Dry Needling vs Acupuncture

physical therapysan antonio physical therapysan antonioadvanced rehab and sports center san antonio

Nov 10

Although Acupuncture and Dry needling both incorporate needles in their treatment, they differ in terms of the benefits and areas that they focus on.

Dry Needling vs. Acupuncture - What’s the Difference?

Acupuncture is a conventional method that uses needles to encourage endorphin release from the body and stimulate healing energy for reduced pain.

Dry needling, on the other hand, implements needles as a form of treatment for muscle healing and trigger points that are the main source of a patient’s pain levels.

Now, you may be wondering… what are trigger points and why do we target them?

Trigger points are highly sensitive problem areas in the body that require a little extra attention. These muscle fibers become pain points if an injury occurs or they are overworked in any way.

Used by our physical therapy specialists here at ARSC, Dry needling is a minimally invasive technique that punctures the skin with tiny needles to treat and heal the pain caused by trigger points in the muscles.

Dry needling has been shown to work as quickly as 24 hours after the treatment has been conducted on our patients and works wonders on those who struggle with musculoskeletal impairments.

What is Dry Needling?

Hear from our physical therapist Dr. Ramnarine as he explains what dry needling is:

Dr. Ramnarine: “Dry needling is a technique that we use as physical therapists. We use it for a variety of conditions and diagnoses. We use thin needles to go into trigger points or teno osseous junctions where the tendon and bone meet. We can also use it for getting close to the nerves without getting into the nerves in order to help promote blood flow and tissue healing. Sometimes some of these tissues when having an injury will heal improperly or incorrectly. The dry needling will help to kind of restructure that healing process and promote a better type of healing. We use it for a variety of diagnoses. We use it for neck pain, and low back pain, but just soft tissue injuries. We can even use it to treat some headaches. It's a good tool that we use in our toolbox.”

What Are the Benefits of Dry Needling?

Dry needling gets straight to the source of the problem and has many benefits that we see daily with our patients here at ARSC. Some of the benefits of dry needling include the following: