SweetSue's Clues to the ECS

[SweetSue]

I need a space to drop the clues that keep throwing themselves at me. Maybe if I can get them all in one spot I can reason it out better.

The mystery continues. This is such fun, like chasing down a lost treasure.

This thread is about as close as you'll get to Susan, the student. If you fall through this rabbit hole, be forewarned. I don't do this like other bears. Lol!

I'm here to play. Game on!

 

[SweetSue]

Today I'm lost in the idea that the fascial net may be key to the operation of the ECS. I have a copy of Tom Myer's "Anatomy Teains" open beside me, and every time inspiration hits I read another passage out loud until I understand it, and then move on to something else.

At the moment the thought was concerning the process of gastrulation.

Looking at it, and thinking about it, it plays out in my mind like this:

The ectoderm becomes the sensory input; nervous system and skin. The endoderm is nutrition and maintenance of the inner sea, including elimination. The mesoderm is where the magic is.

The mesoderm gives birth to the fascial net and the systems designed to heal you and move your healing body playfully through the paradise you choose to live in.

There you go girl. these little gems of clarity are surprising. They're adding up to something.

 

[SweetSue]

Tom Myers on the myofascial net.


The bald statement is that the fascial web so permeates the body as to be part of the immediate environment of every cell. Without its support, the brain would be runny custard, the liver would spread through the abdominal cavity, and we would end up as a puddle at our own feet. Only in the open lumens of the respiratory and digestive tracts is the binding, strengthening, connecting, and separating web of fascia absent. Even in the circulatory tubes, filled with flowing blood, itself a connective tissue, the potential exists for fiber to form a leak-stopping clot (and in some places we do not need one, as when plaque builds in an artery).


We could not extract a cubic centimeter, let alone Shylock's pound of flesh, without taking with us some of this mesh work of collagen. With any touch we contact the tone of this web, registering it whether we are conscious of it or not, and affecting it, whatever our intention.


This ubiquitous network has enough of a regular molecular lattice to qualify as a liquid crystal, which begs us to question to what frequencies this bilological 'antenna' is tuned, and how it can be tuned to a wider spectrum of frequencies or harmonized within itself. Although this idea may be farfetched, the electrical properties of fascia have been noted but little studied to date, and we are now glimpsing some of the mechanisms of such 'tuning' (pre-stress)


So what frequency do you think cancer tumors give off to attract the warrior cannabinoids we introduce into our systems? The mystery deepens.


Stay joyful people. I become more convinced by the day.

 

[SL2222]

One thought I've been obsessing about is Katy Bowman's take on cell deprivation, death, movement and cancer cells. (Boy, I feel how inarticulate I am when I post after reading your stuff, Susan).

The simple version is: If a particular portion of your body is tight, reducing the blood flows' access to the cells of that part of your body, it isn't receiving nutrition, nor is waste being adequately removed. Cells die. The ones that remain end up wallowing in an acidic, nutrient-depleted wasteland. This is where cancer *can* easily grow.

My theory is this:

Getting movement to every single cell of the body is vital not only to prevent cancer in the first place, but in more easily getting the cannabis to the site of the cancer. If the area isn't receiving adequate blood flow, the cannabis can't as easily get to the site. Oh, I'm sure some will. But if the area is restricted, it's restricted. How much more would make it were the area mobile and fluid? And the more movement you've done for a time, the more blood vessels are created by the body, allowing even more movement in and out.

So full body movement, of which healthy, mobile, fluid fascia is essential, can only fast track getting the cannabis where it needs to go.

I wonder how movement during the time when the cannabis is reaching the blood stream would only facilitate its distribution? And throughout the brain? I'm not sure how that works, but I wonder if stimulating the brain when the cannabis reaches it would facilitate the chemicals to their proper place?

(hopefully you don't mind me chiming in here).

 

[SweetSue]

From Tom Meyers "Anatomy Trains", page 58:

This brings us to a very different relationship among biomechanics, perception, and health. The cells do not float as independant 'islands' within a 'dead' sea of intercellular matrix. The cells are connected to, and active within, a responsive and actively changing matrix, a matrix that is communicating meaningfully to the cell, via many connections. The connections are linked through a tensegrity geometry of the entire body, and are constantly changing in response to the cells activity, the body's activity (as communicated mechanically along the trails of the fiber (matrix), and the conditions of the matrix itself.

Microtensegrity and optimal health

It appears that cells assemble and stabilize themselves vis tension all signaling, that they communicate with and move through the local surroundings via adhesive molecules, and that the macula-fascial-skeletal system as a whole functions largely as a tensegrity. According to Ingber: 'Only tensegrity, for example, can explain how every time that you move your arm, your skin stretches, your intercellular matrix expends, your cells distort, and the interconnected molecules that constitute the internal framework of the cell feel the pull - all without any breakage or discontinuity.' This is a very up-to-date statement of the sentiment from The Endless Web with Thich we started this chapter.

The sum total of the matrix, the receptors, and the injer structure of the cell constitute our 'spatial' body. Though this research definitively demonstrates its biological responsiveness, a question remains concerning whether this system is 'conscious'in any real sense, as posited earlier in this chapter, or whether we percieve its workings only via the neural stretch receptors and muscle spindles arrayed throughout the the muscle and interstatia of the fibrous body.

Structural intervention - of whatever sort - works through this system as a whole, changing the mechanical relations among the countless numbers of individual tensegrity-linked parts, and linking our perception of our kinesthetic self to the dynamic interaction between cells and matrix.

Research into integrity has begun to show us the beginnings of 'spatial medicine' - and the importance of spacial health:

To investigate the possibility further [researchers in my group] developed a method to engineer cell shapes and function. They forced living cells to take on different shapes - spherical or flattened, round or square - by placing them on tiny adhesive 'islands' composed of extra-cellular matrix. Each adhesive island was surrounded by a Teflon-like surface to which cells could not adhere.

By simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells among different genetic programs. Cells that were stretched and spread flat became more likely to divide, whereas rounded cells that were prevented from spreading activated a suicidal apoptopic gene. When cells were neither too expanded nor too hemmed in, they spend their energy neither in dividing nor in dying. Instead, they differentiated themselves in a tissue-specific manner; capillary cells formed hollow cappilary tubes, liver cells secreted proteins that the liver normally supplies to the blood, and so on.

Thus, mechanical information apparently combines with chemical signals to tell the cell and cytoskeleton what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons overstretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate - as in wound repair - and that cell division is necessary. Rounding and pressure indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumors formation. In between those two extremes, normal tissue function is established and maintained. Understanding how this switching occurs could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy and tissue repair and perhaps even to the creation of artificial-tissue transplants.

The new proportion

This research points the way toward a holistic role for the mechanical distribution of stress and strain in the body that goes far beyond merely dealing with localized tissue pain. If every cell has an ideal mechanical environment, then there is an ideal 'posture' - likely slightly different for each individual, based on genetic, epigenetic, and personal use factors - in which each cell in the body is in its appropriate mechanical balance for optimal functioning.

I need a break. I'll pick this up later.

 

[SweetSue]

One thought I've been obsessing about is Katy Bowman's take on cell deprivation, death, movement and cancer cells. (Boy, I feel how inarticulate I am when I post after reading your stuff, Susan).

The simple version is: If a particular portion of your body is tight, reducing the blood flows' access to the cells of that part of your body, it isn't receiving nutrition, nor is waste being adequately removed. Cells die. The ones that remain end up wallowing in an acidic, nutrient-depleted wasteland. This is where cancer *can* easily grow.

My theory is this:

Getting movement to every single cell of the body is vital not only to prevent cancer in the first place, but in more easily getting the cannabis to the site of the cancer. If the area isn't receiving adequate blood flow, the cannabis can't as easily get to the site. Oh, I'm sure some will. But if the area is restricted, it's restricted. How much more would make it were the area mobile and fluid? And the more movement you've done for a time, the more blood vessels are created by the body, allowing even more movement in and out.

So full body movement, of which healthy, mobile, fluid fascia is essential, can only fast track getting the cannabis where it needs to go.

I wonder how movement during the time when the cannabis is reaching the blood stream would only facilitate its distribution? And throughout the brain? I'm not sure how that works, but I wonder if stimulating the brain when the cannabis reaches it would facilitate the chemicals to their proper place?

(hopefully you don't mind me chiming in here).

I don't mind at all Sara. I just needed a place to organize this part of it. Right smack in the middle of what I posted are notes on an experiment done on cells that prove what Katy says. I haven't followed her since I fell into study here, but Tom Meyers touches on the same information. I think they're feeding each other data. Lol!

There's also the factor of the "Inner Sea" to be taken into account. At the ends of the cappilaries the walls are permeable. The pulse of the heartbeat pushes minute bits of fluid into the inter cellular matrix. If there are squashed cells in there, or cells stretched beyond their natural state, they aren't going to get their fair share of the incoming goods.

We do our children an injustice restricting their movement. They instinctively know it's wrong. We do ourselves further damage working in cubbies and seated at desks, anything that restricts free movement. The cells depend on having their own space and the ECS relies on a lack of tension to get the signals through.

 

[SweetSue]

Re-reading the Nat Geo article on Faith Healing. On page 38 the author asks "How does a belief become so potent it can heal?"

The answer is so obvious to me it's almost laughable. Because they were always capable of healing. We, as a species, have somehow forgotten that we can heal, as a matter of course. I believe this may be tied into the evolution of processed foods.

They got us to move to cities and begin working in factories, switched us from a mostly agrarian society to a manufacturing society. This allowed men of power to amass wealth. It also created a need for massive amounts of food that would feed all those assembled masses of workers and their families. Enter processed, "convienience foods." Hmmmmm..... When this was all starting, no one knew we had a biological necessity to keep the fatty acids in balance, or that we even needed to be so concerned about the quality of the food from the perspective of the ECS, a system no one knew we had.

Alright, to continue... processed foods threw the balance of fatty acids out of whack. This increased the incidence of inflammation, which caused a massive upswing in disease. Now, complicate this with the greed of the pharmaceutical corporations, and we have one screwed up planet to get back to balance.

Ok, from the perspective of The Path:

It does no good to look at the past any longer than to determine just exactly what disturbs me in that history, so that the desire can rise up, and I can then shift my focus and momentum of feeling in that direction. So what is the desire that rises up in me here?

To remember that I was evolved to heal, that this is the biological imperative. I want to set off down that path and never look back. To keep myself focused that the goal here is to allow myself to feel my inner guide. I'm not here to save the world. I'm not here to heal anyone. I'm here to have fun. If helping others find healing and saving the world become part of the game, I'm all the happier.

But first and foremost, I'm here to have fun with the universe. I'm really good with that idea now.

Step One: Begin supporting the ECS - this is what my practice of deliberate waking is meant to jump start. As I go along, other additions will augment that. Of greatest interest to me is the introduction of an omega-3 supplement and a good probiotic.

Step Two: Feel my way to the answers. I'm walking around in some uncharted waters here, looking at things I've been exploring casually for years with fresh perspective. No way do I have the answers I seek, or even any way to know where to begin looking for them, so I depend on inspiration. So far I'm a bit stunned at how spot on it's been.

I have no idea where this will end up, but isn't this the most fun you've ever had Susan?

OMG, I've never been this deep in so many subjects at the same time and not felt overwhelmed. Nothing about this feels intimidating anymore. I have years and years to devote to this. Hahaha! Oh God...... This feels a little like Susan Heaven. Hehe!

 

[SL2222]

So relevant to me today, Susan.

