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You’ve probably heard me talk about it, especially if we’ve chatted about running in the city. Every August New York City gives us a few Saturdays with no car traffic on Park Ave and it is one of my most favorite times of the year. In my opinion, Summer Streets is the jewel of NYC summer and each year I look forward to seeing what I am able to accomplish compared to the year before. It’s where I ran my first 10k, my first 15k, and every half marathon run I’ve run. It has definitely been a huge part of my running journey.
Summer Streets is NYC DOT's annual program that closes major corridors to car traffic and opens them up to walkers, runners, cyclists, and skaters - with rest stops along the way offering fitness classes, live performances, art installations, and local vendors. It's free, it's rain or shine, and it turns some of the most car-choked streets in Manhattan into a place you can actually run a straight line for miles without breaking stride at a crosswalk. The program launched in August 2008 under then-DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, modeled directly on Bogotá's Ciclovía — a Colombian tradition dating back to 1974 where major roads close to cars so people can bike, walk, and gather — with an assist from Paris's temporary urban beach installations along the Seine. That first year was modest: three Saturdays, one route along Park Avenue and Lafayette Street between the Brooklyn Bridge and 72nd Street, an estimated 150,000 people showing up across those three days. The response was strong enough that NYC DOT made it an annual fixture, and it's been expanding pretty steadily ever since — East Harlem got added in 2022, and the program went city-wide to all five boroughs for the first time in 2023. What's happening this year 2026 is the biggest version of this yet. The season runs five Saturdays total: Queens and Staten Island kicked things off on July 25, Brooklyn and the Bronx close out the season on August 22, and in Manhattan August 1, 8, and 15 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with the route running the full length of the borough for the first time: from the Brooklyn Bridge all the way up to Dyckman Street in Inwood. A few things worth knowing about this year specifically:
Form more information, go to the official Summer Streets website https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/summerstreets.shtml The recovery part What I often see in the clinic the weeks during and after Summer Streets include: people who normally run three miles decide this is the day to do twelve, people who haven't been on a bike since last September do six miles of Park Avenue in the saddle, and people who "just walked" end up covering eight or nine miles round trip without really tracking it, because the environment makes it easy to keep going. None of that is bad — it's exactly the point of the event — but it means Sunday and Monday are when I hear about tight hip flexors, cranky low backs, sore Achilles tendons, and IT bands that suddenly have opinions. A few things that actually help:
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Trigger Point Acupuncture for Muscle and Movement PainEdd Lee, L.Ac., LMT, MSOM • Manhattan Sports Acupuncture • On Point If a trainer, physical therapist, or doctor has sent you for “dry needling,” or you’ve simply stumbled on the term while hunting for relief from a knot that won’t quit, you probably have two questions: what is it, and is it right for my pain? Let me clear a few things up — honestly, and with the research to back it. It Starts With Chinese Medicine Think of it as a set of nested circles. The outer circle is Traditional Chinese Medicine, a complete system of medicine. Inside it sits acupuncture, one of its core therapies. And inside acupuncture sits dry needling — also called trigger point or orthopedic acupuncture — the branch that concentrates on muscle and movement. Just as other acupuncturists specialize in fertility, facial rejuvenation, or women’s health, this is simply the area of focus that lives in the muscles. Same medicine, same needles, different specialty. The Real Goal: Rebalancing Work and Rest A healthy muscle moves fluidly between two states: it contracts when you ask it to work, and it fully releases when you don’t. The point of dry needling is to restore that rhythm in a muscle that has lost it. In the language of Chinese medicine, that’s the balance between yang — activity and contraction — and yin — rest and recovery. A muscle stuck in a low‑grade, never‑quite‑releasing contraction has lost its yin. Needling helps reset the balance so the tissue can let go again. Why You Hear “Dry Needling” Instead of “Acupuncture” Here’s where I’ll be candid, because patients ask me this constantly. Acupuncturists have needled tender muscle knots for over two thousand years — the classics call them ashi (literally “ouch”) points, and surveys estimate that the large majority of trigger points map directly onto known acupuncture points. So why the new name? The term “dry needling” gained traction largely so practitioners outside the acupuncture profession — many physical therapists, chiropractors, and some physicians — could use acupuncture needles without completing the thousands of hours of training that acupuncture licensure requires. Framing it as a separate, purely “Western,” anatomy‑only technique made that easier, legally and