Breakthrough therapy could help pain management
OAKLEY, Ohio (Liz Bonis ) - A breakthrough therapy could help you fight pain without medication or surgery.
This therapy is now pretty popular, and it is said to get to the point of the pain, which can be anything from carpel tunnel to back pain.
It's now offered at Beyond Exercise in Oakley where a couple of local athletes said it's keeping them in the competition.
Taylor Watts and Megan Myers put in rigorous training workouts each day. Taylor was having back pain from soccer. Megan was in similar pain from hours of practice classes at Julliard.
"This year's been pretty demanding, especially on a dancer's body," Myers said.
Taylor admits that turning to dry needling wasn't at the top of her list.
"I was not a needle person," she said.
But in just a short time, Sarah Crawford, a physical therapist, got her pain levels way down with dry needling.
"It's an invasive technique that we can use to treat myofacial symptoms," said Crawford.
Myofacial symptoms come from trigger points or knots, according to Crawford.
"The best case scenario is to figure out where the source of the pain is coming from, and if it's coming from muscles then dry needling is a great option," she said.
She simply inserts hair-thin needles through the skin and into the underlying muscle. The stimulation, she says, then helps the muscle relax, which relieves trigger point pain.
"I essentially twist in the needle, in and out, waiting for the twitch to stop," said Crawford.
Since dry needling is recommended for all kinds of pain, it can help everything from migraines to foot pain to bunions.
Myers was sidelined for a bit due to her pain, but after just a few months of dry needling she says she ended up going back into dancing a lot sooner than her doctors thought.
Beyond Exercise is all self-pay, and after initial assessment a half hour session of dry needling is about $65. This therapy also being studied right now at Ohio State for knee pain, which hasn't been studied this way before.
