Dry Needling & Cupping
What is Dry Needling
Dry Needling is a manual technique and therapeutic modality in which a sterile solid filament needle is inserted into soft tissues at points selected by your physical therapist. It is a highly effective form of physical therapy treatment for a multitude of musculoskeletal, neurogenic, and inflammatory conditions.
How Does Dry Needling & Cupping Work?
Dry needling works at the systemic and local tissue level in order to restore internal homeostasis. Homeostasis is a process in which the body's internal environment is stable, despite changes in external conditions. DN promotes self healing.
Soft tissue dysfunction involves soft tissue injuries including tissue inflammation, sensitized nerve tissue, scar tissue formation, tissue adhesion, and deficiency in blood and lymphatic circulation. The process of inserting a sterile needle starts with puncturing the skin, and then involves physical stretching of the tissues by mobilizing the needle and creating lesions in the soft tissue. This initiates a tissue remodeling process to reduce tissue tension, normalize local inflammation, and replace injured tissues. DN can produce a local twitch response when inserted into an active trigger point and this will reduce referred trigger point pain.
The DN process also works with the systemic nervous system using peripheral nerve mapping to reduce the neurogenic inflammation for pain management of neuropathy and radiculopathy syndromes.
Advanced DN therapists also use micro-vascular techniques, such as cupping and
electrical stimulation with the needling. These techniques follow the same principles of foundational integrative dry needling. Cupping involves placing cups on the skin to create suction and facilitate blood flow. This helps relieve muscle tension, which improves overall circulation and promotes cell repair. Cupping is used along with manual therapy and exercise to give patients optimal treatment results.