professionally. (Worth knowing: here in New York, this kind of needling is largely reserved for licensed acupuncturists.) The needle doesn’t know the difference; it’s the same tool used toward the same end. Plenty of non‑acupuncturists needle safely — but when someone is putting a needle in you, it’s fair to ask how many hours they’ve trained to do exactly that. What a Trigger Point Actually Is A myofascial trigger point is a hyperirritable spot within a taut band of muscle — the “knot” you can feel under your fingers. They form when a muscle is overloaded: repetitive strain, sustained posture (hello, desk and phone), acute injury, or simply guarding an area that already hurts. The leading explanation, the “energy crisis” model, goes like this: a small patch of fibers stays contracted, squeezing shut its own blood supply. Starved of oxygen and unable to flush out waste, the spot becomes a self‑feeding loop of tightness and irritation. Trigger points come in two flavors — active ones that hurt on their own, and latent ones that only complain when pressed — and both are famous for referred pain, sending ache to a spot far from the source. That’s a big reason muscle pain can be so maddening to chase. (Fair disclosure: the trigger‑point model has its scientific critics and palpation isn’t perfectly reliable, but it remains the most useful working framework we have.) How the Needle Works A fine filiform needle placed precisely into the knot often produces a quick, involuntary muscle twitch — the local twitch response. That twitch is the goal. Microdialysis studies by Shah and colleagues found that active trigger points are chemically hostile little neighborhoods, rich in pain‑sensitizing substances like substance P and CGRP; after a twitch response, those concentrations drop sharply and the tissue chemistry begins to normalize. Needling also increases local blood flow (one study measured a 72% jump), prompts the nervous system to release its own pain‑dampening endorphins, and helps quiet both local and central pain signaling. The net effect, when it works, is a muscle that can finally relax — restoring length, easing pain, and freeing up how the joint moves. What to Expect: The Process and the Feel First we talk and assess — where it hurts, how you move, and which muscles are actually driving the problem (remember, pain refers, so the culprit isn’t always where you feel it). I locate the taut band by hand, clean the skin, and insert a hair‑thin needle. Because these needles are far thinner than the hollow ones used for shots, the insertion itself is usually barely felt. You may notice a brief cramp or deep ache and that twitch — most patients describe it as a satisfying “that’s the spot” sensation rather than sharp pain. Afterward, mild soreness or fatigue in the area for a day or two is normal — much like the day after a good workout. Heat, water, and gentle movement help. Is It Safe? For the right person in trained hands, yes. The common side effects are minor and short‑lived: bruising, a little bleeding, post‑needling soreness, and occasionally lightheadedness or temporary fatigue. Large prospective surveys bear this out — minor events show up in roughly one in five sessions, while serious complications are rare, on the order of well under 0.1% of treatments. The serious risks that do exist — most notably pneumothorax (a punctured lung) from needling too deeply near the chest, ribs, or upper back — are precisely why depth of anatomical training matters so much. Tell your practitioner about bleeding disorders, blood thinners, pregnancy, or needle anxiety before you start. What the Evidence Says I’m an evidence‑based practitioner, so here’s the honest picture rather than the sales pitch. Across numerous systematic reviews and meta‑analyses, dry needling produces real, meaningful short‑term reductions in pain and improvements in function for myofascial pain — best documented in the neck, shoulder, and low back. In neck‑pain trials it has outperformed sham and placebo for both pain and disability, and roughly matched or modestly exceeded hands‑on manual therapy. Head‑to‑head, it performs comparably to trigger‑point injections for myofascial pain. Where the evidence is thinner is the long term: we have fewer large, high‑quality studies tracking results months out, the trials vary in quality, and the most durable results consistently come when needling is paired with exercise, stretching, and a proper rehab plan rather than used on its own. In short: a genuinely powerful tool, not a standalone miracle. The Bottom Line Dry needling is acupuncture aimed squarely at your muscles — a direct way to coax a stuck muscle back into its natural rhythm of work and rest. For the right musculoskeletal problem, in well‑trained hands, it’s one of the most efficient ways I know to release a knot that simply won’t let go. If you’re wrestling with a nagging muscle issue, reach out — I’m always glad to tell you honestly whether it’s a good fit for what you’re feeling. Selected References
Every so often a major outlet runs a story declaring that acupuncture has finally been "proven" — or, just as often, "debunked." National Geographic recently published one of the more thoughtful versions, and a few patients have asked me what to make of it. So here's my honest read: as someone who has spent his career practicing this medicine and watching it help people, but who also pays close attention to what the science can and can't yet say.
