Beebe Healthcare is now offering dry needling as an alternative to opioid prescription.
Dry needling uses needles to penetrate the skin and relax a deep tissue muscle spasm otherwise inaccessible with other methods like massage or cupping.
Physical Therapist Joseph Barrera says the technique can be offered to patients with chronic pain who may otherwise be prescribed opioids. He says, like opioids, dry needling blocks pain signals called peripheral nociceptive input.
“It also, in a way, blocks peripheral nociceptive input that goes through the spinal cord and goes to the brain which can kind of mimic the effect of the opioids. The good part about that is you don’t have quite the side effects of the medication,” said Barrera.
Beebe’s dry needling program has been up and running for about three months now and Barrera says he’s used it to help patients who had previously been prescribed opioids for chronic pain.
“Those instances that the input is consistent doctors usually resort to using opioids, because opioids tend to consistently block those nociceptive inputs. Dry needling tends to do the same thing,” he said.
Dry needling has become practiced widely across the state since 2014 legislation signed by then Gov. Jack Markell allowed for the practice to be considered within the scope of physical therapy.
Barrera says dry needling differs from acupuncture in that is exclusively used to treat pain.