July 2024

If you’ve only heard about trigger point dry needling or you’ve been too nervous to try pelvic floor dry needling, you’re in for a treat!

Dry needling pelvic floor muscles can offer relief from pain, incontinence, and sexual dysfunction, but many people are nervous to try this treatment. And sometimes dry needling only one area of the body can miss some key factors that are contributing to your pain.

Read Whole Body Healing with Integrative Dry Needling to understand another option to get more complete relief and improvement, especially if trigger point dry needling is too intense for you or you’ve been nervous to try pelvic floor dry needling.

(If you prefer a video version - scroll to the bottom to watch the recent talk I gave on Dry Needling for Pelvic Health!)

What is Dry Needling?

Dry needling - also called trigger point dry needling, or trigger point therapy - is a skilled technique and clinical treatment that involves placing a very small diameter needle into painful soft tissue (muscles, tendons, capsules, ligaments, etc) to release tension and improve blood flow and function of the tissue. The placement of the needle is based on your unique needs, as found in your evaluation, to directly address any pain and dysfunction you’re experiencing. The small needle used in trigger point dry needling varies in length depending on where in the body the needle is placed - safety is always the main focus of treatment! We can even needle into tendons, scar tissue, or vascular regions to treat neuromusculoskeletal conditions, pain, movement impairments, and disability.

What Is the Difference Between Dry and Wet Needling?

Dry needling uses a thin, solid, monofilament needle that is inserted into soft tissue. This needle typically ranges from 0.15mm to 0.35mm in diameter, which is thinner than a sewing needle and significantly smaller than a ‘wet’ needle. Wet needling uses a hollow bore needle to deliver fluid such as corticosteroids, anesthetics, or other substances. The wet needle diameter ranges from 0.5mm to 1mm, which is much larger than a dry needle. Whenever medication is added to the treatment the likelihood of side effects like skin discoloration or tissue damage increases, so dry needling is considered a more conservative treatment than wet needling.

Is Dry Needling the Same As Acupuncture?

Dry needling is NOT the same as traditional Chinese acupuncture. Dry needling utilizes a different methodology, philosophy, and education than traditional Chinese acupuncture. 

Acupuncture uses ancient eastern medicine principles like meridians and Qi that were developed thousands of years ago to treat physical, mental, and emotional pathologies. Dry needling practice is based on the foundation of modern Western medicine principles such as neurology, physiology, and anatomy to treat neuro-physiological pathologies like decreased mobility, strength, function, and pain. Since dry needling is based in science, it will continue to advance as medicine advances. 

While acupuncture and dry needling may utilize the same monofilament needle, their ideology and treatment approach is significantly different. This explains how a traditional acupuncturist deciding where and why to needle would be entirely different from where and why a practitioner of dry needling would decide to needle.

Dry needling utilizes a different methodology, philosophy, and education than traditional Chinese acupuncture. 

What is Integrative Dry Needling?

If you’ve only heard of trigger point dry needling, you may be excited to hear that there’s another approach to dry needling called integrative dry needling (IDN). Trigger point dry needling is especially helpful for patients who have acute pain - their pain or restrictions are very localized to one area. By needling the affected or related muscles or other soft tissues, we can get those tissues to relax and improve their function. But many patients have chronic pain or pain that they experience more systemically, so the treatment needs to be more global as well. 

Integrative dry needling provides a more comprehensive approach and holistic treatment than dry needling. It’s based on the understanding that musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction are systemic issues stemming from inflammation, irritation, and inhibition. Integrative dry needling focuses on homeostatic points in order to have a calming or normalizing effect on these three factors. Homeostatic points are key neurological areas in the body that have stronger therapeutic signaling to the nervous system.

Integrative dry needling provides a more comprehensive approach and holistic treatment than dry needling.

What Makes an Integrative Dry Needling Practitioner Different?

Integrative dry needling practitioners provide a whole body approach to your problem! I love being an integrative dry needling practitioner because it allows me to treat your entire body at a local AND a systemic level. As an integrative dry needling practitioner I can needle symptomatic myofascial trigger points and also apply needling to homeostatic neurological points in your body in order to address your entire nervous system so you can get more complete relief and improvement. It also allows me to offer many more ways to customize your dry needling session to best fit your unique needs and sensitivity. 

By only focusing on one area of the body with trigger point dry needling, you may be missing some of the key factors that are likely contributing to your pain. This is why some injections result in temporary or no relief. You may not be getting to the root of the problem because you’re neglecting an underlying nervous system involvement. This is important considering that most issues are a systemic problem, not a local problem!

How Can Integrative Dry Needling Help You?

There are many benefits of integrative dry needling because it manages soft tissue inflammation and positively influences the function of your nervous system! Some of the benefits you can experience with integrative dry needling include improved blood flow, release of tension in your muscles, decreased pain, increased range of motion, increased muscle strength, and improved daily function. These benefits are important because a lot of chronic and recurring pain is due to a loss of micro-circulation. Needling these areas helps to increase blood flow and reduce inflammation and helps to optimize the body’s physiological processes.

Some of the benefits you can experience with integrative dry needling include improved blood flow, release of tension in your muscles, decreased pain, increased range of motion, increased muscle strength, and improved daily function.

Give it a Try!

If you’re experiencing pelvic pain or other pain that just won’t go away, or if you’re looking for whole body healing, integrative dry needling could be just what you’re looking for! Schedule an appointment with me at Renew Pelvic Health today to see if integrative dry needling is right for you!