Monday, April 11, 2011

It's Alive - IT'S ALIVE: Fascia, More Than Just A Cover Surrounding Your Muscles

By Miami Beach Chiropractic Sports Physician, Dr. Todd Narson

Most of us grew up in our sports injury profession, albeit sports chiropractic, physical therapy, orthopedics, athletic training or the like thinking that fascia was simply a covering that surrounded various structures in the body. Kind of an envelope that surrounded the stuff inside and kept is separate from it's neighbors and allowing for the sliding and gliding of the individual parts.


However original research by Stecco et.al., Histological Characteristics Of The Deep Fascia Of The Upper Limb show that what we once thought of as a kind of a sock or wallpaper type tissue covering on the inside is more like that of a proprioceptive information superhighway interwoven into the fascial weave. This proprioceptive information superhighway relays information throughout the musculo-skeletal system allowing the coordination of movement throughout a kinetic chain.


Imagine having an injury such as a contusion, muscle or tendon strain or having surgery that interrupts or cuts through the fascial planes and no real consideration is given to the condition of it's state of healing. No longer can we think it's just incidental connective tissue keeping things compartmentalized. We must now think about fascia as an integral part of our neuro-musculo-skeletal system as it gives afferent information into the system that that helps to provide for our movement, balance and coordination.

This information now places more importance on treatment modalities like Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (Graston Technique(r), AYSTM, SASTM, FAKTR) as well as manual hands on mobilization systems like ART(r), Fascial Manipulation (Stecco & Hammer) & NIMMO.

For surgeons, you need to think more about the post surgical rehabilitative process to account not only the proper healing of the target structures of your surgery, but the supportive systems of muscle, tendon, joint capsules AND fascial planes.

Fascia my friends is alive and well...AND loaded with proprioceptive organs:
Ruffini and Pacini corpuscles and woven around the muscle fibers, muscle spindles reside in the fascia surrounding them.

If you want to learn more, go to www.pubmed.gov and in the search screen type only two words: stecco facia. They (brother and sister) have written over 40 articles on this very subject.

Quite interesting and enlightening information indeed. A big thank you to Warren Hammer, DC, DABCO for his lecture on the subject at the ACBSP Sports Science Symposium, Boston MA, April 2011.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

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1 comment:

Dr. Brian Abelson said...

Good article, thanks for the post.