High tensions in muscles and fascia can lead to pain. And why this is the case, and what exactly is happening in the fascia, you will find out in this video. I will also tell you in the end why such tensions can also strain your joints and lead to unnecessary damage such as osteoarthritis and intervertebral disc damage. So stay tuned! Let's first take a look at what fascia actually is and how it is connected to the muscles. Then it is relatively easy to understand why pain arises when our muscles and fascia become inflexible. In this video, we want to look at the topic in a very general way, without focusing on a specific pain condition, so that it is interesting for you and for everyone else as well. What is fascia actually? There are different types of it with different functions, and they are all interconnected throughout the whole body. Basically, there is only one fascia in the entire body. You can imagine fascia like those white membranes in an orange that shape and separate the pulp. Or like a three-dimensional spider web that runs through the entire body. Medically, the whole thing is of course a bit more complex. Scientists divide the fascia in the human body into three layers. The superficial layer is located directly under the skin, and it is particularly elastic. Then there is the deep fascia, also known as muscle fascia. It surrounds and penetrates our muscles and also tendons, ligaments, bones and the joints. Maybe you can also recognize the white threads when you cut a raw piece of meat. These are usually muscle fascia, those small white things. And then there is the so-called visceral fascial layer. It surrounds our organs and holds them in place. In total, there are around 250 million sensory nerves in our fascia. According to experts. The fascia is very sensitive. And it is now known that it has many different receptors. This allows it, for example, to perceive our position in space, that is, the position of the body, whether we are lying down or standing. You can also detect tensile or compressive forces or chemical changes in the tissue, such as during inflammation. In addition, there are pain receptors. On our channel, it's always about pain and movement. Therefore, let's take a closer look at what happens in the fascia of the muscles. Pain in the musculoskeletal system is often related to our fascia. The deep fascia surrounds and penetrate our muscles, thereby also influencing their function. In the muscle, there are different layers of connective tissue that are connected to the fascia and ensure that the individual muscle fibers and fiber bundles can slide well over each other. The fascia itself also has several layers. Here it becomes particularly interesting when we look at what happens in the fascia. The muscle fascia consists mainly of two things, namely layers of collagen fibers and loose connective tissue in between. The collagen fibers are light, stretchable, and tear-resistant. And most importantly, in each layer they are always oriented in a specific direction. The layers are stacked on top of each other, creating a lattice structure, similar to a pair of nylon stockings when viewed from above. This allows the fascia to withstand well tensile forces from different directions. Between these layers of collagen fibers is a layer of loose connective tissue. It ensures that the collagen fibers slide over each other and can move well. The loose connective tissue consists mainly of water and so-called glucosaminoglycans. And this includes, for example, hyaluronic acid, but more on that later. In order for us to move well, the fascia should be built in the same way. Responsible for this are, among other things, small connective tissue cells, called fibroblasts. They take care of the collagen fibers, meaning, the flexible grid structure. Because fibroblasts are sensitive to mechanical stimuli, they adjust the collagen fibers according to our movements. The constructors of the fascial tissue are exactly these fibroblasts. They are the arachnids that remove, strengthen, or rearrange fascial threads. Depending on the movement we make. And they do this permanently, so 24 hours a day. Always according to the movements that we perform. Therefore, our body and its structure are always the structural representation of how we move or not move throughout the day. Therefore stretching is infinitely important. This way you show the small cells how to structure the tissue so that it remains or becomes flexible again. When there's a lack of movement, that is, when the muscles and thus also the fascia are not repeatedly stretched, the fascia becomes disorganized. The fibroblasts are not stimulated to build flexible structures that allow for length changes, but rather ones that are inflexible, just like how we move. These are accumulations of fascial threads that are matted and tangled. Thus, the ordered scissor grid structure of the fibers becomes more and more confused and the tissue loses more and more of its elasticity. Furthermore, lack of movement can cause the loose connective tissue between the collagen fibers to stick together. And this is often due to an imbalance of hyaluronic acid. And you must know that loose connective tissue consists mainly of water and other substances, including hyaluronic acid. Now hyaluronic acid has flow properties similar to ketchup. Ketchup bottle, ketchup. Imagine you carefully turn a ketchup bottle upside down, then the ketchup is viscous and only slowly runs out. You must always shake, you may know that. When we move, we do the same as when we shake the bottle, the ketchup flows much easier. It is similar in the fascia. When we move little, the flow properties of hyaluronic acid change and the