Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Dry needling

For the past week, I've been in Bangkok. Peace Corps fit the bill for my bus ticket and per-diem but it's not all glitz and glamor in southeast Asia's sin city. Let me explain.

For the past six months I've been training for the Bangkok marathon which I will run on November 22. The first five months of my training went as smooth as they could have been. I was running no less than 15 kilometers a day at one point. Then, on one of my distance days, I attempted to break through a plateau runners sometimes find themselves in. I ran 25 kilometers in the midday heat without resting and without taking in any water.

The result was not a breaking through of a plateau but a breaking of my body. I pulled a muscle in the back of my left knee called the popliteus. For a month, I couldn't run. It was devastating to my psyche after training so hard for so long and it looked like I wasn't going to be able to run the marathon.

Two weeks ago I called in to the Peace Corps medical officer and explained to him my situation. His immediate response was, "When can we get you in?" At this point, I was thinking all hope was lost because I could still feel the discomfort and the marathon was just over a month away.

I arrived in Bangkok on Friday morning and Peace Corps had me in the doctors office that afternoon. The procedure was simple: stick a long smooth needle through my skin and into my muscle, causing a twitch response which is an indication that the muscle is relaxing.

http://www.southsideosteopathy.com.au/_notitia/ImageHandler.ashx?id=
The approach is based on Western anatomical and neurophysiological principles and is not to be confused with Chinese Acupuncture. Dry Needling involves introducing fine, sterile acupuncture needles into “trigger points” of muscles. A trigger point is defined as a tight, irritable and painful spot within a muscle - exactly what I had. Dry Needling alleviates the symptoms of trigger points quickly and effectively by eliciting a twitch response. The feeling is much like a muscle cramp or sometimes a centralized electrical shock.

Immediately after my dry needling treatment, my knee was sore and it was uncomfortable to walk. But as the days progressed, I could feel the discomfort from the needling AND the discomfort from the injury melting away. I've got one more series tomorrow morning and then I'm all done. The best part is, I should be healthy enough to run the marathon. In all honesty, I would have never thought this procedure would work but I stand by it 100%.

As far as what I did in the meantime between my treatments, that's information for my personal journal.