Anyone tried Dry Needling or Acupuncture for Pain or Neuropathy?

I’ve put off any injection in my cervical spine as well. I, like you, have done extensive research and relief does seem to be short lived. Has to be repeated, can cause worse pain, etc. all very scary.

I may try it anyway.

They did dry needling on my neck at PT - scapula area where the pain radiates down my back/shoulder from my neck. Didn’t seem to do much. Didn’t hurt though, worth a try.

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Can you tell me what dry needling is? Acupuncture?

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When I was going to PT for neck pain, they would put warm compresses on my neck/shoulder, while at the same time they would hook me up to a TENS machine for 15 minutes (small electrical pulses into tight trapezius muscles).

Then the Physical therapist would come in and insert 4-5 long very thin needles into the muscle area that was affected. I went to another PT provider and they hooked up the TENS machine to the needles. After that I would do the stretching exercises.

Acupuncture uses very thin needles inserted into acupressure points throughout the body. The goal is to break through blockages in the meridians or between the acupressure points. The needles are not put where the pain is necessarily, but at the acupressure point corresponding the affected body part. For example, one day I told her I could feel aching in my ankle after the session. She said the ankle acupressure point corresponds to the neck, and I was there to work on relieving my neck pain.

When I asked the doctor of Asian and Oriental medicine what the difference is between acupuncture and dry needling she said acupuncture puts needles into acupressure points and dry needling uses needles into the trigger points of the muscles.

Of course acupuncture is not widely accepted in main-stream medicine in the US, but my acupuncture doctor says when she worked in NJ before moving her practice to Alabama, she worked hand-in-hand with pain management doctors and chiropractors. I think it definitely has merit and I have seen improvement in my sinus, neck and general pain level.

Great question, hope this helped (or brought up more questions!).

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It was recommended to try by my pt. I have DDD in my neck and that's where they want to do. Had anybody tried it and did it help. My C5,6 and 7 have no cushion left.

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Oh I have definitely found a range of expertise in massage therapists and physical therapists.

I have only gone to 1 acupuncturist but I am very impressed with her skills. She spends time asking me about what is going on with my body each time before she starts and asks later what worked and how I felt later in the day. She studied massage therapy and worked at that to get through the Oriental and Asian Medical school which took 9 years. She said having the knowledge of the body from massage therapy training definitely helped her in her further studies to learn acupuncture.

As for massage therapists, I have again hit the jackpot in finding Michael, who started at a Massage Envy I had joined. I couldn’t believe how skilled he was and his knowledge of the body is amazing. He used to work on the Dallas Cowboys. He also asks what’s going on when I arrive, what I want him to concentrate on, he is trained in myofacial release and all sorts of other types of massage. He started his own business recently.

Both the acupuncturist and my massage therapist are located within a 5 minute drive of my house. Wow, lucky me.

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When I was going to PT for neck pain, they would put warm compresses on my neck/shoulder, while at the same time they would hook me up to a TENS machine for 15 minutes (small electrical pulses into tight trapezius muscles).

Then the Physical therapist would come in and insert 4-5 long very thin needles into the muscle area that was affected. I went to another PT provider and they hooked up the TENS machine to the needles. After that I would do the stretching exercises.

Acupuncture uses very thin needles inserted into acupressure points throughout the body. The goal is to break through blockages in the meridians or between the acupressure points. The needles are not put where the pain is necessarily, but at the acupressure point corresponding the affected body part. For example, one day I told her I could feel aching in my ankle after the session. She said the ankle acupressure point corresponds to the neck, and I was there to work on relieving my neck pain.

When I asked the doctor of Asian and Oriental medicine what the difference is between acupuncture and dry needling she said acupuncture puts needles into acupressure points and dry needling uses needles into the trigger points of the muscles.

Of course acupuncture is not widely accepted in main-stream medicine in the US, but my acupuncture doctor says when she worked in NJ before moving her practice to Alabama, she worked hand-in-hand with pain management doctors and chiropractors. I think it definitely has merit and I have seen improvement in my sinus, neck and general pain level.

Great question, hope this helped (or brought up more questions!).

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@lindes Thank you for your comment. I wanted to share some information with you about dry needling and myofascial release. Living fascia weaves through all the muscle fibers and organs in the body and is a conductor of electricity. When a therapist does dry needling, and places a needle into a trigger point in a muscle, it causes a twitch response which is a depolarization and release of the held electric charge that then causes the muscle to contract with a twitch. Here is some literature that describes this event.

The source is the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine:
https://www.jabfm.org/content/jabfp/23/5/640.full.pdf

Excerpts:
"Myofascial pain is a common form of pain that arises from muscles or related fascia and is usually associated with myofascial trigger points (MTrP). An MTrP is a highly localized, hyperirritable spot in a palpable, taut band of skeletal muscle fibers.1 When an MTrP is stimulated, 2 important clinical phenomena can be elicited: referred pain and a local twitch response. "

"Dry needling an MTrP is most effective when local twitch responses are elicited, 14 probably because of rapid depolarization of the involved muscle fibers, which manifests as local twitches.19 After the muscle has finished twitching, the spontaneous electrical activity subsides and the pain and dysfunction decrease dramatically. "

Here are a few links that may also be of interest:

This video illustrates living fascia and how it moves and remodels as it changes between solid and liquid forms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW0lvOVKDxE

This is our discussion on Myofascial release and there are numerous links in the first few pages about MFR therapy. I have a lot of experience with MFR therapy and it has helped me a lot. My therapist taught me how to do MFR so I can self treat at home between clinic sessions.

Isn't the video of living fascia interesting?

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I went to an ENT, everything looks normal but they did no scans. I asked my primary care physician to order an MRI to decide what to do next. She agreed, then referred me to a pain management doctor.

That was 3 weeks ago, still waiting to hear back from them to schedule an appointment. The pain management doctor must review my medical record before scheduling so don’t know how long that will take.

I will continue to do my PT exercises but now worried the stretching might be causing more inflammation. What’s a girl to do?

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There's really no evidence that acupuncture works for much of anything. The studies that show positive outcomes are quite flawed.

What kind of headaches do you have?

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I have to disagree that needling doesn’t work. I had the worst case of shingles Drs. had seen. The cure for my case of severe shingles pain came from a very talented acupuncture therapist. I loved how she described, “Next, we are going to cut off the head of the dragon” because Chinese medicine compared the pain of shingles to that of dragon breath.

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