What Are The Benefits Of Dry Needling?
Should you consider incorporating dry needling into your clinical practice? As with any physical therapy intervention, dry needling is best suited as part of a multimodal plan of care as opposed to an isolated intervention. If you’re not familiar, let’s unpack the benefits of dry needling.
Pain Relief
Dry needling is a powerful tool for modulating pain in many common musculoskeletal conditions. Dry needling mechanisms are multiple and complex, but facilitate both “bottom up” and “top down” pain modulation. “Bottom up” modulation involves segmental inhibition of peripheral nociception, facilitating improved ability of the inter-neuron pool in the dorsal horn to block transmission to second order neurons. “Top down” modulation involves stimulation of higher centers in the cortex facilitating descending inhibition via release of endogenous opiods.
Faster Recovery
Dry needling may promote faster recovery from a variety of soft tissue injuries including, strains and sprains. Manipulation of the needle within tissues can aid in stimulating a local inflammatory response, potentially promoting the healing process.
Improved Function
The use of dry needling can improve range of motion, flexibility, and function for many patients. Dry needling has demonstrated improved local and global recruitment of painfully inhibited muscles as well as normalizing tone in hypertonic muscles. This creates a therapeutic window where patients are able to more actively participate in therapeutic activities with improved muscle recruitment and motor control.
Improved Circulation
One of the local benefits of dry needling is improved circulation. Improved blood flow has been associated with a decrease in local inflammatory and nociceptive chemicals which is one of the primary local mechanisms facilitating hypoalgesia and tissue healing.
Reduced Muscle Tension
Dry needling is a beneficial technique for reducing muscle tension, muscle guarding or spasm. These phenomena are found in many common musculoskeletal conditions. Dry needling has been shown to produce a reduction and normalization of resting muscle tone as measured via EMG.
Why Should I Offer Dry Needling At My Practice?
Helps You Stand Out
Dry needling is becoming a more commonly offered service in many physical therapy clinics. Both physicians and patients are increasingly seeking a facility that offers dry needling. Having staff that is certified in dry needling will allow you to market directly to both physicians and the public.
Allows You To Better Help Your Patients
Offering dry needling can help you better serve your current patients. The technique has been supported to be beneficial in treating a variety of conditions including:
Back and neck pain
Headaches and migraines
Pelvic pain
Whiplash
Tennis elbow
Joint problems
Plantar Fascitis
TMJ
Tendonitis
Spinal issues
Shoulder impingement
Learning about dry needling and getting certified is not just about adding another section to the services on your website. It’s about expanding your knowledge base to be able to offer your patients the best service you can provide and dry needling is a great way to do that.
Can Expand Your Patient Pool
Similarly to helping your patients, offering dry needling at your practice will allow you to reach new clients that are specifically looking for physical therapists that offer dry needling services. Dry needling can open your clinic up to those with musculoskeletal disorders, like fibromyalgia that are looking for alternative treatments. Additionally, offering dry needling is a great way to further expand into the world of sports therapy and recovery. Dry needling is a technique that is becoming increasingly popular among athletes as it is generally beneficial for recovery but also great for treating more chronic musculoskeletal conditions.
Where Can I Take Dry Needling Continuing Education Courses?
NAIOMT offers a variety of continuing education courses for physical therapists and physical therapist assistants. Our continuing education courses include dry needling courses and we offer them across the country! Not only do our courses cover the theory, but we also provide an ample amount of lab time to ensure that those who take our course feel they have the proper techniques to bring back to their patients! If you are interested in learning more about our dry needling courses, you can view our upcoming courses on our website or contact us directly!