"To remember that I was evolved to heal, that this is the biological imperative. I want to set off down that path and never look back. To keep myself focused that the goal here is to allow myself to feel my inner guide. I'm not here to save the world. I'm not here to heal anyone. I'm here to have fun. If helping others find healing and saving the world become part of the game, I'm all the happier.

But first and foremost, I'm here to have fun with the universe. I'm really good with that idea now."

This. I want to save the world and I make myself sick at all of the injustices. Time for that to stop.

You are having a great time and you are helping people along the way. We all need to follow that path

 

[SweetSue]

So relevant to me today, Susan.

"To remember that I was evolved to heal, that this is the biological imperative. I want to set off down that path and never look back. To keep myself focused that the goal here is to allow myself to feel my inner guide. I'm not here to save the world. I'm not here to heal anyone. I'm here to have fun. If helping others find healing and saving the world become part of the game, I'm all the happier.

But first and foremost, I'm here to have fun with the universe. I'm really good with that idea now."

This. I want to save the world and I make myself sick at all of the injustices. Time for that to stop.

You are having a great time and you are helping people along the way. We all need to follow that path

Sara, the most delicious part that I just figured out recently, is that when you care more about how you feel, and make how you feel more positive than negative, regardless of what's going on around you, then you open yourself up to the inspiration that others need to help them find greater happiness.

But first you have to let go of the erroneous idea that you have some purpose in life beyond being happy. Take the time to determine and articulate your desires and then chill. Just chill, and wait for the inspiration. It'll come, and it's usually just after one of those points when you get frustrated about things moving too slowly. Resist the urge to "make something happen" and you'll be amazed at what the universe can orchestrate.

It's totally backwards from the way we were taught to succeed. This makes me laugh right out loud.

 

[KingstonRabbi]

Wow! Another one?! Sue, I think when you were messing around cloning your carnivals you managed to clone yourself! Hard enough keeping up with one of you, but now two of you?!?! We are truly blessed!

I spent a lot of time as a teacher thinking about how fun plays a role in our development. I also watch a lot of nature programs. Every time one repeats the idea that lion cubs wrestle to establish dominance I get frustrated. There are certainly evolutionary advantages to establishing dominance, which is a natural consequence of wrestling, but that's not why a lion cub chooses to wrestle. They do it because it's fun. It's more fun to win, but nobody will play with you if you always win, so they learn social skills to keep it fun for everbody (or most, some may get left out.) Those social skills help the pride stay cohesive and survive. So there's a lot more to wrestling than dominance. That's just a side point, but it helps build up the parallel with humans.

My main point is that we are rewarded for doing things that help us to develop, survive and thrive. And how do our bodies reward us? ECS has to be part of that. It's a complicated relationship with all sorts of other neurotransmitters and hormones. Also, it supports not just our physical states but also mental, emotional states and even social behavior.

That kind of just repeats what you've said above, but seeing it in this context makes it easier for me to picture.

 

[SL2222]

Sara, the most delicious part that I just figured out recently, is that when you care more about how you feel, and make how you feel more positive than negative, regardless of what's going on around you, then you open yourself up to the inspiration that others need to help them find greater happiness.

But first you have to let go of the erroneous idea that you have some purpose in life beyond being happy. Take the time to determine and articulate your desires and then chill. Just chill, and wait for the inspiration. It'll come, and it's usually just after one of those points when you get frustrated about things moving too slowly. Resist the urge to "make something happen" and you'll be amazed at what the universe can orchestrate.

It's totally backwards from the way we were taught to succeed. This makes me laugh right out loud.

And that's why I love this.

 

[SweetSue]

Wow! Another one?! Sue, I think when you were messing around cloning your carnivals you managed to clone yourself! Hard enough keeping up with one of you, but now two of you?!?! We are truly blessed!

I spent a lot of time as a teacher thinking about how fun plays a role in our development. I also watch a lot of nature programs. Every time one repeats the idea that lion cubs wrestle to establish dominance I get frustrated. There are certainly evolutionary advantages to establishing dominance, which is a natural consequence of wrestling, but that's not why a lion cub chooses to wrestle. They do it because it's fun. It's more fun to win, but nobody will play with you if you always win, so they learn social skills to keep it fun for everbody (or most, some may get left out.) Those social skills help the pride stay cohesive and survive. So there's a lot more to wrestling than dominance. That's just a side point, but it helps build up the parallel with humans.

My main point is that we are rewarded for doing things that help us to develop, survive and thrive. And how do our bodies reward us? ECS has to be part of that. It's a complicated relationship with all sorts of other neurotransmitters and hormones. Also, it supports not just our physical states but also mental, emotional states and even social behavior.

That kind of just repeats what you've said above, but seeing it in this context makes it easier for me to picture.

I mirror that frustration at the erroneous intrepertations of animal behavior. We want so desperately to make them conform to our limited perspectives, and they just want to play. Lol! We are a manic species.

I was particularly taken by the idea that no one wants to play with you if you win all the time. If you insist on being the winner, you've lost sight of what playing is, haven't you? As an educator you understand the dangers of limiting the playtime of children. The more I study, the happier I am with my firm decision to keep my own children unrestricted by the public school system. There's arising in me a desire to develop curriculum guides for elementary schools and see if they'll fly.

I have a difficult time with the idea that they aren't teaching these facts about the ECS from kindergarten up. The concept of fueling the body so you can build cannabinoids...... how do we ignore this basic message? This took "eat to stay healthy" to an entirely new level for me.

