At my dry needling clinic in Tampa, FL I help patients with finger pain every single day. Here’s a quick video showing what a treatment for pinky finger pain looks like.
This patient has had pain in her pinky finger for 1+ year. It hurts in her knuckle when she opens/closes her hand and there is a constant burning sensation along the side of her finger. Her primary doctor, orthopedic doctor and a neurologist have all done expensive and frankly unnecessary testing which have shown there are no abnormalities in x-ray, mri imaging or nerve conduction testing.
The sad thing is that even when seeing 3 different doctors, no one did a thorough physical exam on not just her finger and wrist but on her elbow or neck. The nerves that make your hand work start all the way up at the neck and so to make a positive change, we have to check every possible segment that could contribute to the pain!
So what I’m doing here is helping to clean out the ulnar nerve which controls both the ability to open and close the finger but also sends sensory information like burning pain signals back to the brain.
This approach is VERY different than what your normal acupuncturist might do and VERY different than what your weekend trained physical therapist who does a little bit of dry needling might do. (FYI you know that physical therapist who do dry needling only take a short weekend course and don’t get much experience doing dry needling, right? I’m here using dry needling on 12+ patients a day for the past 6 years.)
The goal is to reset and clean how the nerve is functioning. Then she will be able to move her finger with less pain. When you can move with less pain, you feel better!
This principle applies to any area that hurts, so it doesn’t matter if you have back pain, sciatica, knee pain, hip pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, or foot pain. We can take this functional, neurological based approach and help you feel better!
