Throw away Gray's Anatomy - the new World Order of Anatomy Understanding is here, and its Italian

This week has seen a string of tweets out of the World Fascia Congress. Interesting? Relevant?


Even if the assorted tweets & images have not directly influenced your day, the material the Congress discusses certainly does.


How does the new perspective on what lies beneath our skin contribute to your treatment in the clinic? Where is this information coming from, and how do we as clinicians interpret it? We will offer up one example of a particular condition: neck pain, and see what the new information can tell us.

Carla Stecco on stage at Fascial Research Congress 2012

There are effectively seven layers from skin to the muscle, as described eloquently by leading anatomist Carla Stecco from Italy. From careful dissection of fresh cadavers (no plastination or dried out models her so familiar in Universities) Carla has demonstrated these as being:

Fascia being dissected

• Skin
• Derma
• Superficial adipose layer
• superficial fascia- layer of fibroelastic tissue
• Deep adipose layer & retinaculum cutis profundus
• Deep Fascia
• Muscle

The careful dissection clearly is in the DNA, as her father was also a renowned and skilled practitioner, as is her brother Antonio. He also spoke eloquently at the World Fascia Congress in Vancouver on the imaging of fascia, reporting that in patients with neck pain there is:

• Increase in the size of SternoCleidoMastoid fascia
• Increase of Fascia Scalenus Medius
• Increase of the Deep Fascia Thickness - if this is >=0.15cm then there is strong correlation with pain

There is high viscoelasticity within the fascial layers as shown by both of the Steccos, and this is increased in pain states: in effect there is an entanglement of Hyaluronic Acid chains which are more concentrated and aggregated. The fascial tissue therefore become more dense & many massuers & therapists alike will recognise the type of tissue feel this confers to the area.


The good news for physiotherapists & massage therapists alike is that science by way of the Steccos as an example, have now shown that these chain-chain interactions were reversibly disaggregated by an increase in temperature or by alkanization (as a result of hands-on treatment or massage).


Exciting huh?
This suggests that we are able to change neck pain, with our bare hands by having a profound on the layers between skin and muscle, and not just by increasing blood flow either.


This greater understanding of how we can shape our worlds is moving rapidly thanks to the youthful energy of the Italian siblings building on dissection work by the likes of Gil Headley, Tom Myers & Andry Vleeming.

Long may it continue: to help those seeking to get the public better by themselves getting better help.

Previous posts on our blog click Fascia articles back catalogue here