by the initial assessment. Resulting in dysfunction where the body is not ready to benefit from other manual therapy techniques. Dry needling is a far more precise and specific approach in order to decrease hypertonic muscle tension and pain.


Past experience has shown that there are specific areas that respond extremely well to dry needling and the results are normally quite different to hands-on treatment options.


Dry Needling and Massage


Dry Needling and Massage can be used together to create a very successful treatment. Dry needling hip, dry needling bursitis, dry needling ITB, and dry needling for neck pain are some of the areas most commonly treated.


Dry Needling Dangers


Dry needling dangers are very small. The act of dry needling only becomes dangerous if the practitioner has poor education about human anatomy.


Dry Needling Pregnancy


Dry needling pregnancy is not recommended as in the past has caused complications.


Dry Needling Melbourne


There are many dry needling myotherapists, dry needling massage, and dry needling physio in Melbourne. Dry needling near me in Thornbury is the place to go for dry needling experts.





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