December 1, 2025 • 28 mins
Episode Highlights With Cristi
- What dry needling is and how she uses this modality
- The things happening to the body physiologically during dry needling
- Why muscles became acidic after injury and how to replenish and fix this
- How muscle voltage changes and how this impacts us and is linked to pain
- Dry needling is a mechanical disruption of the tissue fibers of the muscle in a knot
- The four pillars of healing: Reset, repair, replenish, respect
- What about people who are afraid of needles and what helps them with dry needling?
- Things we can do to help our bodies become more alkaline with hydration, breath, and movement
- Healthy, well used muscles don’t exhibit trigger points
- In a perfect world, how often to dry needle
- When in our cycle to dry needle as women
- All of the things dry needling can be helpful with
- CC Dry Needling website and on Instagram
- Cristi's Instagram
- The Body Keeps the Score - Book
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welk on to My Body's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This podcast is sponsored by Native Path and here's a
creating benefit that might surprise you. It can actually support
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might think. See. Creating helps you build and maintain leaning
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(00:25):
big concern for a lot of women, I first hand know,
don't be afraid of the water weight that comes when
you first start supplementing. Its hydration and your body composition
can improve dramatically over time. For many women, they fear creating,
thinking it will make them bulky. I can say from
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(00:46):
some form of exogenous support, that most of us are
not doing. So instead we get that toned to find
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body composition. I have been lifting for a long time
and I am certainly not bulky, and I wish I
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(01:06):
and for many women three to five grams to day
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I use Native path creatin and for most women, creatine
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(01:30):
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n A t I v E c r e A
t I n E. And this episode is brought to
you by Apollo neuro This is a tool that has
really helped me feel more relaxed and de stress. It's
than Apollo wearable that can be worn anywhere in your
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I've used mine for years and I definitely noticed the benefits.
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and get your own by going to A P O,
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one word for a discount Hello, and welcome to the
Wellness Mama podcast. I'm Katie from Waldnessmama dot com and
I am thrilled today to introduce you to an in
(03:15):
real life friend who I've gotten to get the immense
benefit of working with in her work of dry needling,
and that's what we're going to talk about in this episode.
We talk about dry needling and what she calls the
four rs of healing, pain, reset, repair, replenish and respect.
And like I said, I got to do dry kneeling
with her was my first experience with it, and it
(03:35):
was incredibly profound and helpful. Christy is a holistic physical
therapist dedicated to helping people restore balance to their neuromuscular systems,
enhance their core strength, and elevate their athletic performance. And
she's the founder of CC dry Needling, where she redefines
traditional physical therapy with personalized one on one care. And
she also has a passion for helping women who are
(03:56):
facing burnout, which we talk about in our second episode together.
Let's jump in and learn. Christy. Welcome. I'm so glad
you're here.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Thanks for being here, mean, I'm so excited of being here, Katie.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Thanks for inviting me. I'm really excited to there are
stories together.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, thank you for being here. It's an honor to
finally get to chat here because we are in real
life friends, and I will say you have one of
the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met, because before
we were even actually in real life friends, you hosted
a friend of mine who was moving across country, not
even knowing this person, in the middle of the night,
at the expense of your sleep, and they stove to
this day rape about how amazing you were. So it's
(04:34):
an honor to get to chat with you and learn
from you, and also knowing you in real life, I
have gotten to do dry needdling with you, which was
an amazing experience, and I feel like helped release some
stuff that massage could never quite get anywhere near, and
so I've wanted to learn from you on a deeper
level about that. Today. I would guess some people have
heard of this, and I would guess a lot of
people have not. So for anybody new to the term,
(04:56):
can you tell us exactly what is dry needling and
how it's different than, for instance, acupuncture or massage or
any of these other techniques that someone might use.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, the term acuu puncture comes from acuum means needle
or sharp, and puncture is you know, the insertion into tissue.
So acupuncture has been around thousands of years. It's part
of Chinese medicine. It is used to unlock or unblock
(05:27):
fee energy throughout the body, and Chinese medicine practitioners have
used this for years to like open up meridians and
energy in the body to balance out people's energy. Grin needling,
on the other hand, is similar because it uses the needle.
It uses the same needles, a tiny bit thicker needle
because we want the muscle to respond to the stimuli
(05:50):
to the to the needle. And I discovered dry needling
in two thousand and nine when I was working as
a physical therapist in loss of Vegas. The therapist that
I was working with said, like, you know, he was
always in his back room and he was working on
a really strange case with this guy with some rib
(06:11):
problems and shoulder problems, and the guy would always come
out and I don't know, he looked like he was
just it was like really intense, but he was getting
great results from it. And I asked him if he
could needle me. So he used the acupuncture needles on
my hip flexer. And at the time, I was training
for a bodybuilding competition, and I was doing these long
runs and you know, doing all the proper exercise for
(06:34):
these competitions, and he needled my hips and my quad
and the next day I had the best run I'd
ever had. I could do the split. I don't know
why I decided to like try to split, but like
my hip flexer. Really, I mean this is in twenty
four hours. So yeah, it's been around for over fifteen years.
