11 minute read
THE CONNECTION
The Connection Between Stress and Fascia
by Eric Winder, DC
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“Doc, can these treatments affect my mental and emotional states? I feel more relaxed and less anxious after them. My pain is decreasing, but I also noticed that I feel more calm and centered now.” Tom was not the first patient to ask me this question, and as I explained to him, positive mental and emotional effects can often result from fascia release work. This does not happen in all cases, but many people report a sense of well-being, an increased ability to cope with stress, and even decreased symptoms of anxiety or depression.
There is a scientific basis to explain the “emotional releases” that sometimes occur with hands-on fascia therapy. As a member of the Fascia Research Society, I attended a webinar this spring by Dr. Joeri Calsius, a clinical psychologist and research scientist who uses fascia therapy as part of his treatment. He discussed how the neurology of fascia can be involved with a person’s emotional state. I was interested in this because of the emotional responses that my patients often experience following a treatment.
Fascia contains innumerable nerve endings that are dedicated to feeling pain and creating position sense, but it also has other less-known nerves linked to pathways that continue along the spine to an area of the brain called the insula. This part of the brain regulates pain, love, emotion and self-awareness. A brief summation of the insula’s role in daily function would be to answer the question, “How do I feel right now?” The insula would play a role in that response.
Dr. Calsius suggested that in addition to improving pain sensations and position sense, it is also possible that the release of fascia restriction can improve the emotional state by restoring normal signals on those pathways to the insula. While this is still just a hypothesis, it would help to explain many of the reactions that I observe in my patients. These include endorphin releases and deep relaxation during treatment, better stress management and overall well-being.
Shelly, a patient of mine, once told me at the onset of a treatment visit that she had a new concern. “I’m worried that I don’t feel worried,” she remarked. She went on to explain that she was used to living in a constant state of mild worry about many different facets of her life, both small and large.
However, since her recent fascia release treatments for a painful shoulder, her constant worry had dissipated, and she was mostly focused on just to the largescale issues in her life. Because she was not used to this, she felt concerned that it was abnormal. As time went on though, she learned to enjoy this decrease in stress.
I will point out that I do not treat mental or emotional issues, and the above case was unusual, mentioned only to illustrate how fascia can affect emotional states. More commonly, people tend to experience mild but pleasant changes, or sometimes no change at all. However, this does raise an important question: If fascia can affect how we feel, what can you do in order to maximize its health?
Fascia needs hydration, so making sure that you consume an adequate supply of water each day is important. This fibrous connective tissue does not respond well to inflammation, so eating a nutritious, noninflammatory diet can also help to maintain its function.
A simple place to start is to cur back on portions of red meat and fried foods, as well as increase vegetables and greens. In addition, yoga is an excellent form of exercise for stimulating and toning the fascia. In particular, restorative yoga can activate the fascia nerve pathways to the insula which leads to that sense of well-being which helps to relieve stress.
Research into the effects of fascia therapies on emotional well-being is continuous, so it is possible that someday these hands-on therapies will be incorporated more in conventional psychological therapies. For now, I will enjoy hearing about my patients’ positive side-effects when I treat them for other problems such as back and knee pain.
Eric Winder D.C. uses gentle fascia release treatment methods, without forceful manipulation, to help patients with a wide range of pain and injury problems. For more information, call 941-957-8390 or visit Gentlebay.com.
health briefs
Retain Muscle Mass with Vitamin C
“Bulking up” evokes images of bodybuilders and possible steroid use, but new research shows that older people that simply eat lots of vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables have greater skeletal muscle mass than those that don’t eat these foods. Researchers from the UK’s University of East Anglia collected data from more than 13,000 people between 42 and 82 years old and reported in The Journal of Nutrition that the highest amounts of vitamin C correlated with the greatest estimated skeletal muscle mass—an important finding, as people older than 50 typically lose half a percent of muscle fat each year, leading to frailty and a lower quality of life. Sixty percent of men in the study and 50 percent of women were not getting enough vitamin C from food or supplements. “We’re not talking about people needing megadoses. Eating a citrus fruit such as an orange each day and having a vegetable side to a meal will be sufficient for most people,” says study co-author Richard Hayhoe.
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Eat Cruciferous Veggies for Cleaner Blood Vessels
Pile on the broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. In a study of 684 older Australian women published in the British Journal of Nutrition, research- southstore design/Pexels.com ers found those that ate more than 45 grams of cruciferous vegetables a day—about one-quarter cup of steamed broccoli or one-half cup of raw cabbage—were 46 percent less likely to have calcium buildup in the aorta, the main vessel carrying blood from the heart into the body. Fatty calcium deposits in the aorta are a key marker of vascular disease linked to heart attacks and strokes. “One particular constituent found abundantly in cruciferous vegetables is vitamin K, which may be involved in inhibiting the calcification process that occurs in our blood vessels,” says lead author Lauren Blekkenhorst, of Edith Cowan University, in Perth.