 

[SweetSue]

From Tom Meyers "Anatomy Trains", beginning at page 58:

This brings us to a very different relationship among biomechanics, perception, and health. The cells do not float as independant 'islands' within a 'dead' sea of intercellular matrix. The cells are connected to, and active within, a responsive and actively changing matrix, a matrix that is communicating meaningfully to the cell, via many connections. The connections are linked through a tensegrity geometry of the entire body, and are constantly changing in response to the cells activity, the body's activity (as communicated mechanically along the trails of the fiber (matrix), and the conditions of the matrix itself. 141

Microtensegrity and optimal health

It appears that cells assemble and stabilize themselves vis tension all signaling, that they communicate with and move through the local surroundings via adhesive molecules, and that the macula-fascial-skeletal system as a whole functions largely as a tensegrity. According to Ingber: 'Only tensegrity, for example, can explain how every time that you move your arm, your skin stretches, your intercellular matrix expends, your cells distort, and the interconnected molecules that constitute the internal framework of the cell feel the pull - all without any breakage or discontinuity.' 139 This is a very up-to-date statement of the sentiment from The Endless Web with Thich we started this chapter.

The sum total of the matrix, the receptors, and the inner structure of the cell constitute our 'spatial' body. Though this research definitively demonstrates its biological responsiveness, a question remains concerning whether this system is 'conscious'in any real sense, as posited earlier in this chapter, or whether we percieve its workings only via the neural stretch receptors and muscle spindles arrayed throughout the the muscle and interstatia of the fibrous body.

Structural intervention - of whatever sort - works through this system as a whole, changing the mechanical relations among the countless numbers of individual tensegrity-linked parts, and linking our perception of our kinesthetic self to the dynamic interaction between cells and matrix.

Research into integrity has begun to show us the beginnings of 'spatial medicine' - and the importance of spacial health:

To investigate the possibility further [researchers in my group] developed a method to engineer cell shapes and function. They forced living cells to take on different shapes - spherical or flattened, round or square - by placing them on tiny adhesive 'islands' composed of extra-cellular matrix. Each adhesive island was surrounded by a Teflon-like surface to which cells could not adhere. 138

By simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells among different genetic programs. Cells that were stretched and spread flat became more likely to divide, whereas rounded cells that were prevented from spreading activated a suicidal apoptopic gene. When cells were neither too expanded nor too hemmed in, they spend their energy neither in dividing nor in dying. Instead, they differentiated themselves in a tissue-specific manner; capillary cells formed hollow cappilary tubes, liver cells secreted proteins that the liver normally supplies to the blood, and so on.

Thus, mechanical information apparently combines with chemical signals to tell the cell and cytoskeleton what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons overstretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate - as in wound repair - and that cell division is necessary. Rounding and pressure indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumors formation. In between those two extremes, normal tissue function is established and maintained. Understanding how this switching occurs could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy and tissue repair and perhaps even to the creation of artificial-tissue transplants. 141

The new proportion

This research points the way toward a holistic role for the mechanical distribution of stress and strain in the body that goes far beyond merely dealing with localized tissue pain. 141 If every cell has an ideal mechanical environment, then there is an ideal 'posture' - likely slightly different for each individual, based on genetic, epigenetic, and personal use factors - in which each cell in the body is in its appropriate mechanical balance for optimal function. This could lead to a new and scientifically based formulation of the old search for the 'ideal' human proportion - an ideal not built on the geometry of proportion or on musical harmonics, but on each cell's ideal mechanical 'home'.

Thus, creating an even tone across the myofascial meridians, and further across the entire collageneous net, could have profound implications for health, both cellular and general. 'Very simply, transmission of tension through a tensegrity array provides a means to distribute forces to all interconnected elements, and, at the same time to couple or 'tune' the entire system, mechanically as one.' 141





REFERENCES

138 Horwitz A. Integrity and health. Scientific American 1997;(May):68-75

139 Ingber D. The architecture of life. Scientific American 1998;(January):48-57

140 XVIVO. Scientific Animation. Online. [Accessed 10 January 2013]. Available: Harvard University Presents The Inner Life Of The Cell.

if a video could be included in a book, this one from XVIVO commissioned by Harvard would be front and center - go here for a visual feast of mechanotransduction.

141 Ingber DE. Cellular mechanotransduction: putting all the pieces together again. FASEB J 2006;20:811-27

142 Tomasek J, Gabbiani G, Hinz B, et al. Myofibroblasts and mechanoregulation of connection tissue modeling. Nature Reviews. Molecular Cell Biology 2002;3:349-63

143 Guimberteau JC. Promenades sous la peau; Strolling under the skin: Edition bilingue. Paris: Elsevier Masson SAS;2004.

144 Guimberteau J. The subcutaneous and epitendenous tissue behavior of the multimicrovascular sliding system. In: Shleip, R, Findley TW, Chaitow L, et al, editors. Fascia: the tension all network of the human body. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingston;2012. p. 143-6.

145 Headley G. Fascia and stretching: the fuzz speech. Online. [Accessed 3 January 2013]. Available: Gil Hedley: Fascia and stretching: The Fuzz Speech - YouTube.

No mention of fascial fuzz can be complete without reference to Gil Hedley's 'fuzz speech'.

Did a quick search on YouTube and found this one. It really is a priceless speech. Gill's a treasure all his own. Really great source for cadaver dissection with a focus on the fascia.

The Fuzz Speech by Dr Gill Hedley - YouTube

146 Netter F. Atlas of human anatomy. 2nd ed. East Hanover, NJ: Novartis; 1997

147 Williams P. Gray's anatomy. 38th ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone; 1995.

Fig. 1.71 'The fibrils, made of collagen and elastin, de limit the microvacuoles where they cross each other. These microvacuoles are filled with hydrophilic jelly made of proteoaminoglycans.' What a still photo cannot convey is the fractal and frothy way these microvacular structures roll over each other, elasticize, reform, blend, and separate. Guimberteau synthesizes the predictions made by tensegrity geometry with the pressure system concepts from visceral manipulation proffered by another Frenchman Jean-Pierre Barral. This system responds to all the forces under the skin - tensegrity and optimal use of space/closest packing, osmotic pressure, surface tension, cellular adhesions, and gravity. The gluey, elastic, hollow fibrils in ever-responsive interplay with the vacuoles create an array of rigging and sails that changes with every traction or movement from the outside. This gluey areole R network could be said to form a body-wide adaptive system allowing the myriad of small movements that underlie or larger voluntary efforts. Photos (and quote) from Promenades Sous La Peau. Paris: Elsevier; 2004.

