What is fascia?
Fascia is the supportive connective tissue that surrounds every muscle, organ, bone, joint, blood vessel and nerve fiber in our bodies.
Without it movement would not be possible. Healthy fascia relies on fluid to stay hydrated, flexible, supportive, and bendable.
Fascia is a communication highway. There are more neurons being transmitted via our fascia at any time than our actual nerves themselves.
You can think of it like a fluid based spider web seamlessly connected from head to toe and skin to bone.
It keeps our muscles balanced and stable and gives our joints shock absorption.
It gives our skin its support and lift and keeps our organs tucked back within our bodies. It's what gives us our shape.
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There are 3 types of fascia
- Superficial fascia is the outer layer under the skin.
- Deep fascia surrounds your bones, nerves, muscles, arteries and veins.
- Visceral fascia surrounds your internal organs.
Do your joints feel stiff and achy in the morning?
Do your joints feel stiff and achy in the morning or after you have sat for a while? But when you start moving around and feel better, you think it's nothing. That stiff and achy feeling is our body sending us a distress signal that something is quite right. The problem is that we ignore that distress signal.
Dehydrated fascia is the cause of that stiff and achy feeling. If we don't address the dehydration it will accumulate in the tissue causing it to become stiff and sticky and lose the flexible and supportive qualities our bodies rely on for movement.
When fascia is hydrated its flexible and supportive and moves with you. When it's dehydrated it tightens up and restricts movement and can lead to pain and limited mobility.
What causes dehydration in fascia?
Daily living, both active and sedentary, repetitive movement and aging. In other words, life!
I have an example: If your fascia is dehydrated it looks like a dry crispy sponge. When you bend and twist it you can almost hear that crackling, right?
We want our connective tissue to look more like a hydrated sponge. When we bend and twist the sponge it goes back into shape.
Just like the hydrated sponge, when we bend and twist our body goes back into shape and its the connective tissue that helps us do this.
To get the sponge to absorb water we squeeze and release to work the fluid into the sponge.
Can I drink more water to hydrate my fascia?
Not exactly. Accumulated dehydration in the tissue is like a kink in a hose and disrupts the fluid flow in the connective tissue. We can use gentle compression to hydrate connective tissue and improve the fluid flow to relieve joint stiffness and muscle pain and bring balance to the nervous system.
Learn more about The MELT Method and how it helps hydrate connective tissue, decompress the spine and relieve joint stiffness and muscle pain.