Health, One Step At a Time: Shoes For The Sole

We talk about the rules and guidelines that make up good shoes as well as the effects of proper and improper shoe wear on your health.

What is Dry Needling?

I always get asked by friends and patients what dry needling is so I thought I'd write a brief introduction to it's effects on the body. 

Dry needling is a skilled intervention performed by physical therapists that uses a thin needle to penetrate the skin to stimulate underlying muscular trigger points to relieve myofascial or neuromuscular pain

  • What is a trigger point? 
    • When a certain muscle is always contracting or "on", it builds up lactic acid and other inflammatory processes that cause your muscle to become irritated and sticky, which blocks out oxygen. These are the tender and sometimes painful "knots" you feel during massages. 
    • That muscle soreness you feel after a workout? Also from lactic acid. The problem is that if the muscle is always on, it never gets to rest and those inflammatory processes are stuck within the muscle fibers. 
  • How does dry needling work?
    • A therapist performing dry needling will be looking for a "twitch" response from the muscle as the needle is inserted into the trigger point. This brings about chemical, neurological and physical changes. 
    • Right at the source of pain, a dry needle can be used directly at the trigger point to...
      • Increase blood flow and oxygen
      • Decrease muscle shortening
      • Release waste build up
  • Does it hurt?
    • The needle itself is a thin filament needle that can barely be felt upon insertion. Once the practitioner finds a trigger point, the twitch response may feel like a quick cramp. 
    • After the session, muscle soreness may be felt for a day or two. It is recommended to drink plenty of fluids, applying heat, and staying active to reduce the soreness. 

Now, I must mention that dry needling is not a cure-all. It is one aspect of therapy that, if used, must be incorporated in the entire treatment plan. Think of it as a band-aid. It may be useful initially, but you are not going to be applying band-aids for the rest of your life. It is patient specific. It is a means to an end. 

If you have any questions, you can send me a message under the appointments tab!

 

Resources

  1. American Physical Therapy Association. APTA Department of Practice and APTA State Government Affairs. Physical Therapists & The Performance of Dry Needling: An Educational Resource Paper. 2012.
  2. Kalichman L, Vulfsons S. Dry Needling in the Management of Musculoskeletal Pain; JABFM 2010;23 (5): 640-646.
  3. Vulfsons S, Ratmansky M, Kalichman L. Trigger point needling: Techniques and Outcome. Springer Science +Business Media, LLC 2012. Published online: 18, May 2012. 

Dry Needling Demonstration

I got the opportunity to work with a few students from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore's physical therapy program (my alma mater) and Ariel was kind enough to let me demonstrate dry needling to her upper trapezius. I will be posting some information in the next week or so on some of the general concepts and FAQ's with dry needling so keep an eye out for that. Enjoy!

Why Did I Start My Own Practice?

I have been a student on rotations and working as a Doctor of Physical Therapy in numerous insurance-based clinics for a number of years... and I was burnt out. 

Think about this for a second. When you go to see your in-network orthopedic physical therapist, how old are they normally? The next question that may pop into your head is, "where have all the older physical therapists gone?" Coming out of PT school, many of my classmates had the same question, but some of us have only just realized the answer after working in the field.

For therapists who really care about their patients, working in an in-network clinic is hard work. Reimbursement rates from insurance companies are dwindling each year. Note-taking and justification for each patient is thorough and time consuming. What does this mean? Factory physical therapy clinics where patients are brought in every half an hour, sometimes every twenty minutes, sometimes even double booked! So after those twenty to thirty minutes, that may or may not be double booked, the patient is then whisked away to a tech/PT aide, whom may or may not have proper training from the physical therapist, to guide the patient through their exercises. What does that say about the exercises we are giving our patients? What kind of quality care is that really providing?

If therapists are getting burned out so quickly from seeing 16-24 patients per day, who comes in to replace them? New graduates. Don't get me wrong, being a new graduate fresh out of school has its perks. They are hungry for knowledge, they are eager to work, they sacrifice and go above and beyond for their patients. But, what kind of experience do they possess? What exactly have they learned coming out of school? 

Unfortunately, insurance companies have a lot of influence in the world of physical therapy. They influence who can be treated, how often they can be treated, how long they can be treated, sometimes even when a certain body part can be treated. Insurance companies even influence what we learn in school. Ever have your orthopedist or physical therapist ask you to hold a certain position with your arms or legs and ask you to resist their pressure? That's called a manual muscle test. It measures the strength, on a scale from 0 to 5, of a particular muscle, isolated as best as possible. Insurance companies require measurements such as these during your evaluation, re-evaluations, and discharge to see how you have progressed with therapy. But, what relevance does this number have in real life? Not much. If you really strengthen your left medial hamstring, or ischiocondylar adductor, or your anterior gluteus medius, does that mean those muscles kick in when it is truly needed to stabilize that leg during early stance of your gait cycle? Ever reach a 5 out of 5 with all your muscle tests but still feel pain? How about range of motion? If we're measuring the length of your hamstring, are we taking into account the position of your pelvis or rib cage during the measurement? 

I'm not saying these skills are not useful, but most therapists will tell you that coming out of school, skills such as these are only baseline tools that must be used to expand our knowledge once we're actually out in the field. These are baseline skills PT schools need to drill into us so that we can justify treatments to insurance companies (and receive reimbursement) instead of focusing on research-based treatment interventions. 

Physical therapists care. We care so much that we'll try to give each patient as much of our time as possible even though we realistically only have twenty to thirty minutes per patient. We care so much that we'll work with each patient as long as possible and save all of the documentation work for after hours when all the doors have closed.  It is because I care for the well-being of my patients that I decided to start my own clinic to give each patient what they deserve: my full, undivided attention.