Fig 1.72 The 'microvascular collagen if absorbing system' diagrammed from skin to tendon, showing how there is no discontinuity among fascial planes, just a frothy relationship between polygons that support the vascular supply to the tendon, while still allowing sliding in multiple directions. (Photo from Dr. JC Guimberteau, Plastic and Hand Surgeon and Endovivo Productions.)

Fig. 1.73

The gluey, elastic, hollow fibrils in ever-responsive interplay with the vacuoles create an array of rigging and sails that changes with every traction of movement from the outside. Again, a still photo fails to convey the dynamism and ability to instantly remodel that characterizes this ubiquitous tissue. This gluey areolar network could be said to form a body-wide system allowing the myriad of small movements which underlie or larger voluntary efforts. (Photo from Dr JC Guimberteau, Plastic and Hand Surgeon and Endvivo Productions)

Photo by Eric Root

Fig. 1.74 (A) Microvacuoles embedded in the gluey proteoaminoglycans with capillaries running through. This photo was taken of human tissue through a microscope at a dissection conducted by the author some months before his acquaintance with the work of Dr. Guimberteau. At the time, we did not know what we were looking at;in retrospect, its importance is obvious. (B) Similar bubbles are visible to the unaided eye in fresh animal dissection, or occassion, as here, in embalmed cadavers. Again, before being exposed to the work of Guimberteau, we took this as an artifact of death or tissue exposure during the dissection, and therefore did not realize the significance of what we were seeing.


More later. Susie needs a break. That was sweet fun though. So much knowledge packed into every page. Getting closer to the insight.

 

[SweetSue]

FINAL VERSION

From Tom Meyers "Anatomy Trains", beginning at page 58:

This brings us to a very different relationship among biomechanics, perception, and health. The cells do not float as independant 'islands' within a 'dead' sea of intercellular matrix. The cells are connected to, and active within, a responsive and actively changing matrix, a matrix that is communicating meaningfully to the cell, via many connections. The connections are linked through a tensegrity geometry of the entire body, and are constantly changing in response to the cells activity, the body's activity (as communicated mechanically along the trails of the fiber (matrix), and the conditions of the matrix itself. 141

Microtensegrity and optimal health

It appears that cells assemble and stabilize themselves vis tension all signaling, that they communicate with and move through the local surroundings via adhesive molecules, and that the macula-fascial-skeletal system as a whole functions largely as a tensegrity. According to Ingber: 'Only tensegrity, for example, can explain how every time that you move your arm, your skin stretches, your intercellular matrix expends, your cells distort, and the interconnected molecules that constitute the internal framework of the cell feel the pull - all without any breakage or discontinuity.' 139 This is a very up-to-date statement of the sentiment from The Endless Web with which we started this chapter.

The sum total of the matrix, the receptors, and the inner structure of the cell constitute our 'spatial' body. Though this research definitively demonstrates its biological responsiveness, a question remains concerning whether this system is 'conscious'in any real sense, as posited earlier in this chapter, or whether we percieve its workings only via the neural stretch receptors and muscle spindles arrayed throughout the the muscle and interstatia of the fibrous body.

Structural intervention - of whatever sort - works through this system as a whole, changing the mechanical relations among the countless numbers of individual tensegrity-linked parts, and linking our perception of our kinesthetic self to the dynamic interaction between cells and matrix.

Research into integrity has begun to show us the beginnings of 'spatial medicine' - and the importance of spacial health:

To investigate the possibility further [researchers in my group] developed a method to engineer cell shapes and function. They forced living cells to take on different shapes - spherical or flattened, round or square - by placing them on tiny adhesive 'islands' composed of extra-cellular matrix. Each adhesive island was surrounded by a Teflon-like surface to which cells could not adhere. 138

By simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells among different genetic programs. Cells that were stretched and spread flat became more likely to divide, whereas rounded cells that were prevented from spreading activated a suicidal apoptopic gene. When cells were neither too expanded nor too hemmed in, they spend their energy neither in dividing nor in dying. Instead, they differentiated themselves in a tissue-specific manner; capillary cells formed hollow cappilary tubes, liver cells secreted proteins that the liver normally supplies to the blood, and so on.

Thus, mechanical information apparently combines with chemical signals to tell the cell and cytoskeleton what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons overstretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate - as in wound repair - and that cell division is necessary. Rounding and pressure indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumors formation. In between those two extremes, normal tissue function is established and maintained. Understanding how this switching occurs could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy and tissue repair and perhaps even to the creation of artificial-tissue transplants. 141

The new proportion

This research points the way toward a holistic role for the mechanical distribution of stress and strain in the body that goes far beyond merely dealing with localized tissue pain. 141 If every cell has an ideal mechanical environment, then there is an ideal 'posture' - likely slightly different for each individual, based on genetic, epigenetic, and personal use factors - in which each cell in the body is in its appropriate mechanical balance for optimal function. This could lead to a new and scientifically based formulation of the old search for the 'ideal' human proportion - an ideal not built on the geometry of proportion or on musical harmonics, but on each cell's ideal mechanical 'home'.

Thus, creating an even tone across the myofascial meridians, and further across the entire collageneous net, could have profound implications for health, both cellular and general. 'Very simply, transmission of tension through a tensegrity array provides a means to distribute forces to all interconnected elements, and, at the same time to couple or 'tune' the entire system, mechanically as one.' 141

For manual and movement therapists, this role of tuning the entire fascial system could have long-term effects on immunological health, improved physiology, and prevention of future breakdown, as well as in the sense of self and personal integrity. It is this greater purpose, along with coordinating movement, augmenting range,, and relieving pain, that is undertaken when we seek to even out the tension to produce an equal to mus - like the lyre's string or the sailboat's rigging - across the Anatomy Trains myofascial meridians.