(06:57):
It became a modality in texts that is used by
chiropractors and physical therapists. And yeah, the point of dry
needling is to really tension in muscles and or reconnect
the nerve to muscle connection. And I could go on
about exactly what it's doing, but driin kneeling is more
(07:18):
about tissue healing and resetting, breaking up scar tissue and
even resetting the muscle to nerve connection so that patient
can get back into healing and kind of releasing like
all the information that they've had and I get back
to moving better. Most patients feel a difference in one
session and then other patients kind of need a few
(07:40):
other sessions maybe according to their to their injury.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, I definitely noticed the difference within one session. And
what surprising me. I expected that like the muscle might
feel different, or might release things, or there might even
be some soreness if I had been holding tension there
for so long. What I didn't expect was how it
drastically seemed to affect my nervous system. And I've heard
you talk about this or seeing you talk about this
in other places, but can you describe like what's happening
(08:06):
with the nervous system and what's happening in the body.
You mentioned the muscle to nerve connection, but that was
what was really what stood out to me was like
I was like, oh, wow, I'm deeply impairasympathetic. It was
like something maybe my body was holding on too released
and I just felt that like profound, like oh within
my nervous system.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's crazy. They didn't talk about that. You know
during our certification. We do know that. You know, when
there is a noxious stimulus and that twitch response happens,
the body's like, oh what's going on? And so your
sympathetic nervous system does fire up, but then the longer
the needles are in, it kind of gets you into pairasympathetic.
(08:45):
And what I've learned in the last couple of years
with research on my own body, because we needled your
neck and your upper trapezius, and so the neck and
the upper trap I mean, they are so connect to
fascia that is connected to the top of your head,
and some of those nerves are correlated with your cranial nerves.
(09:09):
And the most important cranial nerve that we know is
the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve runs along the
neck and like it's under the sterner platomastoid. And of
course we know that fash is all connected, so it
possibly stimulated your vegus nerve, which which puts you into parasympathetic.
The other thing that we know about the parasympathetic nervous
(09:29):
system is that we have the most afferent nerve. We
have the most nerve fibers or afferent nerve fibers in
the back of the head, which are along the sub
occipitals on the back of the neck. And then there
are some afferent fibers in the ears, and there are
along the sacrum and I don't remember if I did this,
but there's a really cool protocol that we do that
(09:51):
we needle the back of the head and along the
sacrum and crisscross the lead and it gets people into parasympathetic.
I know that this happens just because I have my
or ring and every time that I get needled in
those areas, my freaking HRV like jumps like twelve thirteen point.
(10:12):
It's really awesome. I think most patients, or I tell
most patients that they are going to feel a little
high and that they will sleep better. And I'm sure,
do you remember sleeping really hard that night?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I definitely did. I remember you told me to hydrate,
so I was very impetible to hydrate and get electrolytes
and minerals and then I slept super super hard.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean it's great for scar
tissue and releasing any of the trigger points, but also
there is this like retraining of the nervous system. I
used to get needled along my low back, and my
low back was just so tight up for so long
that we would remove the needles and the needles would bend.
But I think that I've just been in this light
(10:56):
fight or flight mode, and my erectors were so tight
that I would bend the needles. And I've been the
needle like the first five or six times, and then
after that it's it's never happened again. But I really
believe that our nervous system needs some like nurturing and
(11:17):
re education and not what needling does.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In my perspective, that makes sense. And I remember reading
years and years ago the book The Body Keeps the
Score about how so much can be stored in our tissues.
So it makes sense to me that like if you're
able to release that, it would have a ripple effect
beyond just that area of the body, or beyond even
just the physical body. And you mentioned Fashia, and I
love anytime I get to learn more about Fashia. But
can you talk a little bit more about the connection
(11:42):
there and trigger points and chronic pain and how like
one spot can kind of be the root cause of
like all these downstream issues when it comes to this.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, well let's explain. Let's like talk about what's in
a trigger point. So we're here on our computers. Most
people are, you know, working online. Most people that I
see are in this light forward head posture, and so
when a muscle stayed in this continued contracture, there's extra acetochline,
(12:13):
which is the chemical that a nerve need, that a
nerve lets out, and then we have you know, sodium potassium,
and it builds up at the motor end plate and
it initiates a cyple of hypertonicity, and then it blocks
oxygen and then it causes is schemia. So then now
this muscle is tight, there's less oxygen, and then we'll
(12:36):
call this inflammation. And then the body calls in cidokines
and bradykinin and prussiglandins and serotonin and his threen and
then that area just becomes really acidic. And the other
part of that is that creates the less negative voltage
in the muscle most of us are we're supposed to
be at negative seventy to ninety is that millible and
(13:00):
it disrupts like the muscle performance, So then you're tight.
