What's going on? Ladies and gents, Robert Sykes? Keto, Savage.com. Today. I've got special guest, Doug, Bertram on the line. He is an expert when it comes to Eastern medicine. Chinese medicine specifically when it comes to Fashion training and working on improving Mobility. Improving the parasympathetic nervous system. I've taken a keen interest towards improving, my recovery and just setting myself up for Success when it comes to training hard and then being able to recover after that
training. So this podcast was especially interesting for me. That's something that I feel like everybody should probably spend more time, optimizing and improving. So, I've got no doubt that you will take something from this conversation without further Ado, sit back, relax. Enjoy the podcast with Doug and we are live. Doug. How are you brother? I'm doing great yourself. I'm good, man. I'm good. So you are a licensed acupuncturist, correct?
Yeah, that is something that you know, think about acupuncture. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm going to start by just telling you a little bit about my my issue with with being a licensed acupuncturist is it's really misleading. You know, I like to think of myself more as a doctor of Chinese medicine and the way that we're licensed in the states is as an acupuncturist, but it really doesn't give credibility to the full scope of Education. That we, you know undergo and we
learn exercise science. I do a lot of manual therapy and manipulations. We learn all kinds of stuff about diet and we learn all kinds of stuff about, you know, the body systems in general and acupuncture is just a tool, right? That's in our scope of practice but to be defined by that. Licensure, I think it is misleading. So a lot of people don't really understand the profession because we're kind of a, I always say, it's like a calling His killer from the The French
Laundry a spatula, Chef, right? It just doesn't really, you know, it doesn't really capture the the full, you know, spectrum of the education. Why is that nomenclature categorizes such like, why do they try and put you in that box as just simply an acupuncturist? Yeah. I think it's basically that it's the main tool that that, you know, is publicly recognized in Chinese medicine. And the other thing is historically, there has been a tremendous spectrum of quality of education.
So some schools that only meet the national requirement really. Don't focus on all aspects of Chinese medicine. They really do. Just focus on the acupuncture. More of almost a technical trade, right? Of your memorizing, these points and it's almost like, you know, kind of like somebody who's trained to do facials, but isn't really trained and learning all about different aspects of skin.
But the training that I underwent was in California and California as do a few other states like Florida and New York, they have their own board requirements and actually something called the Hoover Commission in California. Acupuncturist are considered Primary Care Providers, right?
And especially in the eyes of workman's comp and things like that, so that the education is like double or triple of what you know, some therapist might be receiving and just acupuncture trading and more of a technical schooling. So, you know, there's there's a big Spectrum in terms of the number of hours. But yet we all get kind of lumped together in terms of relationship, which I think is, you know, unfortunate and hopefully you know, what, Change
soon. I want to dive into the weeds of Eastern medicine, Chinese medicine. But before we do that, can you kind of just Define acupuncture and what it is at a high level? Yeah, definitely. Acupuncture literally is, the placing of needles puncturing at a specific spot, which is the Accu part of it. Okay, and it means nothing more. A lot of times, people think that acupuncture means the practice of Chinese medicine and that you're doing acupuncture for a particular.
Reason like balancing the organ. So, you know, are balancing what people call the chief low and things like that. But acupuncture is just simply puncturing the skin in a particular spot and and I'll kind of take the liberty of diving into another little topic, which is, what is the difference between dry needling and acupuncture because there's a lot of confusion there as well. And ultimately man dry, needling, and acupuncture are
the exact same thing. The term dry needling came from when you're doing studies to look at, The effectiveness of injection therapy. You need a control group. So the control group is, is needling the point, but without injecting any substance and they call that a dry needle and they realize that, you know, in studies that there's a lot of effectiveness of releasing trigger points with the dry needle and you don't necessarily need to inject anything.
But because a hypodermic needle, you know, as Halo and it's got a beveled Edge, there's more bruising, there's more risk of infection. So they started using solid filiform, needles, which are acupuncture needles. The so acupuncture and dry needling. Exact same thing. Why you dry needle or why you perform acupuncture can be a number of different things. So in our practice, we retain needles and we put them in to release what's called focal adhesions that form in the
connective tissue. And we're very much looking at the connective tissue is our primary mechanism of effecting change. I have done dry needling. Once I was like, my good friend, Adam. His wife is a Therapist. And she was doing the cupping on damn big in myself and also the the dry needling and she said, the dry needling right around my traps which are notorious for being just incredibly tight and it was the strangest thing.
Men, like you put the needles in and then all of a sudden you'd see the entire muscle spasm, but then it would be like relax. So I'm assuming that's the, the goal there. Yeah, that's, that's the goal of what we call trigger point dry needling, you know, which is ultimately to facilitate a contraction relaxation response in the muscle.
And in order to do that, you need to hit What's called the neuromuscular bundle that causes that contraction relaxation response, which is very effective at trying to reduce the tone of a muscle that is in spasm or in a constant state of hypertonicity. That's not the majority of why we placed needles in the body, right? We're really focused on two layers of connective tissue or two muscles, that should Glide past one another that are sticking together for a number of different.
Reasons but acupuncture needle, especially when you twist it and get fibers to wrap around the shaft of the needle. It's really effective in causing the body to secrete like a lubricating substance that restores that tissue glide back between the muscle layers. So that's really important for
restoring function. And you know, we will do points that you know, are geared towards getting that twitch response, but that might be, you know, one out of you know, 50 needles or something like that that were placing. Is there like a like a like when people go in for acupuncture treatment? Are they trying to focus on a specific body part generally? Or is it just kind of all over? I've seen some pictures or people look like pin cushions.