What the article is really about The piece pulls together a growing body of research suggesting acupuncture produces real, measurable effects in the body — changes in connective tissue, in nerve signaling, and in how the brain processes pain. Its centerpiece is a new study from the University of Illinois Chicago: the first acupuncture trial to use specially engineered placebo needles that keep both the patient and the practitioner unaware of who's receiving the real treatment. In a group of women with chronic vulvar pain, the real acupuncture provided relief lasting up to 12 weeks, while the placebo faded after about 4. The reason that's a big deal isn't the pain relief itself — we've watched acupuncture relieve pain for a very long time. It's the design. A true "double-blind" has been one of the hardest things to achieve in this field, and pulling it off is a genuine scientific milestone. The honest part: why the evidence has lagged Here's what the headlines rarely explain. When people say "the research on acupuncture is mixed," they're not wrong — but it's worth understanding why, because the reasons have surprisingly little to do with whether the medicine works. First, the gold-standard medical study — the large, rigorous, double-blind randomized trial — is extraordinarily expensive. A single one can cost millions of dollars. In modern medicine, that money almost always comes from pharmaceutical companies, and they spend it because there's a patented drug at the end that can earn the investment back. There is no patent on a needle. No company stands to profit from proving acupuncture works, so the deep commercial funding that builds the evidence base for a new drug simply doesn't exist here. What's left is public funding — and acupuncture research has historically received somewhere between one- and two-hundredths of one percent of the entire National Institutes of Health budget. That's not a step away from generous; it is the rounding error. Second, acupuncture is genuinely hard to study with tools designed for pills. How do you create a believable "fake" treatment when the therapy is a trained person inserting needles? For decades there was no good answer — which is precisely why the new double-blind needle technology matters so much. The science wasn't thin because the medicine failed. The science was waiting on the tools, and on the funding, to ask the question properly. So how should you read all this? With both feet on the ground. The best available evidence — including a pooled analysis of nearly 18,000 patients — shows acupuncture genuinely helps with chronic pain, with benefits that outlast the treatment and that placebo alone doesn't explain. At the same time, honest researchers will tell you the margin between "real" and "sham" acupuncture is often modest, and that we're still learning how much the precise points matter versus the broader act of skilled, attentive needling. I don't find that uncertainty threatening. I find it interesting. And I'd gently point out that "we need more research" is true of enormous stretches of conventional medicine too — it's the normal condition of an honest science, not a special indictment of this one. Where I land I trust this medicine because I watch it work, and because the evidence — in the areas where we've actually been able to afford to study it well — keeps pointing in the same direction. The National Geographic article matters because it captures a real turning point: better tools, better studies, and the slow accumulation of exactly the kind of proof that has always been expensive and difficult to produce. Acupuncture isn't magic, and it was never a parlor trick. It's an old medicine that the modern research apparatus is only now getting properly equipped to measure — and what it's measuring so far is encouraging. Don't take my word for any of it, though. Read the original and form your own view — it's a genuinely good piece of science writing: National Geographic: "Acupuncture is gaining acceptance. Here's the evidence." And if it raises questions, bring them to your next visit. I'm always happy to talk it through. — Edd Lee, LAc You've been through it before. You push hard in a workout, take a fall during a game, or wake up the morning after a long run with a swollen ankle and an aching calf. Instinctively, you reach for the freezer. Ice has been the go-to response to sports injury and inflammation for decades — drilled into athletes, coaches, and weekend warriors alike since the 1970s. It feels logical. It feels responsible. It feels like recovery.
