Trigger Point Therapy

Dry Needling Physical Therapy

Deep muscle pain can be stubborn to get rid of. Over-the-counter medicines can’t dent it. Doctors sometimes can’t even locate it. That’s when it’s time to try dry needle therapy or trigger point massage therapy. Both target trigger points in your muscles to release the pain there.
For the long term, dry needling and this trigger point massage therapy technique help you out of pain, naturally. See your local Brooklyn physical therapy practitioner for trigger point therapy.

Chronic pain affects millions of people every day, whether it’s in the knee, shoulders, hips or back. Most live with the pain or spend time and money trying remedies that don’t deliver the best results. It’s an endless struggle.

Trigger point therapy — also known as myofascial trigger point or neuromuscular therapy — is a different alternative. Available at your local physical therapy practice in Brooklyn, trigger point therapy as a form of physical therapy for knee arthritis can treat your chronic pain. It works because it focuses on detecting and releasing trigger points or especially sensitive spots in your body.

Trigger points, found in your skeletal muscles, are locations in your body that generate pain when pressed. Typically, trigger points appear because of some trauma to the striated muscle’s fibers. Ironically, muscle pain can be relieved by trigger point therapy, which taps into those trigger points.

Types of Trigger Points

Trigger points fall into one of two categories:

Active-phase trigger points. These trigger points can generate debilitating and pervasive pain. The sensations also can feel like a dull ache, a burning pain or a feeling of fatigue and numbness. Other sensations caused by active trigger points are sweating, goosebumps, dizziness and watering eyes. When the pain becomes great, you require immediate relief, best in the form of trigger point physical therapy. Over time, if you don’t have the source of the pain treated, your ancillary muscles become overworked trying to compensate for the weakness in the original muscle, and your pain spreads.
Latent-phase trigger points. These trigger points lie dormant within your muscles, where they can remain for years. You won’t even realize these trigger points are there until you accidentally press one, activating a painful reaction. These types of trigger points cause a loss of strength, distortion of muscle movement patterns and limited movement and rigidity of the affected muscle. Some examples of latent trigger points are a dodgy knee that feels unstable and weak from time to time or a back that occasionally acts up with pain and stiffness.

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Trigger Point Therapy Treatment Options

Physical therapy in Brooklyn NY offers various techniques including trigger point physical therapy to release the tension held within your active and latent trigger points. Your response to trigger point massage treatment depends on how long you’ve had trigger point pain. Your top rated PT doctor in Brooklyn gauges your reaction to the treatment and makes adjustments accordingly. The most common forms of trigger point therapy include trigger point massage and dry needle therapy.

Dry needle therapy. Dry needle therapy tends to get confused with acupuncture. They are different, even though they both use the same kind of tiny needles. In layman’s terms, the dry needling physical therapy is focused on releasing pain from irritated muscles, while acupuncture seeks to release the energy that’s blocked inside a body.In acupuncture the needles remain in your skin for an extended time, but in dry needling, your therapist pulls them out fairly quickly, once they’ve hit the spot. Your trained therapist determines the duration as well as the location of the needles. Dry needling may initially feel uncomfortable, but any twinges of pain are part of the journey toward long-term relief. Stating bluntly, dry needling works to relieve your pain.
Trigger point massage. For those people who have a strong aversion to needles, even tiny ones, there’s trigger point massage. In this massage technique, fingers and elbows replace needles, but the goal is the same: activate your trigger points. Trigger point massage focuses on areas where your muscle fibers are tight. These tight muscles may have formed from an injury or from overuse. There are a number of trigger point release methods:
- Active rhythmic release
- Passive rhythmic release
- Shiatsu (acupressure)
- Trigger point pressure release

After Your Trigger Point Therapy

You commonly feel sore for the first 24 to 48 hours after treatment. You may also experience some fatigue after your trigger point therapy, as the release of the pain in your trigger points taxes your body. Sometimes, other areas — seemingly unrelated to where you had trigger point massage or needle therapy — begin to feel better. This happens because the other area is likely a group of muscles that had to overcompensate for the weakness in the muscles you’ve had treated.

Talk with your local physical therapist in Brooklyn about your options for trigger point therapy. Your body may respond very well to this proven form of physical therapy, even if other forms of treatment were unsuccessful. Let the experts at TRI Physical Therapy put you back on the path to a pain-free life with trigger point treatment. Contact us today!