#connective tissue

It’s so wild to constantly get comments like “you’re in a wheelchair? Wow! I want a wheelchair so bad” no you don’t.

“Wow. You can’t walk well at all and can only walk a few steps unassisted? Well walking hurts but I have to do it anyways.” I can’t do it anyways.

“You experience ableism due to being in a wheelchair and visibly autistic and nonverbal? Well I wished I was more visibly disabled because then I’d get taken more seriously” your concerns and life are valid. But don’t wish my life on yourself.

I don’t understand it. Wheelchairs are last resorts and especially if you’re a user like me who needs it for EVERYTHING. They’re causing me pain, deconditioning, struggles with accessibility, ableism, constant comments about how I should “walk more” and “exercise more” when I physically cant.

You don’t want my life. You don’t want the side of hypermobility that slowly takes away your mobility and causes such bad pain that you almost go to the hospitals some nights. You don’t want the constant ableism. The claims that you don’t really need your wheelchair. The rumors. The people. None of that. Hypermobility isn’t a fun little thing, it can be seriously dangerous and cause serious problems in peoples lives.

Fascia, the connective tissue that holds together the body’s internal structure, really hasn’t spent all that long in the limelight. Anatomists have known about its existence since before the Hippocratic oath was a thing, but until the 1980s it was routinely tossed in the bin during human dissections, regarded as little more than the wrapping that gets in the way of studying everything else. Over the past few decades, though, our understanding of it has evolved and (arguably) overshot – now, there are plenty of personal trainers who will insist that you should be loosening it up with a foam roller, or even harnessing its magical elastic powers to jump higher and do more press-ups. But what’s it really doing – and is there a way you can actually take advantage of it?

“The easiest way to describe fascia is to think about the structure of a tangerine,” says Natasha Kilian, a specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Pure Sports Medicine. “You’ve got the outer skin, and beneath that, the white pith that separates the segments and holds them together. Fascia works in a similar way: it’s a continuous, all-encompassing network that wraps around and connects everything in the body, from muscles and nerves to blood vessels and organs. It’s essentially the body’s internal wetsuit, keeping everything supported and integrated.” If you’ve ever carved a joint of meat, it’s the thin, silvery layer wrapped around the muscle, like clingfilm.

Physically, it’s made up of collagen, though 70% of it is actually water – and it hydrates through compressive movement, which pumps fluid through the fascial layers, keeping them supple and gliding smoothly. It also contains nerve endings that allow it to sense movement, pressure and temperature – and can influence posture, movement and proprioception.

“It’s constantly talking to the brain about what the body feels,” says Kilian. “It’s not a thin layer – it’s a massive, functional sensory organ system that holds us together.”

Changing your default typing-at-desk position from time to time can really help. Photograph: Ekaterina Goncharova/Getty Images

This, really, is the key. Fascia’s nature means that it responds to what we repeatedly do, locking us into that set of movements and making anything else a little bit trickier. “Our bodies are smart,” says Kilian. “When we repeat the same activity, the body adapts to make it easier. For most of us, that means hours at a desk, hunched over a keyboard. Over time, we stiffen into that posture. So if you work long days and play cricket or tennis on weekends, you might feel it when you bowl or serve – your fascia has tightened from keeping your arms forward all week.”

The simplest way to start fixing this is to spend more time doing the sorts of movements you would otherwise do only occasionally. “I talk about it in terms of a circle of potential,” says Baker. “If I tell a group of people to raise their arms as far as they can, then take a breath and raise them higher, they’ll always go up another couple of inches – the reason being that we have an extended range of potential that we very rarely go into. That’s our circle, and as we get older, we stop moving, that circle gets smaller. As the circle gets smaller, our connective tissue starts to get smaller, and that starts to limit us in what we can do. If I’m 85 and I want to reach up and grab a cup off a shelf, it’s not necessary to have strong back muscles – I want a full range. Really, I don’t think there’s one range or one particular movement – the ultimate message is keep moving in as many different ways and ranges as possible.”

But fascia isn’t immune to problems, and dealing with them can be a frustrating process. Many issues that can arise with fascia won’t be clear on, say, an MRI scan – which is one reason that deep-seated structural problems in the body can be difficult to diagnose.

So how do you start to fix it? Up until recently, many answers to this question revolved around the idea of rolling the sole of your foot on a golf ball, or lying down on your side to roll your iliotibial band (a tough strip of connective tissue that runs up the outside of your thigh, from knee to hip) on a big knobbly cylinder, in a process sometimes called self-myofascial release. But that may not actually be all that beneficial.

“The current understanding is that you can’t truly ‘break up’ fascia in the way many people think,” says Kilian. “While rolling your foot can help by increasing blood flow and releasing tension, it’s important to look at the body as an integrated system. You need to consider the tension in your glutes, hamstrings, calves and back – not just the area where you feel pain. It’s the way all those muscles and fascial lines interact – or fail to – that leads to discomfort. In other words, don’t mistake the victim for the perpetrator.”

There’s nothing like a good stretch. Photograph: gerdtromm/Getty Images/RooM RF

What does this mean for most people? Maybe that it’s worth trying rock climbing – Baker runs his own group for over-50s – or swimming, dancing or pilates, all of which move the body through uncommon ranges and types of rotation.

But if that’s all a bit strenuous, it might just mean taking the time to move more naturally. “Think about how a cat or dog stretches – or even how we naturally yawn and move when we’re relaxed on holiday, stretching our arms out,” says Kilian. “The body instinctively knows which directions it needs to move in to release tension and free up restricted fascia. Even something as simple as a long, slow, diaphragmatic inhale during a stretch can help lengthen the fascia and encourage the whole system to move more freely.”

so because im so disastrously cooked, i went back to tom's diner just to do a little photoshoot for my johnny/v/takemura fic "connective tissue" im at the stage rn where its pretty much ANYTHING but meet hanako at embers, even though i know i can just go back

Uhh, uhh, HAVE SOME HISTOLOGY DRAWINGS?!

We began discussing the co-occurrence of hypermobility and neurodivergence on our forums over twenty years ago, and have considered them co-occurring since (like hypermobility it's often 'normal in the family'), putting neurodiversity at the centre of what we do, so seeing current research explaining how and why there's such a crossover is really gratifying (not to mention validating).

Most of our volunteer team is hypermobile and neurodivergent - so for us, that is typical, and we can be a little surprised when someone's not! It means our resources and content are designed and created by and for folk with lived experience of the specific challenges both can present.

Research has determined that fascia tissues have 6x to 8x more proprioceptive sensory nerve endings than red muscle (Schleip 2017).

This makes the fascia system arguably the body’s largest sensory organ.

The spindle receptors in muscles are primarily located in areas where force transfer happens at the muscle-tendon unit (MTU). When it comes to sensing where we are in space and time, the fascia system provides our most important interface.