In fact, however, every cell is involved in what we could term a 'tensile field'. When the cell's need for space is disturbed, there are a number of compensatory moves, but if the proper spacial arrangement is not restored by the compensations, the cell function is compromised - that is what this research makes clear. 142 The experienced therapist's hand or eye can track disturbances and excesses in the tensile field, although an objective way to measure these fields would be welcome. Once discovered, a variety of treatment methods can be weighed and tried to relieve the mechanical stress.

The self-adjusting mechanosome

The body has to relieve and distribute such stress continually. The mechanism for doing so - a fascinating fractal adapting system in the tissues - has recently been uncovered and documented. We cannot leave the world of fascia without sharing some of the insights and beautiful images that have come from the work of the French plastic and hand surgeonDr Jean-Claude Guimberteau. 143,144. these images show the interface between microtensegrity and macrotensegrity (an artificial distinction in the first place) in action in the living body (Fig. 1.70).

So many of the images, both verbal and visual, that we present here were taken from in vitro experiments or from cadaverous tissue. The photos in this section were taken in vivo during surgery, with permission. How well they demonstrate the healthy functioning of normal fascia, revealing a surprising new discovery of how fascia layers 'slide' on each other.

Fascial layers in the hand, specifically in the carpel tunnel, must slide on each other more than any other apposite surfaces, so it is understandable that a hand surgeon would seek more precision on this question. Every fascial plane, however, has to slide on every other if movement is not to be unnecessarily restricted. Yet, when doing dissection in either fresh-frozen or preserved cadavers, one does not see fascial planes sliding freely on each other; one sees instead either a delicate fascial 'fuzz' or stronger cross-linkages that connect more superficial planes to deeper ones, as well as laterally between the epimysia. 145 This fits with the 'all one fascia' image of continuinity that is the motif for this book, but it calls into question what constitutes 'free' movement within the fascial webbing (Fig. 1.71).

Fig. 1.71 'The fibrils, made of collagen and elastin, de limit the microvacuoles where they cross each other. These microvacuoles are filled with hydrophilic jelly made of proteoaminoglycans.' What a still photo cannot convey is the fractal and frothy way these microvacular structures roll over each other, elasticize, reform, blend, and separate. Guimberteau synthesizes the predictions made by tensegrity geometry with the pressure system concepts from visceral manipulation proffered by another Frenchman Jean-Pierre Barral. This system responds to all the forces under the skin - tensegrity and optimal use of space/closest packing, osmotic pressure, surface tension, cellular adhesions, and gravity. The gluey, elastic, hollow fibrils in ever-responsive interplay with the vacuoles create an array of rigging and sails that changes with every traction or movement from the outside. This gluey areole R network could be said to form a body-wide adaptive system allowing the myriad of small movements that underlie or larger voluntary efforts. Photos (and quote) from Promenades Sous La Peau. Paris: Elsevier; 2004.

Such movement within the carpal tunnel and with the lower leg tendons around the mallet li is usually depicted in the anatomies as having tensosynovialsheaths, or specialized bursar for the tendons to run in - often rendered in blue in anatomy atlases such as Netter's 146 or Gray's. 147
Dr Guimberteau has poked his camera inside these supposed bursar of the 'sliding system' and come up with a startling revelation that applies to his specialized area of the hand, but to many of the loose interstitial areas of the body: there is no discontinuity between the tendon and its surroundings. The necessary war between the need for movement and the need for maintaining connection is solved by a constantly changing fractally divided set of polyhedral bubbles which he terms the 'multimicrovacuolar collagen ice absorbing system's 144

The skin of these bubbles is formed from elastin and collagen Types I,II,IV, and V. The bubbles are filled with 80% water, 5% fat and 15% hydrophilic proteoglycoaminoglycans. The fern-like molecules of the sugar-protein mix spread out through the space, turning the contents of the microvacuole into a slightly viscous jelly. When movement occurs between the two more organized layers on either side, (the tendon, say, or the flexor rectinaculum), these bubbles roll and slide around each other, joining and dividing as soap bubbles do, in apparently incoherent chaos. 'Chaos', understood mathematically, actually conceals an implicate order. This underlying order allows all the tissues within this complex network to be vascularized (and therefore nourished and repaired), no matter which direction it is stretched, and without the logistical difficulties that present themselves whenever we picture the sliding systems the way we have traditionally done. (Fig. 1.72)

Fig 1.72 The 'microvascular collagen if absorbing system' diagrammed from skin to tendon, showing how there is no discontinuity among fascial planes, just a frothy relationship between polygons that support the vascular supply to the tendon, while still allowing sliding in multiple directions. (Photo from Dr. JC Guimberteau, Plastic and Hand Surgeon and Endovivo Productions.)

This kind of tissue arrangement occurs all over the body, not just in the wrist. Whenever fascial surfaces are required to slide over each other in the absence of a serous membrane, the proteoglycans cum collagen gel bubbles ease the small but necessary movements between the skin and the underlying tissue, between muscles, between vessels and nerves and all adjacent structures, accomadating a wide variety of forces automatically. This arrangement is almost literally everywhere in our bodies; tensegrity at work on a second-by-second basis.

There is little to add to these images; they speak for themselves. To see this system in motion, Dr Guimberteau's videos are available from Anatomy Trains - Dynamic Education for Body-Minded Professionals. No photo can show how the microvacuoles and microtrabeculae rearrange themselves to accommodate the forces exerted by internal or external movement. The trabecular 'struts' (actually parts of the borders between vacuoles) shown in Figures 1.70-1.73, which combine collagen fibers with the gluey polysaccharides, spontaneously change nodal points , break and reform, or elasticize back into the original form. Also not visible in the still pictures is how each of these sticky guy wires is hollow, with fluid moving through the middle of these bamboo-like struts.