But what if it's actually slowing you down? A growing body of research is challenging the longstanding RICE protocol — Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation — that has been the default response to acute sports injuries for nearly 50 years. The science is increasingly clear: icing an injured area constricts blood flow and may actually impair the very healing process your body is trying to initiate. Inflammation, it turns out, isn't just a symptom to suppress. It's a signal — the first stage of your body's own sophisticated repair mechanism. When you numb that signal with ice, you may be delaying the arrival of the immune cells and growth factors your tissues need to heal. Dr. Gabe Mirkin, the sports medicine physician who coined the RICE acronym in 1978, has since revised his own recommendation, acknowledging that both rest and icing may delay healing rather than accelerate it. That's a significant reversal — and one that most athletes haven't heard yet. Your Body Knows What It's Doing When you sustain a soft tissue injury — a sprain, strain, muscle tear, or tendon irritation — your body immediately begins a complex inflammatory cascade. Blood rushes to the area. Specialized cells called macrophages flood the tissue to clear debris and release a hormone called IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), which is essential for muscle repair and regeneration. This is your body doing exactly what it evolved to do. Applying ice interrupts this process. By reducing circulation, you're effectively telling your repair crew not to come. The short-term comfort of numbing the area comes at the cost of a prolonged recovery timeline. For competitive athletes and active New Yorkers trying to maintain their training schedules, that's not a trade-off worth making. The emerging clinical consensus is moving toward approaches that support the inflammatory process rather than suppress it — restoring movement, promoting circulation, and facilitating tissue healing through active, evidence-informed interventions. This is precisely where acupuncture and dry needling come in. Needles Over Ice: A Smarter Approach to Acute Injury At Manhattan Sports Acupuncture, dry needling is a cornerstone of how we treat athletes and active patients. Runners, CrossFitters, climbers, cyclists, surfers — people who push their bodies hard and can't afford prolonged downtime. What we consistently see is that patients who incorporate dry needling early in the injury process tend to recover faster, regain function more fully, and return to sport with less compensatory dysfunction. Here's why it works. Dry needling targets myofascial trigger points — those tight, hyperirritable bands of muscle tissue that develop in response to injury, overuse, or protective guarding around a painful area. When a needle is inserted directly into a trigger point, it elicits a local twitch response: an involuntary contraction of the muscle fiber followed by a release. That release isn't just mechanical. It resets the neurochemical environment of the tissue — reducing local inflammation, increasing blood flow, and interrupting the pain-spasm-pain cycle that keeps so many injuries from fully resolving. Unlike ice, which suppresses the body's response, dry needling works with the tissue. It's pro-circulatory rather than vasoconstrictive. It promotes the kind of localized healing environment that lets the repair process actually complete — rather than stalling it in the early stages and leaving athletes managing a half-healed injury for weeks. Dry needling is also precise. Rather than treating a broad anatomical region, we identify the specific muscles and trigger points contributing to pain or movement dysfunction and work directly there. For a runner with calf tightness that's loading the Achilles, a cyclist whose hip flexors are pulling on their lumbar spine, or a climber with forearm flexor overload affecting grip — this level of specificity matters enormously. It's the difference between treating symptoms and treating the source. It's worth noting that not all dry needling is the same. In many states, physical therapists can perform dry needling after completing a weekend certification course. Licensed acupuncturists, by contrast, complete three to four years of graduate-level training — thousands of clinical hours — specifically focused on needle technique, safety, and the treatment of musculoskeletal and systemic conditions. That depth of training isn't incidental; it directly informs how precisely and safely dry needling can be applied, particularly in acute or complex presentations. Within a broader sports acupuncture framework, dry needling integrates naturally with Traditional Chinese Medicine assessment. We consider the full clinical picture — the injury itself, the patient's recovery environment, their training load, sleep, stress — and tailor treatment accordingly. Dry needling addresses the local tissue; the larger context ensures we're supporting the whole athlete. What to Do Instead of Reaching for the Ice If you've just rolled an ankle or strained a muscle, here's a more evidence-aligned approach: Move it (gently). Light, pain-free movement promotes circulation and signals the body to begin the repair process. Complete immobilization is rarely the right call for soft tissue injuries. Compress and elevate — these elements of RICE