And then there's supposedly I think it's calcatonin gene related peptide.
It increases the sensity of the receptors at the neuromuscular
junction and the muscle is just like painful. And then
it's just sending the signals to your brain. So once
(13:20):
we can identify where that first trigger pointed. And for again,
like when we're talking about our upper trap upper body tightness,
do several needles along the upper trap trigger point area
or the upper trap line. But the main therapeutic thing
that we're trying to do is this pistoning technique on
(13:43):
the upper trap and so it sends no susceptive afferient
signal to the brain and then a local twitch response
happens and then it clears out the acetocholine, so it
like makes the muscle purge out this acetocholine. Then the
body is able to re uptake this the right amount
(14:03):
that it's supposed to have because usually there's an imbalance.
It depolarizes the post thematic membrane and then it sends
out signaled to the collagen bundle to come like re
restructure the muscle. So it's doing that. So basically it
is causing it's like a mechanical disruption of the of
(14:27):
the tissue fibers, because the tissue fibers are like in
a knot, and it's like disrupting it and it's like,
you know, all these fibers are just like in a knot,
and it just like lets it go, and then the
fibers are able to to slowly, over the next thirty
six hours restructure and like line up the way that
they're supposed to. So because there's a disassembly of the
(14:51):
actamin myosin that it allows the tissue to be more
easily remodeled. And then it also causes like an analgesic effect.
When you wist the needles, it'll like release ATP and ADP.
This is like really scientific. A lot of patients get
really confused, but basically it's just a big refset And Okay,
(15:11):
so you're asking about fascia. Fascia is like the skin
over the muscle. And when when say we're talking about
how the muscle gets really tight and there's less oxygen,
the fascial also gets thicker and thicker and thicker, and
so we say, like I always describe it like fascia's
(15:33):
like pannyhose, Like a pannyhose layer over the muscle.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
The dir and diety gets it becomes like denim.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's so thick, and so we're literally using the needles
to like poke around and make it more porous so
that it can move and be free the way that
it should most. I explain this to most patients because
they want to they're they're really they want to know
like the scientific, you know, explanation of what's going on.
(16:02):
But we also know at a deeper level that yes,
emotions are stored in fascia. Some patients will go there.
Some patients don't want to go there. I had several
patients that start crying when they're in a dry needling
session and they'll remember, you know, our right side represents
(16:24):
like our giving masculine side, and our left side represents
our receiving feminine side. And there was a patient one
time where she had like a shoulder issue. We dry
needled all the shoulder and the upper trap, and she
started crying and feeling like a little empathy for her.
She hadn't mourned her mom's death and that came up
(16:46):
during the dry needling session. And I feel like, I
am my practice has grown the way I the way
it has because I feel like not a lot of
patients have the time and space or the space to
work with a practitioner one on one to allow this
release to happen. And yeah, I you know, fashion work
(17:08):
is really special and can be intense and deep and intimate.
And yeah, I like to allow the space or allow
patients to bring up whatever they need to.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That's incredible. Well, and I love that you mentioned the
HRV said that was a great analogy too, with the
pantyhose versus the dentim and what our fashions is meant
to be when it's kind of in its ideal state.
And I would guess this is very much a both ants.
But people I know who do work in the world
of like mobility and not just flexibility, but like true
mobility and strength and full range of motion and really
are aware of their fascia and especially like fascially driven athletes,
(17:43):
I notice they tend to have very high HRV on average,
And so I have no data to back this up,
but I suspect there's some connection between our fascia health
and our HRV and our nervous system, and I hope
we can to keep learning more about that. This podcast
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v E c r E A t I n E.
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This is a tool that has really helped me feel
more relaxed and de stress. It's than Apollo wearable that
can be worn anywhere on your body and it tracks
sleep like other wearables, but unlike other wearables, it actually
improves my sleep automatically. Apollo was designed by a team
(19:53):
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that actually feel really good and work in the moment
so it feels like a hug. These weights are proven
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better sleep. The sleep setting is probably my favorite. Apollo
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(20:16):
which is heart rate variability, which is a leading biomarker
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I want to hold in on something else you said.