Fig. 1.73

The gluey, elastic, hollow fibrils in ever-responsive interplay with the vacuoles create an array of rigging and sails that changes with every traction of movement from the outside. Again, a still photo fails to convey the dynamism and ability to instantly remodel that characterizes this ubiquitous tissue. This gluey areolar network could be said to form a body-wide system allowing the myriad of small movements which underlie or larger voluntary efforts. (Photo from Dr JC Guimberteau, Plastic and Hand Surgeon and Endvivo Productions)

Guimberteau's work brings together the tensegrity concepts on both a macroscopic and microscopic level. It shows how the entire organismic system is built around the pressure balloons common in both cranial osteopathy and visceral manipulation. It suggests a mechanism whereby even light touch on the skin could reach deeply into the body's structure. It demonstrates how economical use of materials can result in a dynamically self-adjusting system.

One last personal note, however famaliar it is, on the scientific method: it is not simply observing, but observing with understanding that makes the difference. I and many other somanauts have observed these microvacuoles as we dissected tissue. Each year at a class in the Alps we dissect a Paschal lamb just after slaughtering, and before it becomes dinner. For years I observed these bubbles between the skin and the fascia profundis and in other areolar tissue, but dismissed them as artifacts of either the dying process or being exposed to the air. Fig. 1.74A is a microscopic photo we took at a fresh tissue dissection 6 months before I was exposed to Dr Guimberteau's work.

Photo by Eric Root

Fig. 1.74 (A) Microvacuoles embedded in the gluey proteoaminoglycans with capillaries running through. This photo was taken of human tissue through a microscope at a dissection conducted by the author some months before his acquaintance with the work of Dr. Guimberteau. At the time, we did not know what we were looking at;in retrospect, its importance is obvious. (B) Similar bubbles are visible to the unaided eye in fresh animal dissection, or occassion, as here, in embalmed cadavers. Again, before being exposed to the work of Guimberteau, we took this as an artifact of death or tissue exposure during the dissection, and therefore did not realize the significance of what we were seeing.

This photograph is part of a short video (which is on the accompanying website) in which we were watching the behavior of the fascial fibers and ground substance, but completely ignored the microvacuoles in the tissue sample, again dismissing them as an unimportant artifact
(Fig, 1.74B).


In summary, we can see that the 70 trillion cells we call 'us' are held in place by this body-wide network of variably elastic fibers in a variably viscous hydrated polyglyco-protein gel. The cells are guided into place and stretched (or not) into their proper shape, and this shaping can determine their function. This tension all environment is constantly vpchanging with the endogenous and exogenous forces from fluid flow to gravity.

The viscous elements act like a shock absorber, a non-Newtonian fluid that absorbs and dissipates fast forces, e.g. The synovial fluid in your finger joints is effectively 'solid' at the moment of impact from a ball, and effectively fluid a second later as you manipulate your hand to throw it back. The gel elements allow for free perfusion to the cells and maintain a hydration level suitable to the tissues within. The fibrous elements maintain the overall shape and the apposition of the anatomical elements. In health it all works together as a supremely well-designed biomechanical regulatory system.

To look at what everyone else has looked at, and to see what no one else has seen - this is the essence of all new discoveries detailed in this chapter. Like any writer, I live in hope that the Anatomy Trains idea that unfolds in the subsequent chapters has some element of this kind of discovery in it. That said, our introduction makes it quite clear that this idea lies in a continuim that builds on previous ideas of kinetic chains, fascial continuities, and the systems theory in general.

Let us go then, you and I, and leave the larger picture and the long words behind to expose the specifics of how this fascinating web is arranged around the muscles and the skeleton.


REFERENCES

138 Horwitz A. Integrity and health. Scientific American 1997;(May):68-75

139 Ingber D. The architecture of life. Scientific American 1998;(January):48-57

140 XVIVO. Scientific Animation. Online. [Accessed 10 January 2013]. Available: Harvard University Presents The Inner Life Of The Cell.

if a video could be included in a book, this one from XVIVO commissioned by Harvard would be front and center - go here for a visual feast of mechanotransduction.

141 Ingber DE. Cellular mechanotransduction: putting all the pieces together again. FASEB J 2006;20:811-27

142 Tomasek J, Gabbiani G, Hinz B, et al. Myofibroblasts and mechanoregulation of connection tissue modeling. Nature Reviews. Molecular Cell Biology 2002;3:349-63

143 Guimberteau JC. Promenades sous la peau; Strolling under the skin: Edition bilingue. Paris: Elsevier Masson SAS;2004.

144 Guimberteau J. The subcutaneous and epitendenous tissue behavior of the multimicrovascular sliding system. In: Shleip, R, Findley TW, Chaitow L, et al, editors. Fascia: the tension all network of the human body. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingston;2012. p. 143-6.

145 Headley G. Fascia and stretching: the fuzz speech. Online. [Accessed 3 January 2013]. Available: Gil Hedley: Fascia and stretching: The Fuzz Speech - YouTube.

No mention of fascial fuzz can be complete without reference to Gil Hedley's 'fuzz speech'.

Did a quick search on YouTube and found this one. It really is a priceless speech. Gill's a treasure all his own. Really great source for cadaver dissection with a focus on the fascia.

The Fuzz Speech by Dr Gill Hedley - YouTube

146 Netter F. Atlas of human anatomy. 2nd ed. East Hanover, NJ: Novartis; 1997

147 Williams P. Gray's anatomy. 38th ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone; 1995.

 

[SL2222]

I hope the link works so you can see the images. I have no idea if this could add a very tiny piece to the puzzle, but just in case

The strings that bind us: Cytofilaments connect cell nucleus to extracellular microenvironment

***Let me know if this link isn't allowed. I'm not sure of the linking rules yet.***


Rendering of the 3D architecture of cytofilament bundles (in gold) tunneling through a cell's nucleus. The nuclear membrane is shown in blue.
Credit: Manfred Auer/Berkeley Lab
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but new images of structural fibers inside a cell may represent more than a million words from hundreds of research papers spanning the past three decades.

