If you’ve been suffering from chronic pain, muscle tightness, or movement issues, dry needling might be the solution you’re looking for. But what exactly is it, how does it work, and what can it help with?
What is Dry Needling?
Dry needling involves the use of thin, sterile needles inserted into trigger points or tight bands in your muscles. Unlike acupuncture, which is rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, dry needling is based on modern anatomy and medical research. The goal is to release muscle tension, improve blood flow, and promote healing in specific areas of your body.
How Does It Work?
When the needle is inserted into a trigger point, it causes the muscle to contract and then release, reducing tension and discomfort. This process also stimulates your body’s natural healing mechanisms by increasing blood flow to the area, reducing inflammation, and releasing endorphins which act as your body’s natural painkillers.
What Conditions Can Dry Needling Treat?
Dry needling can help with a variety of conditions, including:
Chronic muscle pain: Trigger points can cause persistent pain and stiffness, which dry needling effectively reduces.
Sports injuries: Whether it’s a pulled muscle or tendonitis, dry needling can help athletes recover faster.
Neck and back pain: These areas are prone to tension and spasms that dry needling can help release.
Headaches and migraines: Often linked to muscle tightness, dry needling can alleviate the tension that contributes to headaches.
Why Choose Dry Needling?
One of the greatest benefits of dry needling is how quickly it can offer relief. Many people notice an immediate reduction in pain and an improvement in mobility after dry needling. It’s a safe, minimally invasive option that can be an effective part of your overall chiropractic treatment.
If you’re dealing with muscle pain, tension, or an injury that’s affecting your daily life, feel free to talk to us about whether dry needling might be right for you. You might be surprised by how quickly it can get you back to feeling your best.
Contact the clinic today on 0578678904 or book now.
Hip pain is a common issue that can affect people of all ages and activity levels. Whether it’s caused by injury, overuse, or underlying conditions such as arthritis, hip pain can significantly impact a person’s quality of life. Fortunately, there are several non-invasive treatment options that can help get rid of your hip pain, including chiropractic care, active release techniques, and dry needling.
Chiropractic care uses hands-on techniques to manipulate the spine and other joints in the body to improve mobility and reduce pain. In the case of hip pain, we may perform adjustments to the pelvis, lower back, or other areas to help relieve pressure on the hip joint.
Dry needling is a technique that involves the insertion of thin needles into trigger points or knots in the muscles. This technique can help to release tension and improve blood flow to the affected area, leading to pain relief and improved function. Dry needling can be particularly effective for hip pain caused by overuse or muscle imbalances.
Active Release Techniques (ART) is a manual therapy that is used to treat soft tissue injuries and conditions. This technique involves the application of pressure to specific areas of the body while the patient performs specific movements. ART can help to break up scar tissue, release tension, and improve mobility in the affected area. For hip pain, ART can be used to address issues such as tight hip flexors, gluteal muscles, or the iliotibial band, which can all contribute to hip pain.
Chiropractic care, ART, and dry needling are all non-invasive treatment options that can help to alleviate hip pain.
If you need help with your pains or just want some advice feel free to contact the clinic today on 0578678904 or book now.
Triathlon’s shoulder (also known as swimmer’s shoulder) is a term that is used a lot, and not only in the world of athletes. But what does it really mean? What is involved in creating the pain and what can be done to help alleviate it?
What is triathlon’s shoulder?
The medical terminology for triathlon’s shoulder is “impingement syndrome” which is a fancy term to say that there is a narrowing in the space between the acromion (the most top bony part of the shoulder) and the humeral head (connecting the arm to the shoulder). This narrowing causes a “pinch” in the tendons going through that space: usually the rotator cuff (supraspinatus and subscapularis in the picture below) and/ or the biceps.
What causes it?
It occurs more often in athletes and labourers that perform repetitive motions which can in the long term cause this sort of overuse injury. The typical sports include but are not limited to triathlon, swimming, baseball, volleyball, and racket sports. Jobs involving repeated overhead activities such as painters, carpenters, and electricians are also more at risk.
The recommended hand on approach involves the patient, the chiropractor and the coach (if sport-related injury) to combine their efforts together using:
Manual chiropractic adjustments
ART: Active Release Techniques muscle work
Dry needling
Laser IV therapy
Technique evaluation and correction
Proper rehabilitation exercises
Finding the cause of what initiated the pain is very important in order to avoid reproducing the same injury in the future. This does not mean stopping the activity involved with that movement but rather finding a new pattern that will allow to achieve the same goal without putting yourself at risk for injuries. This process works best with everyone working together as a team to get you out of pain and back into doing whatever activity or work you want or need to do.
The following video shows what a normal shoulder full range of motion should look like. Please only perform this exercise to your own tolerance. This is not a treatment.
If you have been experiencing shoulder pain and would like a consultation, contact the clinic on 057 8678904.
Almost everyone has experienced a headache in their lifetime. If it only happens once then there is usually no need to do anything about as it will be quickly forgotten. What about those that come back regularly, every month, weekly or even daily? There are many kinds of headaches which can be very debilitating, especially migraines.
What is a migraine? A migraine is a specific type of headache. It is defined as recurring head pain due to changes in the brain and/ or surrounding vasculature. These can come with or without an “aura”. An aura is a symptom/ feeling/ sound/ vision that comes on before the migraine starts, as a warning sign.
Migraines are usually related to triggering factors such as:
Stress
Hormonal changes
Diet
Medication
Pain can be very intense and is usually described as pulsating or throbbing. More often than not it is located on one side of the forehead and can last several hours to days.
