Hi, guys. Welcome to another episode of the Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. Welcome to one of our final episodes of the summer. Can you believe it's already time for kids to head back to school? It's been a rather hectic time with the FAKTR team as well. We've launched a ton of great new course offerings this year, including a functional nutrition certification, a foundational and advanced dry needling course, a chiropractic acupuncture certification, and have 2 other large online certification programs in the works. Currently, we're in the midst of planning for our 2025 in person course dates, so do me a favor and send us a message on Instagram. Our handle is at factor education, that's F A K T R, education, and let us know what cities and states should be on our list.

So today on the podcast, we wrap up part 2 of our training with doctor Gary Estadt on the intersection of dry needling and acupuncture in clinical practice. Doctor Estadt will walk us through real world applications and success stories that showcase the quick and profound effects of needling on complex conditions like frozen shoulder, peripheral neuropathy, and even phantom limb pain. We will also chat more about the importance of patient education and how to discuss the use of these treatments with patients who may have a fear of needles. So bookmark this one. You'll definitely wanna revisit it more than once. Let's dive in.

Gonna leave you with a couple of last slides, and then we're going to just show you in practice how the 3 work together. So when we stick a needle in somebody, we get analgesia by stimulating the small nerves, which sends impulses to the spinal cord, then up to the midbrain, primarily to the periaqua, doctor Gray, the ventral tegmental area, and the rosterentromedial medulla here in the lower brain, as well as up into the somatosensory cortex and the thalamus. At all three levels, we're getting release of endorphins and monoamines, which results in pain suppression and analgesia. So we get the descending pain modulation pathways. Both inhibits the pain that's coming up, and it's blocking the ascending pain pathways in the spinal cord, which is central, as well as at the pain site, which is peripheral. And we can increase it by using electrotherapy with the needling. This is another slide on the neuromechanisms of acupuncture analgesia. It basically shows when you have a painful stimulus, it goes up the spinothalamic tract through the spinal cord to the thalamus of the cortex.

And when you needle, it affects the spinal cord, blocking pain there as well as going the anterior lateral tract to the midbrain and the pituitary hypothalamus complex, blocking and suppressing the pain pathway as it's coming up. And you get chemical release at the spinal cord of encafetalen and dynorphin. You get various neurotransmitters released by the midbrain as well as in the pituitary hypothalamus and adrenal complex. And those chemicals that are being released not only stop pain and inhibit pain messages, but the pituitary and the hypothalamus complex dumps beta endorphins and ACTH into the blood CSF, promoting analgesia and homeostasis of the immune cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Also helps with tissue healing, and the ACTH release also activates the adrenal gland to further modify pain sensations and help with the immune reactions. So let's just look at the differences on how we would needle. So here's a tight muscle in the thumb. So basic trigger point dry needling, we would needle myofascial trigger points here in the thumb for any forearm, wrist, hand, or thumb pain.