Fascia: attention must be paid

Fascia is the tough, flexible tissue that surrounds and connects muscles, bones, and organs. (Picture raw chicken.) Your body has two kinds: dense and loose. Dense fascia holds muscles, organs, blood vessels, and nerve fibers in place. It also helps your muscles contract and stretch and stabilizes your joints. Loose fascia is more slippery. It allows your muscles, joints and organs to slide and glide against one another.

Problems with fascia can range from annoying to serious. One in ten people have experienced plantar fasciitis in their feet (count me in). It’s an inflammation of the fascia that connects your heels to your toes. The most serious fascia problem is necrotizing fasciitis, an infection that spreads along the fascial plane and can cause deep tissue destruction, sometimes requiring limb amputation.

In the past, doctors thought fascia was just packaging for more important body parts. Now we know that fascia is key to flexibility and range of motion. Because fascia is alive with nerve endings, it can also be a source of pain. The longer it is damaged or inflamed, the more sensitive it becomes.

If you’re sedentary for a long time, fascia can shorten, become overly rigid and congeal into place, forming adhesions that limit mobility. In fact, inactivity can cause fascia to reshape itself. Fascia that is too short, stiff, or sticky in one part of the body can lead to pain and dysfunction elsewhere. And, as you might imagine, it stiffens with age.

If you’ve got pain, it can be tricky to determine whether it’s coming from your fascia or from muscles and joints. As a rule, muscle and joint problems tend to feel worse the more you move, while fascia pain lessens with movement.

Like everything else, it seems, the most effective way to keep your fascia sturdy and elastic is to stay active. Experts say that the best activities are those that involve bouncing, such as dancing, jumping jacks, tennis, skipping. (I know—there’s no way ….) They also suggest dynamic stretching, such as twists, squats, or lunges. Happily, swimming is also good. Some lay people swear by other techniques, such as Rolfing, yin yoga, and myofascial release. While experts question the long-term effectiveness of such treatments, at least they don’t require jumping.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.