fascia begin to stick together. To take care of your fascia, you must bring movement into as many angles of your body as possible and fully stretch and bend as many joints as possible. Otherwise, certain joint angles simply remain unused. And that means your muscles and fasciae are insufficiently exposed to length changes. Thus, they cannot be trained to repeatedly yield. We assume that in these areas the fascial structure slowly changes and these adhesions occur, which make your fascia increasingly rigid and inflexible. In summary, it can be said that lack of movement can lead to changes in the structure of the fascia and that the fascial layers may slide less well or even adhere together. This makes it less flexible and less mobile, and because the deep fascia runs through and surrounds our muscles, its condition also affects the mobility and flexibility of your muscles. In addition, inflexible muscles and fascia can lead to further damage. We believe that they lead to biomechanical forces that excessively stress the joints. What exactly is happening there? I want to explain it to you very simply. Take my arm. When it is stretched, then the muscles and fascia on the side are in the longest state, because the joint is at its limit. On the back, they are shorter. When I bend my arm, the longer it gets here, the shorter it becomes on the other side, shorter, shorter, shorter. Here on the opposite side, it gets longer. So if you always move a joint to its limit in both directions, at certain intervals, over a few days, then the muscles and fascia will be able to participate in all of these movements. But imagine using this joint only from here to here, for years, as an example. Then from here on, the fascia and also the musculature would be less and less able to give way easily, because that simply no longer occurs. And on the other side here as well. This means that if we do not fully use our joint angles, no matter in which joint on the body, certain structures can no longer yield and then provide resistance. And you can imagine this like in a car. The car has a handbrake, usually has maybe 100 horsepower, and someone pulls the handbrake just a little bit, and then 20 horsepower are lost. In the joints, forces are lost in the same way, because something cannot give way. I would like to show you now what happens at the joints. We take a completely normal joint with the head, with the counterpart, in between is the cartilage. Surrounding it is the capsule. They hold everything together, and then there are the only engines in the body that generate movement, which are the muscles. And now imagine, one of these muscles would pull over here, that means the bone would move to the right, then you always have something in the opposite direction that has to give way. With every joint movement, a small counterforce is applied during the movement, and this small counterforce has a very simple effect. You may know those huge maypoles that are set up in Austria and Bavaria. These are very long poles that are supposed to be brought from a horizontal to a vertical position. And then there are three, four, five strong people who pull on a thick rope to lift it up. And then there is one on a thinner rope, standing on the other side, and pulling against. One wonders, why does the muscle pull against? Then it makes it even heavier. But the point is that this giant trunk cannot tip over and injure people. This secures, the counter-pulling secures, so to speak, that it comes up without falling to the side. And this counterpulling even takes place three-dimensionally in the joints, so that the geometry of joint movement is optimal. This means that the cartilage is properly loaded, that there is no sliding where there shouldn't be and so on. How does cartilage get its nourishment? It doesn't have a blood supply from the bone; instead, you can imagine the cartilage like a sponge. When the sponge is compressed by the movement of the joint, the fluid inside is squeezed out, and when the movement continues, it is released again. And the sponge can soak up again with this synovial fluid, which is distributed everywhere in the joint and can then practically diffuse the nutrients into the cartilage. This is how the cartilage is nourished. There is always a bit of wear and tear in a joint. This is known because there are stem cells migrating there, and these stem cells repair this slight wear and tear that always occurs. Now back to the forces that we had started to draw. You can now form a force parallelogram, which is quite simple. One draws a parallel to one force and also to the other force. And where the two intersect, that's where we have the resultant. And you see, through this small counterforce that we have drawn in, which is important for the joint to be properly guided, this small counterforce causes the main force triggered by the muscles to deviate a little from what it was before. And all of this is calculated in the brain, so that the movement ultimately goes where it should go, for example, when you want to grab a bottle. Now we had said, if we do not fully use the joint angles, then the muscles and fascia change and do not give in as easily anymore. Let's illustrate this. This means that at some point more and more counterforce is applied here, which cannot be controlled by the brain, because the fascia become entangled, no longer yielding as well, and it is like rust in the gears. And now with this counterforce that eventually occurs, we can again form the force parallelogram and then you see, the resultant deviates even more. Ultimately, this means even less force comes out of the system, human, for external work, and is essentially lost or consumed within the