When most people think about living in Colorado, they think about skiing and playing in the mountains. Whether you are skiing, running, or hiking out here, there's always a fun, active, and sometimes competitive activity to do in every season. However, with all of these options to stay active, overuse and over training injuries are incredibly common for everyone; not just athletes. There is no quick fix for an overuse injury, but Functional Dry Needling is one of the best adjuncts to traditional physical therapy that can help decrease pain, improve flexibility and ROM, and get you back to activities that you may have stopped due to pain.
What is Functional Dry Needling? Also known as trigger point dry needling or just FDN, FDN involves the use of a solid filament needle, that is inserted in the trigger point of a muscle where you are experiencing symptoms. The goal is to release or reset the tissue, which in turn decreases pain and tightness that could be limiting ROM and tolerance to activities. FDN is often used with electrical stimulation to activate a weak muscle or decrease muscle tightness in a comfortable and relaxing way. It is important to note that FDN is not a stand alone treatment and it is essential that your Fyzical therapist can address and find the compensations that led to the injury in the first place. With a full body assessment of posture, strength, and stature, there be more areas than the exact place of pain where FDN can be applied.
Common questions everyone asks are: is it painful? what does it feel like? what is the goal and how long will it last? What are the risks or side effects?
Well, when you get "needled" you do feel the needle. Our therapists will tell you it will typically feel like a deep muscle ache at the point of insertion. Now, while we mentioned before the goal is to increase ROM and functional strength of your body, what the therapist's goal of the muscle itself is to see a quick muscle "twitch" or reproduce the pain that you are being treated for. Now we know you do not want to feel this pain recreated, but rest assured this means we are targeting the correct area! The good news? This pain is not long lasting and is expected to be resolved by the morning after the session. The most common symptoms are mild soreness and/or bruising for about 24 hours after treatment.
The length of improvement in symptoms depends your overall response to treatment including your consistency with your exercises and time in physical therapy. If you've had a compensation for a longer amount of time or it is more severe, it may take longer for your results to reach the optimal level.
As with any procedure or modality in physical therapy, there are potential risks. These risks are rare and your Fyzical therapist will review these in detail with you.
Here at Fyzical Therapy and Balance Center of Westminster our PTs provide a full body assessment to find the cause of the injury and will address the cause through exercise and various manual treatments, including Functional Dry Needling.
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