You mentioned the muscles becoming acidic, and I would love Obviously,
dryingline can come into play here in seemingly a huge way,
But are there anything else other things we can do
to kind of replenish our bodies in our body chemistry
after an injury or after even a workout when we're
(21:19):
in that acidic state.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, well, we talked about kind of have these four
pillars of this holistic physical therapy model that I talked
to about to patient, and we can go over them
one by one in depth. But one is resetting the
nervous system with dry needling, who would be repairing the tissue,
(21:44):
rebuilding collagen, and you know stretching and moving. Three is
replenishing chemistry because it's all about chemistry. We know that,
you know, we know that like water and hydration is important,
but there's also you know, having a diet where you're
not in an acidic way and eating foods that kind
(22:06):
of bring more alkalinity your body and have more negative
electrons like vegetable is very important. And then number four
is respecting yourself and just like the mental emotional part
of healing. So, oh, you were asking about chemistry and
just being less acidic. Yeah, yeah, So number one I
(22:26):
usually talk to patients about electrolytes because they are most
people coming in so dehydrated, they are being they're in
sympathetic nervous system mode, and they like drink coffee because
they're going, going, going, So just being a little bit
dehydrated affects the chemistry. So I ask them to drink
(22:48):
more water at electrolyte. I also, just you know I could,
I'll tell them, like, just add real salt to himalanthalt
into your water. What else? Having an anti inflammatory diet,
we all know that sugar and refined carbohydrate's just like
don't don't they don't like contribute to healing. Eating a
(23:10):
good amount of protein is really great. And breath, I
would say, breath and oxygenating our body is the most
alkaline thing that we can do. And also you know,
the more breath you have, the more negative you'll be.
But a well, a healthy, well used muscle do not
exhibit trigger point. And so when you're using your muscle
(23:36):
as well and you're moving and breathing, the muscles are
always going to have amazing integrity. But most of us
are like this and we're hunched over and we're in
one position or posture, and the other thing is that,
well we're hunched over, our liver is being squished, our
diaphragm is squished, and then you know, our paraspinyls are
(23:57):
in a lengthened position, but they're like learning to be
that way, and then our hip flexors get tight and
then so we contribute. We continue to go into this
forehead posture and also anti your pelvic positioning and if
our like if our organs are not opening up and
oxygenating as well, then yeah, those are going to be
acidic too. I know that every organ has its own
(24:19):
pH level, and you know, optimizing each organ need to
be is very important for overall voltage.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I would say that makes sense, and I totally wish
that we were neighbors and I could just come dry
needle with you all the time. I am curious though,
if someone wanted to implement this as a tool, obviously
they want to find a good practitioner close to wherever
they live, and I'll put your information for anybody who
lives in the Austin area. But what would be an ideal,
like perfect timing or amount that you would recommend, is
(24:49):
that if people were going to make this a part
of their lives and their routines.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, if I had all the resources in time, I
would dry needle every two weeks. I also dry needle
as a female, I drain needle a week before my
menstrual cycle. I just feel like I'm in a little
bit of more inflammation. So doing the parasympathetic protocol really
helps my body get into alignment. And there's I can't
(25:16):
make claims, but dry neeedling your low back before your
menstrual cycle, my gosh, it really helps. It really helps
like women's issues, and it has in mind. But I'd
say every two weeks. Yeah, drain knealing is an excellent tool.
You can dry needle your upper traps. You can dry
needle for low back pain. You could try dry needle
for it band issues. I've dry needled people with plant
(25:39):
you fasciitis. I've dry needled tennis elbow golfer's elbow rotator
cuff strain TNJ. I mean, name a muffel strain you
can get it dry needle. Were you asking about my information?
I'm in Austin, Texas. My business it's called SEC Dry Needling.
We have a team. I have a couple of practitioners
(26:01):
under me. I work yeah, in close to downtown Austin,
and I have an Instagram handle It's at CC dry Needling.
What else my website has lots of information. We talk
about trigger points, we talk about the nervous system, and yeah,
we're physical therapists, so we evaluate the patient with a
(26:24):
thorough physical therapy evaluation and if they do not qualify
or didn't seem like drining link is a good fit,
we also, you know, thoroughly give them the assessment and
we'll treat them with therapeutic exercise, other manual therapy or
manual therapy modalities. And yeah, our the goal is to
get patients out of pain and back into their sport.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Amazing. Well, I'll put all those links in the show
notes and lastly, I know or if they get to
do another episodes, you guys stay tuned. I think that
one will be really phenomenal as well. But for anybody
who's scared of needles, I would guess that's probably the
biggest objection that comes up when it comes to drain needling.
What do you tell people who want to do drinnilling
but are afraid of needles and what helps them to
be able to feel safe with drain needling.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Well, know that when you come to CC dry needling,
it's a one on one, it's a one on one environment.
So anything you need to express, you can freely express
it with us. You actually don't even feel the needle.
It feels like a finger like. You do feel the
twitch response, which feels like a really fat like muscle spasm,
(27:29):
and that's what sometimes surprises people. But you rat, you
really don't feel the needle if you ever do it
like maybe hitting a superficial nerve. But if we do
use these techniques where we kind of press with our hand,
you don't really feel the needle. And so yeah, we'll
talk about like the underlying fear of needles and what
it really means. But here, yeah, people say that they
(27:52):
really don't feel the needles. If it really does hurt,
we will find another way to treat you.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
This has been such a fun conversation. Like I said,
it was amazing to actually get to experience trying doing
I'm a huge fan now and I love that I
got to learn more about it today as well as
everyone listening. Thank you so much for the time, and
you guys stay tuned. We're going to get to do
another episode and go deeper on some other fascinating topics.
