The Social Media Effect: How Gimmicks Go Viral

If you’ve scrolled through Instagram or TikTok in the last five years, you’ve seen it: purple circles on Olympic athletes’ backs, needles stuck into “trigger points,” a therapist scraping reddened skin with a metal tool. It looks dramatic. It looks like something is happening. That’s exactly why it sells.

But looking dramatic and producing lasting results are two very different things. At One80 Physical Therapy, we’ve made a clinical decision not to use cupping, dry needling, or instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM). Here’s the science behind why — and more importantly, why what we do instead produces results that these techniques simply cannot.

Cupping: Ancient Practice, Modern Marketing, Weak Evidence

Cupping involves placing suction cups on the skin to draw tissue upward. Proponents claim it releases fascia, improves blood flow, and reduces pain. The problem? The research doesn’t support those mechanisms.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in JOSPT Open found that the true treatment effect of dry cupping for musculoskeletal pain is unknown, with results no better than placebo across short, medium, and long-term follow-up. A separate 2024 umbrella review in Human Movement, aggregating findings from dozens of published systematic reviews, rated the overall confidence in cupping evidence as critically low to low.

📚 JOSPT Open, 2025: Systematic review — dry cupping vs. placebo cupping for musculoskeletal pain.

📚 Human Movement, Dec 2024: Umbrella review of cupping therapy for musculoskeletal pain in athletes and general population.

Even the studies that show short-term pain reduction after cupping cannot explain the mechanism — because the proposed mechanisms (fascial release, improved circulation) haven’t been validated. Pain went down briefly. Tissue function didn’t change. Patients came back.

And that’s the real problem with cupping: it attacks the painful area without asking why the pain is there. The bruising, redness, and soreness it creates isn’t healing — it’s localized tissue damage that your body then has to repair on top of the problem that caused pain in the first place.

Dry Needling: Short-Term Relief, No Root Cause Resolution

Dry needling involves inserting a thin needle into a ‘trigger point’ — a tight, painful band of muscle — to elicit a twitch response and reduce pain. It has a more developed evidence base than cupping, but that evidence consistently shows the same thing: short-term pain relief with no lasting effect on function.

A systematic review in PubMed (Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy) found that while dry needling and cupping show evidence of reducing myofascial pain in the short term, the evidence for either was not greater than placebo in controlled comparisons. The JOSPT and Oxford Academic Physical Therapy journal similarly found only low-quality evidence for dry needling’s effect on functional outcomes, and no evidence of long-term benefit.

📚 PubMed 2019 Systematic Review: Dry needling and cupping vs. placebo for myofascial pain — evidence not greater than placebo.

📚 JOSPT & Oxford Academic PT: Low-quality evidence for dry needling functional outcomes; no long-term benefit established.

The deeper clinical problem: trigger points don’t form randomly. A trigger point is a muscle that is neurologically overloaded because another muscle nearby isn’t doing its job. Needling the overloaded muscle produces temporary relief — but the inhibited muscle upstream hasn’t been addressed. The trigger point returns. So does the patient.

IASTM (Scraping): Damaging Tissue Isn’t the Same as Healing It

Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization — also called Graston Technique or scraping — uses metal or plastic tools to apply compressive force to soft tissue. The redness and petechiae (small broken blood vessels) it causes are often presented to patients as evidence that something is being ‘broken up.’ What’s actually happening is controlled tissue microtrauma.

The theory is that creating localized inflammation triggers a healing response that reorganizes scar tissue and adhesions. The clinical evidence for this mechanism is limited and largely extrapolated from animal studies. Human trials show, at best, temporary improvements in pain and flexibility similar to other manual techniques — with the added downside of tissue damage and increased soreness.

More importantly: adhesions and fascial tightness are not the root cause of pain. They are downstream effects of the root cause. Scraping an adhesion without restoring the neuromuscular function that caused it is the same as painting over a crack in the wall instead of fixing the foundation.

What We Do Instead

At One80, every assessment begins with one question: why is this tissue being overloaded in the first place? The answer, neuromuscular inhibition, a muscle that has diminished nervous system regulation, forcing other muscles to compensate and eventually break down.

We use the patented One80 System to identify exactly which muscles are inhibited, restore their activation through targeted manual therapy techniques, and reassess function in the same visit. The painful area gets better not because we attacked it, but because we stopped asking it to do a job it was never designed to do alone.

Most patients feel a measurable difference in their first session. That’s not a promise we make because it sounds good — it’s the expected outcome when you treat the actual cause.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is dry needling ever appropriate?

For some patients, dry needling may provide temporary pain relief that creates a window for active rehabilitation. But it never get to the root cause and has a high incodence of tissue damage. It becomes a treadmill — short relief, return of symptoms, repeat visits. That’s not resolution.

Why do so many PTs use these techniques if they don’t work?

Because pain relief is their goal and if “everyone else is doing it,” it must work. Techniques that produce immediate sensory feedback get positive reviews and referrals regardless of whether they produce lasting change. Add in the “cool” factor of posting pictures of needles in patients on social media, and you have the combo for the next big gimmick. Remember, the business model of high-volume, insurance driven PT incentivizes repeat visits, not resolution.

Does One80 PT serve patients in Loveland and Fort Collins?

Yes. One80 Physical Therapy is located in Loveland, CO and serves patients from Fort Collins, Berthoud, Windsor, Timnath, and across Northern Colorado. Since we are the hub for clinicians from across North America and Europe to learn the One80 System, we also have patients flying here for treatment on a regular basis.