Growing 'Dry Needling' Trend Claims To Ease Pain And Prevent Injuries

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- If the thought of needles makes you a little uneasy, dry needling may not be for you.

It's a growing trend to ease pain and possibly prevent injuries.

As CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez explained, it looks like acupuncture, but with some key differences.

After running her first half-marathon, Alex Pierce expected to have sore muscles, but she was concerned when her body wasn't recovering as quickly as she thought it would.

"I would try and run, and I could not go for probably 30 seconds or a minute more before it was just really bad pain," she said.

Alex met with physical therapist Matt Briggs of the Ohio State University-Wexner Medical Center, who performed a therapy called dry needling.

It's a growing trend that uses small, solid needles to stimulate tissue, release tight muscles, and alleviate pain. Unlike massage therapy, it can do all those things in a fraction of the time.

"Rather than using your hands or a foam roller, this is using the needle and actually, you're directly going to the site of the dysfunction," Briggs explained.

Acupuncture uses needles in one part of the body to influence the other, distant areas. Not dry needling.

In a new study, experts have inserted needles directly into problem areas hoping to help with a condition known as runners knee - a painful and persistent problem with few treatment options.

While many patients insist that it works, the team is looking for proof.

"There's theory that it changes the way the nerves function, and it changes the way the muscle functions, that it changes the way the signals reach the spinal cord, and what signals reach the spinal cord, and how people perceive pain," Briggs said.

While researchers test those theories, Alex said all it took was a few needles in her knee.

"If you want to train for something, it's not going to sideline you during training. And hopefully you'll recover faster afterwards," she said.

While this study is looking at knee pain, dry needling has also been used to ease neck and arm pain, almost anywhere a hard, irritable knot, known as a trigger point, can be found in a muscle.