But for today, Christy, thank you so much, thank you,
thank you so much Katie. This is great and thank
(28:18):
you for listening, and I hope you will join me
again on the next episode with the Wellness MoMA podcast.
If you're enjoying these interviews, would you please take two
minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me.
Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which
means even more moms and families can benefit from the information.
I really appreciate your time and thanks as always for listening.
Welk on to My Body's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This podcast is sponsored by Native Path and here's a
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n A t I v E c r e A
t I n E. And this episode is brought to
you by Apollo neuro This is a tool that has
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than Apollo wearable that can be worn anywhere in your
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mama and use the code wellness mama all caps in
one word for a discount Hello, and welcome to the
Wellness Mama podcast. I'm Katie from Waldnessmama dot com and
I am thrilled today to introduce you to an in
(03:15):
real life friend who I've gotten to get the immense
benefit of working with in her work of dry needling,
and that's what we're going to talk about in this episode.
We talk about dry needling and what she calls the
four rs of healing, pain, reset, repair, replenish and respect.
And like I said, I got to do dry kneeling
with her was my first experience with it, and it
(03:35):
was incredibly profound and helpful. Christy is a holistic physical
therapist dedicated to helping people restore balance to their neuromuscular systems,
enhance their core strength, and elevate their athletic performance. And
she's the founder of CC dry Needling, where she redefines
traditional physical therapy with personalized one on one care. And
she also has a passion for helping women who are
(03:56):
facing burnout, which we talk about in our second episode together.
Let's jump in and learn. Christy. Welcome. I'm so glad
you're here.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Thanks for being here, mean, I'm so excited of being here, Katie.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Thanks for inviting me. I'm really excited to there are
stories together.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, thank you for being here. It's an honor to
finally get to chat here because we are in real
life friends, and I will say you have one of
the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met, because before
we were even actually in real life friends, you hosted
a friend of mine who was moving across country, not
even knowing this person, in the middle of the night,
at the expense of your sleep, and they stove to
this day rape about how amazing you were. So it's
(04:34):
an honor to get to chat with you and learn
from you, and also knowing you in real life, I
have gotten to do dry needdling with you, which was
an amazing experience, and I feel like helped release some
stuff that massage could never quite get anywhere near, and
so I've wanted to learn from you on a deeper
level about that. Today. I would guess some people have
heard of this, and I would guess a lot of
people have not. So for anybody new to the term,
(04:56):
can you tell us exactly what is dry needling and
how it's different than, for instance, acupuncture or massage or
any of these other techniques that someone might use.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, the term acuu puncture comes from acuum means needle
or sharp, and puncture is you know, the insertion into tissue.
So acupuncture has been around thousands of years. It's part
of Chinese medicine. It is used to unlock or unblock
(05:27):
fee energy throughout the body, and Chinese medicine practitioners have
used this for years to like open up meridians and
energy in the body to balance out people's energy. Grin needling,
on the other hand, is similar because it uses the needle.
It uses the same needles, a tiny bit thicker needle
because we want the muscle to respond to the stimuli
(05:50):
to the to the needle. And I discovered dry needling
in two thousand and nine when I was working as
a physical therapist in loss of Vegas. The therapist that
I was working with said, like, you know, he was
always in his back room and he was working on
a really strange case with this guy with some rib
(06:11):
problems and shoulder problems, and the guy would always come
out and I don't know, he looked like he was
just it was like really intense, but he was getting
great results from it. And I asked him if he
could needle me. So he used the acupuncture needles on
my hip flexer. And at the time, I was training
for a bodybuilding competition, and I was doing these long
runs and you know, doing all the proper exercise for
(06:34):
these competitions, and he needled my hips and my quad
and the next day I had the best run I'd
ever had. I could do the split. I don't know
why I decided to like try to split, but like
my hip flexer. Really, I mean this is in twenty
four hours. So yeah, it's been around for over fifteen years.
(06:57):
It became a modality in texts that is used by
chiropractors and physical therapists. And yeah, the point of dry
needling is to really tension in muscles and or reconnect
the nerve to muscle connection. And I could go on
about exactly what it's doing, but driin kneeling is more
(07:18):
about tissue healing and resetting, breaking up scar tissue and
even resetting the muscle to nerve connection so that patient
can get back into healing and kind of releasing like
all the information that they've had and I get back
to moving better. Most patients feel a difference in one
session and then other patients kind of need a few
(07:40):
other sessions maybe according to their to their injury.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, I definitely noticed the difference within one session. And
what surprising me. I expected that like the muscle might
feel different, or might release things, or there might even
be some soreness if I had been holding tension there
for so long. What I didn't expect was how it
drastically seemed to affect my nervous system. And I've heard
you talk about this or seeing you talk about this
in other places, but can you describe like what's happening
(08:06):
with the nervous system and what's happening in the body.
