A recent patient came to me in complete desperation. She had converted into a full gym rat and some biceps tendinitis in the left shoulder was keeping her from doing any push movements. After she consulted with her doctor he confirmed her diagnosis of Biceps Tendinitis and told her it would take 6 weeks to heal and if that didn’t work she would need an injection.
Neither waiting 6 weeks to work her arms out again or getting a steroid injection appealed to her. As luck would have it, she happened to overhear another woman in the gym talking about how she had the same thing and that dry needling was helping her. Light bulb! Once she heard that she came running into my clinic for some dry needling.
After a quick evaluation, the diagnosis did seem to be appropriate so we moved forward with placing two needles into the biceps tendon. After I applied a little current and did some instrumented soft tissue work, she hit the deck for a set of 10 push-ups.
“NO PAIN!” she exclaimed. Within a few minutes she went from having pain severe enough to prevent one push-up to being able to hammer out ten without a problem. Yes, dry needling can be that fast and effective. If you suspect you have Biceps Tendinitis, give us a call.
