WellSpring Health Pain Center

Some of you know I practice myofascial release as a specialty. You may have been following the news around what they are calling a "new organ." It is a microt...ubule network filled with fluid that surrounds every cell from head to toe. This is the system Karey and I treat when it has restrictions. We call it fascia. They are calling it interstitium as a reference to interstitial tissue. The fluid in this micro system has been traced to drain into the lymphatic system of the body. The imaging technique used by the New York University School of Medicine to look at the tissue they identified as a new organ is called Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy. The main difference is you get an in-focus 3 dimensional view of living cells. In other techniques this interstitium is destroyed and clumped together. A phosphorescent dye is absorbed by the proteins in the tissue sample. This lights up when struck by a laser. Each point is measured by a scanning device to form one layer of the picture. This same thing is done at multiple layers so you get a focused 3 dimensional view of the structures built by computer image construction much like a 3 dimensional MRI. In the past they have been identifying the fascial matrix around the cells as individual cell membranes connected to each other. The difference in this study is they realized this was an independent microtubule matrix separate from the cell membrane formed by a continuous network of tubes filled with fluid. An organ is defined as a part of an organism that is typically self-contained and has a specific vital function. The fascial system, since it is all connected, would be self contained and certainly provides many vital functions. The recognition of this aspect of human anatomy is a major shift in the understanding of cellular function. The work of Dr. Pollack at the University of Washington provides the physics of how fluid moves through that system and provides a direct scientific connection between what we do as myofascial release therapists and its influence on this new organ. The researchers hope this discovery will inspire new understandings of cancer, how it spreads, how to treat it, and how this system is vital to the health of the whole body.

By Robert Schleip Thanks to a new paper published March 27th, the long-held proposition of many fascia therapists and researchers, that the body wide loose conn...ective tissue system (e.g. called microvacuolar system by JC Guimberteau) is currently being celebrated as a 'new discovery' by the prestigeous journal Scientific Reports by the Nature Publishing group: see www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23062-6. The researchers, who call this tissue 'interstitium', suggest to consider it as an 'organ'. Already within the 2 days since publication in this journal the international public attention given to this 'new' (?) perspective is impressive, see e.g. http://www.newsweek.com/interstitium-new-organ-cancer-human or https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_rel/2018-03/nlh-nh032318.php or https://youtu.be/ZQ4VHwdgY8w While I don't consider the proposition of the loose connective tissue as a body wide inter-connected organ as completely new :) , I must confess that I am intrigued by the new and fascinating details being made visible with the 'in vivo microscopy' available today. I certainly look forward to the upcoming Fascia Research Congress in Berlin (www.fasciacongress.org) and to compare on site the endoscopic visuals from Guimberteau with the novel 3rd harmonic microsopy used by the keynote presenter Peter Friedl in his presentation, based on Friedl using an even more advanced imaging technology than his colleagues in this new paper.

Every two seconds, someone in the world has a stroke. One out of every six people will have a stroke at some point in their lives. But what causes strokes in the first place? And what can doctors do to treat them?

I hear a lot of people talking about how pain is in the brain. The question I have, is where exactly is the brain? Is it just in the skull? We've discovered bra...in like cells in the heart and gut. When I went to Body Worlds, the exhibit that really blew me away was the nervous system. So beautiful, delicate, and complex! And it didn't include all the sensory nerves. Seeing that as a unified system, I have a hard time believing that the brain is just inside the cranium. How can you separate one part from the next? So if pain is in the brain, maybe look at the whole system! See more