You mentioned the muscle to nerve connection, but that was
what was really what stood out to me was like
I was like, oh, wow, I'm deeply impairasympathetic. It was
like something maybe my body was holding on too released
and I just felt that like profound, like oh within
my nervous system.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's crazy. They didn't talk about that. You know
during our certification. We do know that. You know, when
there is a noxious stimulus and that twitch response happens,
the body's like, oh what's going on? And so your
sympathetic nervous system does fire up, but then the longer
the needles are in, it kind of gets you into pairasympathetic.
(08:45):
And what I've learned in the last couple of years
with research on my own body, because we needled your
neck and your upper trapezius, and so the neck and
the upper trap I mean, they are so connect to
fascia that is connected to the top of your head,
and some of those nerves are correlated with your cranial nerves.
(09:09):
And the most important cranial nerve that we know is
the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve runs along the
neck and like it's under the sterner platomastoid. And of
course we know that fash is all connected, so it
possibly stimulated your vegus nerve, which which puts you into parasympathetic.
The other thing that we know about the parasympathetic nervous
(09:29):
system is that we have the most afferent nerve. We
have the most nerve fibers or afferent nerve fibers in
the back of the head, which are along the sub
occipitals on the back of the neck. And then there
are some afferent fibers in the ears, and there are
along the sacrum and I don't remember if I did this,
but there's a really cool protocol that we do that
(09:51):
we needle the back of the head and along the
sacrum and crisscross the lead and it gets people into parasympathetic.
I know that this happens just because I have my
or ring and every time that I get needled in
those areas, my freaking HRV like jumps like twelve thirteen point.
(10:12):
It's really awesome. I think most patients, or I tell
most patients that they are going to feel a little
high and that they will sleep better. And I'm sure,
do you remember sleeping really hard that night?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I definitely did. I remember you told me to hydrate,
so I was very impetible to hydrate and get electrolytes
and minerals and then I slept super super hard.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean it's great for scar
tissue and releasing any of the trigger points, but also
there is this like retraining of the nervous system. I
used to get needled along my low back, and my
low back was just so tight up for so long
that we would remove the needles and the needles would bend.
But I think that I've just been in this light
(10:56):
fight or flight mode, and my erectors were so tight
that I would bend the needles. And I've been the
needle like the first five or six times, and then
after that it's it's never happened again. But I really
believe that our nervous system needs some like nurturing and
(11:17):
re education and not what needling does.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In my perspective, that makes sense. And I remember reading
years and years ago the book The Body Keeps the
Score about how so much can be stored in our tissues.
So it makes sense to me that like if you're
able to release that, it would have a ripple effect
beyond just that area of the body, or beyond even
just the physical body. And you mentioned Fashia, and I
love anytime I get to learn more about Fashia. But
can you talk a little bit more about the connection
(11:42):
there and trigger points and chronic pain and how like
one spot can kind of be the root cause of
like all these downstream issues when it comes to this.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, well let's explain. Let's like talk about what's in
a trigger point. So we're here on our computers. Most
people are, you know, working online. Most people that I
see are in this light forward head posture, and so
when a muscle stayed in this continued contracture, there's extra acetochline,
(12:13):
which is the chemical that a nerve need, that a
nerve lets out, and then we have you know, sodium potassium,
and it builds up at the motor end plate and
it initiates a cyple of hypertonicity, and then it blocks
oxygen and then it causes is schemia. So then now
this muscle is tight, there's less oxygen, and then we'll
(12:36):
call this inflammation. And then the body calls in cidokines
and bradykinin and prussiglandins and serotonin and his threen and
then that area just becomes really acidic. And the other
part of that is that creates the less negative voltage
in the muscle most of us are we're supposed to
be at negative seventy to ninety is that millible and
(13:00):
it disrupts like the muscle performance, So then you're tight.
And then there's supposedly I think it's calcatonin gene related peptide.
It increases the sensity of the receptors at the neuromuscular
junction and the muscle is just like painful. And then
it's just sending the signals to your brain. So once
(13:20):
we can identify where that first trigger pointed. And for again,
like when we're talking about our upper trap upper body tightness,
do several needles along the upper trap trigger point area
or the upper trap line. But the main therapeutic thing
that we're trying to do is this pistoning technique on
(13:43):
the upper trap and so it sends no susceptive afferient
signal to the brain and then a local twitch response
happens and then it clears out the acetocholine, so it
like makes the muscle purge out this acetocholine. Then the
body is able to re uptake this the right amount
(14:03):
that it's supposed to have because usually there's an imbalance.