Some common side effects of migraines are:
Nausea
Vomiting
Sensitivity to light
Sensitivity to sound
What can ease the symptoms of migraine? Migraines can respond well to conservative care including:
Chiropractic adjustments
Mobilisation
Active Release Technique (ART)
Dry needling
Diet
Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS)
Medication (if needed)
Another very important aspect to help with migraines is to find the triggering factor(s) to be able to avoid them if possible or at least manage them when encountered.
If you have recurrent migraines or headaches and are not sure what to do about them, contact us at the Lawlor Clinic in Portlaoise for a consultation to see how we can help.
Those new born days and weeks for most women can be described as a being a bubble of love and awe at what your body has produced. During the nine months prior to this we invest so much time making sure we eat healthy, exercise wisely and educate ourselves of what’s to come.
We may have attended ante natal classes that focus on breastfeeding and focus on how to get that perfect latch. Some mothers and babies take to it easily but many have obstacles to overcome, such as suboptimal latch, tongue tie and nipple pain.
Breastfeeding is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world but it isn’t in anyway easy.
Someone that is often neglected at this precious time is the mum. It can affect us in so many ways particularly emotionally, mentally and also physically.
How does breastfeeding physically affect the mum?
Many postpartum women who attend the clinic have issues with neck pain, mid back pain, headaches, low back pain and even referred pain into the arm/ hand. Basically their posture is inadvertently suffering from all that nursing, cuddling, holding and carrying of their little one.
Of course this doesn’t just apply to nursing mothers but also to those that bottle feed.
Tips on how you can help yourself:
It’s important to ‘check in’ every so often when you’re feeding to make sure you’re not hunching over your baby constantly. This will put strain on those postural muscles and local joints.
Bring the baby to you and use supports such as a nursing pillow to help.
Look at changing nursing position if possible. For example try laid back nursing where you can relax more during feeding.
Foam roll your mid back little and often to relieve tension.
Start doing some gentle stretches for your mid back, chest, neck and hips.
Chiropractic, soft tissue therapies and dry needling are excellent tools for relieving joint restrictions and muscle tension. As well as these, stability exercises are given to make sure these areas are better able to withstand the demands of everyday parenting.
If you are still in discomfort or experience an increase in symptoms consult your local health professional or contact us today for a consultation.
Check out Shane’s XIX Podcast Interview discussing all things Golf Injuries, Rehab & Performance
▫️How he got to work on the PGA & European Tour ▫️Whats it like working with tour pros? ▫️The changes he’s seen in the past 10 years ▫️What it takes to be a tour pro? ▫️What amateurs can do to improve their game?
Dry needling is a minimally invasive procedure in which an acupuncture needle is inserted directly into a muscle (known as a myofascial trigger point – MTrP). An MTrP is a highly localized, hyperirritable spot in a palpable, taut band of skeletal muscle fibers. Essentially an MTrP is a knot within a muscle. 74-85% of patients with pain present with MTrPs in their area of discomfort.
Dry needling an MTrP is most effective when local ‘twitch responses’ are elicited, probably because of rapid depolarization of the involved muscle fibers, which manifests as local twitches. Once the needle hits a tight part of the muscle, the patients’ muscle can twitch. After the muscle has finished twitching, the spontaneous electrical activity subsides and the pain and dysfunction decrease dramatically.
Dry needling breaks up muscle tightness, tension, knots and scar tissue. It helps in reducing muscle spasms, pain and muscle sensitivity. More specifically, dry needling has been proven to be very effective for low back pain. It provides pain relief and functional improvement in those with chronic low back pain and lumbar myofascial pain. Evidence suggests the improvements are further enhanced when the muscle is stretched afterwards. Needling deep into the muscle has been shown to be more effective than superficial needling. Howver, over the areas of the lungs or large blood vessels, superficial dry needling has been shown to be more appropriate and just as effective. Dry needling is a very safe method of treating muscular injuries and pains, and adverse side effects post treatment are very rare.
If you are suffering with muscular pain and tightness, please do not hesitate to contact us to book a consultation
Yours in Health,
The Lawlor Clinic Portlaoise
Chiropractic | Active Release Techniques (ART®) | Functional Range Conditioning (FRC®)
The most common type of headaches are tension headaches. Most of us have likely experienced one at some point in our lives. Headaches can usually be tolerated by most of us if they happen only on rare occasion, or at least infrequent enough to bother us. But what about when you start getting headaches more than once a month? What about every week? And at the extreme, multiple times a week? These symptoms are your body trying to tell you that something is not right! So what’s the cause of these headaches? And what can we do to help?
Causes of Tension Headaches:
Do you get headaches that start at the back of your neck or shoulders? Do you feel pressure around your head? These are some of the symptoms of tension headaches. Unlike some of the other types of headaches, tension headaches usually have a mechanical cause. Mechanical meaning a more physical cause. For example, dysfunction in the muscles of the neck, head, shoulders, and in the joints of the neck. Specifically the muscles at the base of the skull, the suboccipital muscles, are some of the most commonly implicated muscles with these headaches.
What Triggers these Muscles to Tense Up?
Forward head posture: working with head in a prolonged flexed position for too long
Stress: many people “hold” their stress at the top of the shoulders and with these muscles connecting up into the neck and head, too much tightness here can lead to headaches.
Accidents/injuries
Grinding teeth/ Jaw problems
Eye strain
How we treat Tension Headache?
The good news for those who suffer from these type of headaches, is that they respond very well to conservative care, which is what the Lawlor Clinic specialises in! We use Active Release Techniques ®, to provide a targeted release to the problem muscles and tissues, and manipulation or mobilisation to the joints in the spine, and other therapies including Dry Needling and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation (DNS) to help you get back to focusing on life instead of focusing on a headache.
If you are still unsure, contact us today for a quick chat to see how we can help!
Yours in Health
The Lawlor Clinic: Portlaoise
Chiropractic | Physiotherapy | Active Release Techniques (ART®)