Fascia Care 101
Have you heard about fascia? As a Physical Therapist, many of my patients have never heard of fascia and don’t realize how important it is to relieving their pain. I recently read this great article in the New York Times and I thought…FINALLY…fascia is getting the attention it deserves! If you are experiencing PAIN, read on! This quote particularly spoke to me and the work I do with patients:
““When you’re sedentary for a long time, fascia can shorten, become overly rigid and congeal into place, forming adhesions that limit mobility, said David Krause, a physical therapist at the Mayo Clinic…Fascia can also become damaged from repetitive movements, chronic stress, injury or surgery — becoming inflamed, overly rigid or stuck together. And it stiffens with age.”
The article explains what fascia is and how it becomes restricted with inactivity, but there’s much more to the fascia story that I want to share with you here.
Fascia is the spider-webby stuff that holds us together and covers our muscles. This connective tissue lies within our muscles as well. And it can get gunky like the oil in your car. And here’s the great news: you can get that oil changed just like in your car. That’s where myofascial release techniques enter the picture (among other things)!
Myofascial restriction is responsible for a lot of painful conditions in our bodies. Myo- refers to our muscles and fascia refers to the connective tissue that lies within and surrounds our muscles. Restrictions within this tissue often come about due to inactivity but can also stem from overuse, injury or disease processes.
These restrictions can be painful in, and of, themselves but also can cause muscles to become inhibited rendering them weak when, in fact, they may have simply been taken off the brain's radar so to speak. Our brains are designed to use what is strong and ignore what is weak. When too much myofascial restriction “strangles” a muscle, it can become incapable of functioning normally and it performs weakly. Then, it doesn’t get used because the brain chooses to use muscles that are strong, not those muscles that are weak, and so the cycle goes. This process forms the cornerstone for my unique approach to treatment.
When you combine a host of myofascial release techniques, as I do when I treat my patients, you have a good start for a recipe for healing and getting past pain. When fascia becomes restricted, stretches are rendered ineffective. Your muscles may still gain something from stretching but your fascia does not respond as well to stretching as your muscles do. Fascia does, however, respond very well to techniques like Myofascial Decompression (T symbol here)(cupping with movement), Kinesiotaping, ultrasound, and Trigger Point Therapy. But, further complicating matters, sometimes the lack of movement in the area of myofascial restrictions causes your body to develop stiffness in your joints from them not moving normally. Your Physical Therapist needs to get them moving again using joint mobilization in addition to myofascial release techniques to get you feeling your BEST!
You can get relief from both myofascial and joint restriction with the right Manual Therapy treatment techniques, properly applied. Even if pain and stiffness have been a problem for you for years! The combination of myofascial and joint mobilization when combined with movement is the perfect recipe for healing most painful conditions and then well-chosen exercises will help keep the tissues moving smoothly. Relief is expected even with seemingly unrelated conditions such as pelvic health issues, headache, vertigo, even visual disturbance can all be helped, if not fully resolved, with Manual Therapy and Therapeutic Exercise. Sometimes myofascial restrictions can even cause nerve entrapment and be the cause of altered sensation. For example, carpal tunnel syndrome is typically the result of the median nerve being hung up as it makes it’s way through the many muscles and joints from the neck through the arm, not simply just at the carpal tunnel. This is why symptoms often persist even after Carpal Tunnel Release surgery.
If you’d like to learn more about your fascia and see how Physical Therapy might help you, contact us today!