It depolarizes the post thematic membrane and then it sends
out signaled to the collagen bundle to come like re
restructure the muscle. So it's doing that. So basically it
is causing it's like a mechanical disruption of the of
(14:27):
the tissue fibers, because the tissue fibers are like in
a knot, and it's like disrupting it and it's like,
you know, all these fibers are just like in a knot,
and it just like lets it go, and then the
fibers are able to to slowly, over the next thirty
six hours restructure and like line up the way that
they're supposed to. So because there's a disassembly of the
(14:51):
actamin myosin that it allows the tissue to be more
easily remodeled. And then it also causes like an analgesic effect.
When you wist the needles, it'll like release ATP and ADP.
This is like really scientific. A lot of patients get
really confused, but basically it's just a big refset And Okay,
(15:11):
so you're asking about fascia. Fascia is like the skin
over the muscle. And when when say we're talking about
how the muscle gets really tight and there's less oxygen,
the fascial also gets thicker and thicker and thicker, and
so we say, like I always describe it like fascia's
(15:33):
like pannyhose, Like a pannyhose layer over the muscle.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
The dir and diety gets it becomes like denim.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's so thick, and so we're literally using the needles
to like poke around and make it more porous so
that it can move and be free the way that
it should most. I explain this to most patients because
they want to they're they're really they want to know
like the scientific, you know, explanation of what's going on.
(16:02):
But we also know at a deeper level that yes,
emotions are stored in fascia. Some patients will go there.
Some patients don't want to go there. I had several
patients that start crying when they're in a dry needling
session and they'll remember, you know, our right side represents
(16:24):
like our giving masculine side, and our left side represents
our receiving feminine side. And there was a patient one
time where she had like a shoulder issue. We dry
needled all the shoulder and the upper trap, and she
started crying and feeling like a little empathy for her.
She hadn't mourned her mom's death and that came up
(16:46):
during the dry needling session. And I feel like, I
am my practice has grown the way I the way
it has because I feel like not a lot of
patients have the time and space or the space to
work with a practitioner one on one to allow this
release to happen. And yeah, I you know, fashion work
(17:08):
is really special and can be intense and deep and intimate.
And yeah, I like to allow the space or allow
patients to bring up whatever they need to.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That's incredible. Well, and I love that you mentioned the
HRV said that was a great analogy too, with the
pantyhose versus the dentim and what our fashions is meant
to be when it's kind of in its ideal state.
And I would guess this is very much a both ants.
But people I know who do work in the world
of like mobility and not just flexibility, but like true
mobility and strength and full range of motion and really
are aware of their fascia and especially like fascially driven athletes,
(17:43):
I notice they tend to have very high HRV on average,
And so I have no data to back this up,
but I suspect there's some connection between our fascia health
and our HRV and our nervous system, and I hope
we can to keep learning more about that. This podcast
is sponsored by Native Path And here's a creating benefit
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(19:31):
v E c r E A t I n E.
And this episode is brought to you by Apollo neuro
This is a tool that has really helped me feel
more relaxed and de stress. It's than Apollo wearable that
can be worn anywhere on your body and it tracks
sleep like other wearables, but unlike other wearables, it actually
improves my sleep automatically. Apollo was designed by a team
(19:53):
of scientists and doctors to emit silent soothing soundwaight vibrations
that actually feel really good and work in the moment
so it feels like a hug. These weights are proven
in scientific studies to help us shift into recovery mode
so we experience less stress, better mood, more energy, and
better sleep. The sleep setting is probably my favorite. Apollo
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which is heart rate variability, which is a leading biomarker
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level to improve nervous system balance through our sense of touch,
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snuggling a pet. Apollow connects to an app on your phone,
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code wellness Mama all caps in one word for a discount.
I want to hold in on something else you said.
You mentioned the muscles becoming acidic, and I would love Obviously,
dryingline can come into play here in seemingly a huge way,
But are there anything else other things we can do
to kind of replenish our bodies in our body chemistry
after an injury or after even a workout when we're
(21:19):
in that acidic state.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, well, we talked about kind of have these four
pillars of this holistic physical therapy model that I talked
to about to patient, and we can go over them
one by one in depth. But one is resetting the
nervous system with dry needling, who would be repairing the tissue,
(21:44):
rebuilding collagen, and you know stretching and moving. Three is
replenishing chemistry because it's all about chemistry. We know that,
you know, we know that like water and hydration is important,
but there's also you know, having a diet where you're
not in an acidic way and eating foods that kind
(22:06):
of bring more alkalinity your body and have more negative
electrons like vegetable is very important. And then number four
is respecting yourself and just like the mental emotional part
of healing. So, oh, you were asking about chemistry and
just being less acidic. Yeah, yeah, So number one I
(22:26):
usually talk to patients about electrolytes because they are most
people coming in so dehydrated, they are being they're in
sympathetic nervous system mode, and they like drink coffee because
they're going, going, going, So just being a little bit
dehydrated affects the chemistry. So I ask them to drink
(22:48):
more water at electrolyte. I also, just you know I could,
I'll tell them, like, just add real salt to himalanthalt
into your water. What else? Having an anti inflammatory diet,
we all know that sugar and refined carbohydrate's just like
don't don't they don't like contribute to healing. Eating a
(23:10):
good amount of protein is really great. And breath, I
would say, breath and oxygenating our body is the most
alkaline thing that we can do. And also you know,
the more breath you have, the more negative you'll be.