For a Healthy Baby, Take a Multivitamin, Exercise and Ditch the Devices The simple step of taking a daily multivitamin during pregnancy can reduce the risk of autism in newborns by freestocksorg/Pexels.com 38 percent, report Chinese researchers that analyzed nine studies of 231,163 children, of which 4,459 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Another study from Kings College, London, of 1,555 obese, pregnant women, concluded that when they improved their diet and exercised, their children three years later had an average resting pulse rate of five beats per minute lower than the other children, a better glycemic response and slightly less obesity. Israeli research, published in the online journal Sleep, involving 116 men ages 21 to 59, found those that used smartphones and tablets in the evening and after bed-time had lower sperm quality with reduced counts and motility. Watching TV, another light-emitting source, during the evening also correlated with lower sperm concentration.
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Nap Less for Heart Health
For normal nighttime sleepers, taking a midday snooze for more than one hour may hurt cardiovascular health, reports a surprising new study from Guangzhou Medical University, in China. After analyzing 20 studies of 313,651 people, researchers found those people that napped longer than 60 minutes after sleeping more than six hours at night had a 30 percent greater risk of death from any cause and a 34 percent higher risk of heart disease. However, for people sleeping less than six hours at night, naps of 30 to 45 minutes “might improve heart health,” says study author Zhe Pan. Napping, long thought to be healthy, is under increasing scrutiny, with some research linking it to high blood pressure, diabetes and poor overall physical health. A 2019 Swiss study, published in Heart, of 3,500 people concluded that napping once or twice a week reduces heart disease risk by 48 percent, but benefits decline with more frequent naps, perhaps because ongoing sleepiness can point to underlying health disorders.
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global briefs Skin Relief
California Passes Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act California governor Gavin Newsom has signed the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act into law, which bans 24 ingredients from cosmetics and personal care products sold within the state. The list includes mercury, formaldehyde, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, endocrine-disrupting phthalates and long-chain parabens used as preservatives, among other chemicals. Many have been linked to breast cancer, reproductive and neurological damage, birth defects, organ system toxicity and developmental delays.
National standards lag behind the rest of the world and have not been updated since being created in 1938. Despite the industry’s immense size, only two pages of the 829-page Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act govern cosmetics. The new California law will make products safer for everyone, but Black women stand to benefit more because they represent the biggest U.S. market for cosmetics. Environmental watchdog Treehugger notes that Black women account for an estimated 22 percent of the country’s $42-billion per year personal care products market, despite comprising less than 7 percent of the national population.
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Weather Wanderers
Climate Refugees Could Reach One Billion by 2050 The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that global sea levels would rise by about 230 feet if all the glaciers and ice caps on Earth melted, flooding almost every coastal city in the world. This disastrous possibility forces us to confront where current coastal dwellers would go if their cities become uninhabitable. In 2017, of the 68.5 million people that were displaced by sudden weather events that included floods, forest fires and intense storms, more than one-third of them were forced to leave their homes behind. A 2018 World Bank report found that without tangible climate action, more than 143 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America will be forced to move to escape the impacts of climate change by 2050. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, more than 1 billion people worldwide will live in countries with insufficient infrastructure to withstand climate change by 2050 (see Tinyurl.com/EcologicalThreatMap). The Pacific Islands are expected to be impacted especially hard because sea levels there are already rising at almost half an inch each year.
Tainted Taps
WellExplorer App Can Warn of Toxic Drinking Water The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has created WellExplorer, a new, interactive tool that allows residents and scientists to find out what toxins have been deposited in their drinking water as a result of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Exposure to fracking fluid in drinking water has been shown to increase the risk of respiratory problems, premature births, congenital heart defects and other health problems.
Different fracking sites use a diverse mix of chemical ingredients, and individuals and researchers are often uninformed about the exact health consequences of living near a particular well. People can view the closest fracking sites in their state, learn which chemicals are used at those sites and view their levels of toxicity by entering their zip code. WellExplorer can be obtained for free at WellExplorer.org or downloaded on Apple’s App store.
A recent study published in the journal Database found that operators of wells in Alabama use a disproportionately high number of chemicals that target estrogen pathways, as do those in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania in impacting testosterone pathways. The information found through WellExplorer might be particularly relevant for those that use private water wells.