body. And after a few years, the opposing forces may be even greater, then they go up to here. Then we make another parallel and then you see, now the resulting force is almost entering the joint. And this is the point at which the joint locks, because the force can no longer lead to an outward movement and then the joint is blocked, the movement is blocked. You may know this from people, maybe you have even experienced the problem yourself, that you could no longer move the shoulder properly, so you could no longer move the upper arm properly. If you wanted to lift it, it went up to here and then stopped, and you had pain and the movement was blocked. This is the result of such opposing forces. And during this whole development, which we have just outlined from a mechanical perspective, the compressive force into the joint has of course increased. The more advanced it is, the greater the pressure force became. Now you can imagine a joint, as an example for comparison, like a mortar and pestle. If this is the mortar and this is the pestle and you have something in there that needs to be made small, and you put it in loosely and then move it like this, then hardly anything will happen. When something happens, it is because you are applying an axial force to this pin, pushing it in and moving it with this pressure, and then the mustard seeds or whatever you have in your pestle are ground finely. And just as you can imagine it here, when the force that presses the upper bone, the head, tighter and tighter into the socket, becomes greater and greater, then the wear and tear, which would normally only be a little and easy to repair, becomes greater and greater. And at some point, according to our interpretation of things, this information goes through the receptors we talked about earlier, into the brain, and the brain, according to our model, calculates that the wear and tear is so great that it can no longer be repaired. That means, the cartilage is continuously broken down, and the body wants to prevent this, so it activates a so-called alarm pain, which blocks movement, because the body does not want to harm itself. And what is now very important to understand, down here there is wear and tear at some point, because the human does not listen to his pain, takes painkillers and so on, does not feel this warning, then the wear and tear will always increase. Very, very interesting is something that we would not have thought 30 years ago, because it is quite different from what many assume, for us, from our experience, namely, many people think that cartilage damage would cause pain. But in our experience, and as mentioned, this is our experience, our opinion, this pain here, has little or nothing to do with the condition of the cartilage. This means that one can draw a proper line here and say, and this is the great opportunity, even if there are damages in the joint, if the cartilage is attacked, if the meniscus in the knee is damaged. We have found that when the tensile stresses of the muscles and fascia are normalized, then the pain can be brought under control, that it can be reduced, perhaps even that the whole thing can become pain-free. And now very exciting, scientists have found that in matted and glued fascia there are more pain receptors to be found than in healthy tissue, where this is not the case. And now one can speculate a bit, but it is perhaps quite exciting to consider. According to our model, the brain brings pain into the structure like a projection of a feeling, makes it palpable, and the latest pain research agrees on this, pain originates in the brain. It could be now, but one does not know, as much research still needs to be done, that the body, or rather the brain, needs these pain receptors in the fascia to make this projection palpable. This would also explain why there are more of such pain receptors in these tissues, because this pain has to be switched from the brain there, so the brain needs these transmitting units there, so to speak. But that's just a thought, it still needs to be proven, exciting to think about. Now you can understand what the solution is for us. Movement into all joint angles, every now and then, not leaving any joint with too little angle stress alone, because more and more adhesions occur and then the pain eventually comes. This is very, very logical according to our model. So, the muscle-fascia unit, they are inseparably connected, always striving to reach their fullest length possible. And if this happens again and again, if you keep doing it over and over, the scissor grid structure remains intact and the sliding layers stay functional. If you have little time, you naturally need efficient stretching exercises as a balance to everyday life, and that's where our exercises, which we have developed, come in handy. Because it has been clear to us for many years that most patients do not invest more than a maximum of 15 minutes, even when it comes to their pain. It is very difficult for most people to incorporate into their daily routine for longer than 15 minutes. And that's why our exercises are designed to take between five and 15 minutes. And if more is needed, it is distributed over the week, so that the daily use is at a maximum of 15 minutes. This is really feasible because the exercises are so efficient. If you want to know why our stretching exercises help with pain, please click here. If you want to try our exercises directly, you can find an exercise video here about pain in the whole body. There. Yes, and now I hope you have been able to understand well how muscles and fascia work together and what they have to do with pain. I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Goodbye.