The images, obtained by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), show thread-like cytofilaments reaching into and traversing a human breast cell's chromatin-packed nucleus. It provides the first visual evidence of a physical link by which genes can receive mechanical cues from its microenvironment.

The images appear in a study featured on the cover of the Journal of Cell Science in a special issue on 3D Cell Biology published this month. The work leading up to the images began in the early 1980s when Berkeley Lab's Mina Bissell proposed the idea that gene expression and cell fate were dependent on their physical surroundings called extracellular matrix.

"There are somewhere between 30-70 trillion cells in our bodies, all with the same DNA sequence, so I've been saying since 1981 that something other than the sequence of the genes had to allow a nose to be a nose and not an elbow," said Bissell, Distinguished Scientist at Berkeley Lab's Biological Systems and Engineering Division and co-corresponding author of this study. "When the shape changes, biology changes."

The concept that phenotype is dominant over genotype was initially met with great skepticism, but it has since become accepted in the field. Before this, it was believed that the dominant signals dictating cellular function and form were controlled only by soluble small molecules such as hormones and growth factors, whereas extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules outside the cells were large insoluble proteins.

Evidence builds for mechanical influence

Hundreds of papers, including some 400 led by or co-authored by Bissell, have since provided critical clues showing that signals from physical forces outside a cell could dramatically alter a cell's function. By growing cells in a 3-D gel that includes extracellular matrix, researchers coaxed samples of breast cells from lactating mice to produce milk. This showed that cell function depended on having the proper 3-D growth environment.

"We knew the extracellular matrix was affecting gene expression, but it wasn't understood until now that the cytoskeleton was actually able to connect inside the nucleus," said Bissell. "Now we know there's a direct connection to the nucleus. That's what we're showing here for the first time. This is absolutely novel."

Bissell teamed up with Manfred Auer, head of the Cell and Tissue Imaging Department at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Biophysics and Integrative Bioimaging Division and co-corresponding author of the study.

"It took advances in cryogenic sample preparation techniques and large-volume electron microscopy to come up with these images," said Auer.

Also critical were developments in super-resolution imaging by study co-author Ke Xu, a Berkeley Lab faculty scientist and UC Berkeley assistant professor of chemistry. Specifically, Xu works with stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, or STORM, to create sub-diffraction resolution images of cells.

Hundreds of millions of data points to get one image

"We combined a record-breaking six different imaging techniques and hundreds of millions of data points to obtain these images," said Auer. "The integrative bioimaging approach involved three different optical light and three different electron microscopy imaging approaches, each with its own strengths. This new integration of imaging approaches is what allowed us to study something as complex as this cytofilaments system."

With the clarity provided by the super-resolution imaging, the researchers could show that the cytoskeleton coalesced with SUN proteins, a type of protein involved in connections between the donut-shaped nucleus and cell cytoplasm.

"This study establishes for the first time the long-postulated mechanical link between the cell's nucleus to adhesion complexes that allow communication with the surrounding extracellular matrix and other cells," said Auer.

What had been previously seen through other imaging techniques were telltale cytoskeletal tracks going through the cytoplasm of the cell, but it took this high-powered integrated bioimaging used in the study to reveal deep invaginations into and through the cell nucleus. The invaginations contained cytofilaments anchored at the nuclear membrane, thus providing a macromolecular highway allowing cables of cytofibers, which are known to interact with the extracellular matrix, to travel from the outside of the cell to its nucleus.

"The reason we're excited is that it explains a whole lot of literature of how force and tension could be playing a role together with biochemical signals to bring about huge changes in a cell," said Bissell.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Danielle M. Jorgens, Jamie L. Inman, Michal Wojcik, Claire Robertson, Hildur Palsdottir, Wen-Ting Tsai, Haina Huang, Alexandre Bruni-Cardoso, Claudia S. López, Mina J. Bissell, Ke Xu, Manfred Auer. Deep nuclear invaginations are linked to cytoskeletal filaments — integrated bioimaging of epithelial cells in 3D culture. Journal of Cell Science, 2017; 130 (1): 177 DOI: 10.1242/jcs.190967

 

[SweetSue]

Sara, thank you so much. How fascinating, eh? Who'd have ever thought I'd be rooting around in cellular biology at my age.

There's so much we don't understand, but it becomes clearer and clearer that we were made to heal.

 

[SL2222]

I think it's utterly fascinating. If this were me a few years ago, I'd be diving into the research, too. I always said research for me is the most amazing and fun part of solving any question. For now, I'm just focusing on keeping myself stable and learning how to lead with joy. Then maybe my ability to focus will come back. Hehehe

 

[SweetSue]

It's maddening to watch this next one. The science on the ECS made it worth it. I nearly screamed every time they said "cannabis addiction" or "cannabis abuse". They have no clue at all about what they're talking about with cannabis. Scientist to the core, but with very narrow view of a valuable herbal medicine.

It's really scary how much they don't allow themselves to know.

 

[Radogast]

He's such a nice man, and very able to explain at the populist level that a political aide or layperson somewhat familiar with human biochemistry can easily follow. That's a great quality in a scientist and lecturer as they ediucate others,

 

[SweetSue]

You are evolved to heal.

You heal best when you can be playful with life.

Playfulness reduces stress.

Reduced stress = reduced tension in the body.

Reduced tension in the body = clear signaling by the ECS.

When you're sick, it's because your ECS can't keep up with the demands. Try this:

* Be playful.

* Eat foods that support the ECS and help balance the omega fatty acids.

* Drink more water.

* Consider cannabis supplementation.

Let's stop fighting disease and try letting natural healing express itself.