But a well, a healthy, well used muscle do not
exhibit trigger point. And so when you're using your muscle
(23:36):
as well and you're moving and breathing, the muscles are
always going to have amazing integrity. But most of us
are like this and we're hunched over and we're in
one position or posture, and the other thing is that,
well we're hunched over, our liver is being squished, our
diaphragm is squished, and then you know, our paraspinyls are
(23:57):
in a lengthened position, but they're like learning to be
that way, and then our hip flexors get tight and
then so we contribute. We continue to go into this
forehead posture and also anti your pelvic positioning and if
our like if our organs are not opening up and
oxygenating as well, then yeah, those are going to be
acidic too. I know that every organ has its own
(24:19):
pH level, and you know, optimizing each organ need to
be is very important for overall voltage.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I would say that makes sense, and I totally wish
that we were neighbors and I could just come dry
needle with you all the time. I am curious though,
if someone wanted to implement this as a tool, obviously
they want to find a good practitioner close to wherever
they live, and I'll put your information for anybody who
lives in the Austin area. But what would be an ideal,
like perfect timing or amount that you would recommend, is
(24:49):
that if people were going to make this a part
of their lives and their routines.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, if I had all the resources in time, I
would dry needle every two weeks. I also dry needle
as a female, I drain needle a week before my
menstrual cycle. I just feel like I'm in a little
bit of more inflammation. So doing the parasympathetic protocol really
helps my body get into alignment. And there's I can't
(25:16):
make claims, but dry neeedling your low back before your
menstrual cycle, my gosh, it really helps. It really helps
like women's issues, and it has in mind. But I'd
say every two weeks. Yeah, drain knealing is an excellent tool.
You can dry needle your upper traps. You can dry
needle for low back pain. You could try dry needle
for it band issues. I've dry needled people with plant
(25:39):
you fasciitis. I've dry needled tennis elbow golfer's elbow rotator
cuff strain TNJ. I mean, name a muffel strain you
can get it dry needle. Were you asking about my information?
I'm in Austin, Texas. My business it's called SEC Dry Needling.
We have a team. I have a couple of practitioners
(26:01):
under me. I work yeah, in close to downtown Austin,
and I have an Instagram handle It's at CC dry Needling.
What else my website has lots of information. We talk
about trigger points, we talk about the nervous system, and yeah,
we're physical therapists, so we evaluate the patient with a
(26:24):
thorough physical therapy evaluation and if they do not qualify
or didn't seem like drining link is a good fit,
we also, you know, thoroughly give them the assessment and
we'll treat them with therapeutic exercise, other manual therapy or
manual therapy modalities. And yeah, our the goal is to
get patients out of pain and back into their sport.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Amazing. Well, I'll put all those links in the show
notes and lastly, I know or if they get to
do another episodes, you guys stay tuned. I think that
one will be really phenomenal as well. But for anybody
who's scared of needles, I would guess that's probably the
biggest objection that comes up when it comes to drain needling.
What do you tell people who want to do drinnilling
but are afraid of needles and what helps them to
be able to feel safe with drain needling.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Well, know that when you come to CC dry needling,
it's a one on one, it's a one on one environment.
So anything you need to express, you can freely express
it with us. You actually don't even feel the needle.
It feels like a finger like. You do feel the
twitch response, which feels like a really fat like muscle spasm,
(27:29):
and that's what sometimes surprises people. But you rat, you
really don't feel the needle if you ever do it
like maybe hitting a superficial nerve. But if we do
use these techniques where we kind of press with our hand,
you don't really feel the needle. And so yeah, we'll
talk about like the underlying fear of needles and what
it really means. But here, yeah, people say that they
(27:52):
really don't feel the needles. If it really does hurt,
we will find another way to treat you.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
This has been such a fun conversation. Like I said,
it was amazing to actually get to experience trying doing
I'm a huge fan now and I love that I
got to learn more about it today as well as
everyone listening. Thank you so much for the time, and
you guys stay tuned. We're going to get to do
another episode and go deeper on some other fascinating topics.
But for today, Christy, thank you so much, thank you,
thank you so much Katie. This is great and thank
(28:18):
you for listening, and I hope you will join me
again on the next episode with the Wellness MoMA podcast.
If you're enjoying these interviews, would you please take two
minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me.
Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which
means even more moms and families can benefit from the information.
I really appreciate your time and thanks as always for listening.
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