still hold up. Compression can help manage swelling without shutting down the vascular response entirely. Get needled. Dry needling within the first 24–72 hours of an acute injury can be highly effective at reducing pain, releasing muscular guarding, and keeping the tissue mobile. For athletes trying to stay on a training timeline, early intervention is everything. At Manhattan Sports Acupuncture, we regularly treat patients in the acute phase and have developed protocols specifically designed to reduce recovery time and safely maintain activity levels where appropriate. Think about what you're actually treating. Inflammation is a process, not a problem. Supporting it isn't the same as ignoring it — and dry needling is one of the most direct tools we have to do that intelligently. A Note to the Skeptics We understand. Ice is simple. It's immediate. It feels like you're doing something. Dry needling, on the other hand, requires showing up, lying still, and trusting a process that isn't fully visible. For athletes wired toward action and control, that can be a harder sell. But the evidence is shifting, and the athletes who are winning — and staying healthy longer — are the ones who treat recovery as seriously as training. The professional sports world figured this out years ago. LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green — athletes who have integrated needling into their recovery routines aren't doing it for the novelty. They're doing it because it works. At Manhattan Sports Acupuncture, we bring that same evidence-informed approach to our patients across New York City. Whether you're preparing for your next race, managing a recurring injury, or simply trying to move well and stay active, we're here to help you heal smarter. Put down the ice pack. Let's get to work. In December 2025, Pittsburgh Steelers star linebacker TJ Watt reportedly suffered a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) following a dry needling session. Watt developed chest pain and shortness of breath after treatment and was later diagnosed with a pneumothorax, requiring surgery. The incident drew national attention to the safety of dry needling, a few patients even reached out to me about it.
While we may never know exactly what happened, a teammate was quoted as saying he would “rather get acupuncture than dry needling after seeing what happened,” which leads me to believe the practitioner was a non-acupuncturist - likely a physical therapist or even a medical doctor. Cause for acknowledging not all needling practitioners are the same. Dry needling and acupuncture both use thin, solid needles, but are often framed as completely different modalities. The reasons for this distinction are generally about finding ways to avoid completing acupuncture educational requirements for licensure. Dry needling outside of New York State is often performed by physical therapists or other manual therapists who complete relatively short, add‑on courses focused on releasing myofascial trigger points and tight bands of muscle to reduce pain and improve movement. Acupuncture, in contrast, is a full medical system within East Asian medicine, practiced by licensed acupuncturists who receive thousands of hours of dedicated training. They use needling based on meridians, specific acupuncture points, and a broader diagnostic framework that considers the whole person, not just a single muscle or pain area. As a result, while the tools may look similar, acupuncture generally involves more extensive, standardized education in safe, precise needling than most short-course dry needling programs. Risk of Pneumothorax: Overall Low, But Real Pneumothorax is a known, though rare, complication of any needling procedure that penetrates tissues near the lungs, including injections, biopsies, acupuncture, and dry needling. The mechanism is straightforward: if a needle passes too deeply through the muscles between the ribs or around the upper back and neck, it can puncture the pleura and allow air into the chest cavity, causing partial or complete collapse of the lung. Published data suggest that: The overall risk of pneumothorax from acupuncture is very low, with large surveys over millions of treatments reporting incidences on the order of a few cases per million sessions. For dry needling, high-quality, large-scale incidence data are more limited, in part because it is a newer and more variably regulated practice. Case reports and small series do document pneumothoraces, especially when needling in the upper trapezius, thoracic paraspinals, and chest wall. Training and Safety: Licensed Acupuncturists vs. Short-Course Dry Needlers A key issue raised by this incident is who is doing the needling and how they were trained. Licensed acupuncturists (L.Ac.) in the United States typically complete:
Reducing Risk: Why Practitioner Background Counts
The Steelers player’s pneumothorax will likely spur further scrutiny of dry needling protocols in professional sports. For athletes and the public, a reasonable takeaway is not to fear all needling, but to:
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On PointBlog & newsletter for Manhattan Sports Acupuncture and Edd Lee LAc LMT MSOM. Striving to be a source of information on health, fitness and medicine. Check out our Instagram page @dryneedlemaster
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