If your muscles feel tight, sore, or have muscle knots that just won’t relax, you might have heard about dry needling. It’s a treatment physiotherapists can use to help ease muscle pain and help you move and feel better.
What Is Dry Needling?
Dry needling is a form of treatment where the clinician uses very thin needles to gently stimulate tight or sore spots in your muscles — often called muscle knots or trigger points. These knots are small areas in the muscle that feel tense and can be painful or stiff. It is important to note that nothing is injected into your body; the needle just helps the muscle relax and feel less tight.
How Can Dry Needling Help?
Dry needling can:
- Help your tight muscle knots loosen up
- Ease pain and stiffness
- Make the muscles function better and stronger
- Help you get better quicker, reducing your symptoms and enable you to commence exercises and rehabilitation symptom-free
What Does It Feel Like?
You might feel a tiny prick when the needle goes in. Sometimes, there is a muscle twitch — this is normal and means the tight spot (muscle knot) is being stimulated to relax. After treatment, your muscle might feel a bit sore, like after you’ve exercised, but this usually goes away quickly within a few hours.
Dry Needling vs Acupuncture: What’s the Difference?
Both dry needling and acupuncture use thin sterile needles, but they are different treatments approaches:
- Dry needling focuses on treating muscle knots (trigger points) and tight muscles to reduce pain and improve movement. It is based on Western medicine and musculoskeletal anatomy.
- Acupuncture comes from traditional Chinese medicine and focuses on balancing and improving the flow of blocked body’s life force or vital energy (Qi) in the body along the meridians by inserting needles at specific points (acupuncture points) in the body. These points are believed to correspond to different organs and systems, and the stimulation is thought to restore balance and promote healing.
If you’re unsure which one is right for you, your physiotherapist can explain and help you decide which treatment suits your needs best.
Is Dry Needling Safe?
Yes! When a trained and certified physio does it, dry needling is safe. They’ll talk to you about it first and make sure it’s appropriate for you. Normally they will ask you a series of questions prior to ensure there are no precautions or contraindications towards completing the dry needling.
Who Can It Help?
Dry needling might be good if you have:
- Tight or sore muscles full of knots. Common areas of treatment include the neck, back and shoulders
- Headaches caused by tight muscles
- Muscle pain from injuries
- Muscle tightness that hasn’t improved with other treatments
Dry needling is just one of the ways physiotherapists can help you feel better. It works best alongside other treatments like exercise and other forms of hands-on therapy like massage. Book a dry needling session with our qualified physiotherapists to help ease your pain, tightness and muscle knots today to get you moving and feeling better!