They got them all their entire back and legs and everywhere. Yeah, exactly. I I kind of go back and forth. Yo, sometimes I think that's because the therapist doesn't have much confidence in their assessment. Right? So they're just kind of, you know, throwing darts into the are hoping that, that's
something sticks. You know, I use very few needles by comparison to Allah. Therapist again, acupuncture being just a tool, we focus on Orthopedics and body alignment and functional movements restoration. But there are there are doctors of Chinese medicine or their acupuncturists that might focus on fertility or they might focus on allergies or they might focus on, you know, you know, cancer support, you know, when people are going through chemo and
things like that. So it really is all over the map. Just like you have. Have, you know, Western doctors that specialize in things all across the board. The same is true in our field and but our focus at structural elements and what I've been doing for 27 years is working on aligning, the body for optimal function and an increased performance. Gotcha. Gotcha. What is the primary difference between eastern and western medicine? Like, if there was to be a
division there? What would that would that would that stem that division? So I think at a really high level You're going to talk about like, you know, like Define your what camp Western medicine is versus Eastern medicine at a high level. I would think the biggest difference is in Western medicine. They tend to separate and divide the body into parts. And in eastern medicine. We tend to group things together and look at systems is the biggest difference. Got you. I got you.
So people that are I want to generalize here too much. But but when you go to a doctor hospital for any Ailment in most western medicine circles, they're going to give you a specific drug or treatment for that very acute instance, but not really. Look at how it's all intertwined together and I can I can speak most competently about, you know, the field of Orthopedics, because that's my specialty. So just let's just, you know, not even tackle Western medicine
as a whole. But let's just look at, you know, say physical therapy and in the insurance world of, you know, conventional Outpatient Care. You are going to get a script for so many visits based on the diagnosis which includes a body part. Okay, and so so say you're coming in to me with a diagnosis for plantar, fasciitis. And in that world. I have to focus on your foot, right? And in our world, I might look at something completely other
than your foot. I might look at the head forward posture and I might look at the internal rotation of your shoulders. And say until we correct this be can't offload the the stress on the bottom of your foot. So, you know, if if that's where the solution is, I have the liberty of treating that if you go to a traditional PT clinic, and our billing through insurance, and they say, well, I think the problem is coming from your posture and we have to work
on your head and neck. You have to go get a new script for that and treat it separate to the plantar fasciitis that you came in with. And I just That that's a head-scratcher for me. It's not how I see the body and I don't think it's maximizing Effectiveness, when you can't look at the system as a comprehensive, you know, intelligent, you know, unit that works together and you start looking at things as a series of parts. I think you miss a lot of the continuity.
How did you recognize that difference between the the the ways of thinking I guess and recognize that you wanted to go the route of Chinese medicine Eastern medicine. Well, I got so my background I started as a massage therapist and I had a honestly, man. I'm really smart guy come into my life. When I was a junior in high
school, who's my track coach. And when it came time for college, he saw that I really loved anatomy and I really, you know, we have this like athletic training course that he taught. I like really like, you know, soaking up everything I could there and he came up with the idea. He was like, well if you know, you want to do something in Physical Medicine, whether that's Physical Therapy, you know, be North Surgeon to come chiropractor, whatever.
It might be, he was like, why don't you go to massage school before you go to college? And that way, you can work in different environments and you can kind of see what you're interested in and you have a trade that would allow you to make an honest wage while you're pursuing higher education. Instead of, you know, you know, waiting tables or, you know, working at a coffee shop and I was like, you know, it just made a lot of sense to me at the time.
And so I did that and then immediately following graduation. I'm from massage school. I went and started studying myofascial work. So in this was back in like, you know, 1994 started working with connective tissue and at that time people, you know, had no idea what facha was and how it functions and they all thought
we were crazy. Now, your National Geographic, you know, posted that Fosters the largest organ in the body, you know, so it's come a long way in the in the 27 years that I've been in practice but But yeah, it's just, you know, I'm from from moment one. I really kind of had an orientation of this connective tissue, that connects everything together appropriately named. This is a little bit of a selfish question of me being a bodybuilder. But is there a way to stimulate the fashion?
I've heard of like a FST 7. Basically, it's faster stretch training in which your training in a way that you're doing high volume, High repetition, work to really maximize blood flow and stretch that faucet issue to allow room. Umm, for more growth. Is there like have you seen that play out in your practices that make practical sense? Yeah. I think I think there are yes and no, okay. They're so the facha is really
interesting. Fossa is comprised of a bunch of different types of collagen fibers and the types of collagen fibers that will will form our in relation to, what sort of mechanical stress the tissue is placed. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you strain the tissue in a consistent Direction at a consistent, you know, amount of pressure mechanical stress, you will train that tissue to form a certain amount of tonus right now in the world of bodybuilding or in the world of, you know, football or, you know, contact Sports where you have a lot of cutting and pivoting and act. You need your FAFSA to be strong, right? You need that tissue to be resilient and to be strong. It's you need the faucet to be a
little different. If your goal is to be a distance Runner or to be, you know, an accomplished Yogi and, you know, and being able to, you know, contort your body into different
positions. So, the role of the FAFSA is, is a big factor in terms of adaptation of what She's good at a particular, you know type of sport or a type of activity and how we train to train the facha to support our goal and to support the types of mechanical load that we're going to introduce is is a critical part of adaptation makes sense.
Makes sense. So as a bodybuilder, if I'm, if I am stretching that I'm going to get more growth potential from maximizing blood flow under a consistent range of motion than by simply lifting, very heavy for a singular repetition or something of that nature that basically going to be more stimulating to the facha with more of an in gorging blood rush in that localized area. Yeah. The blood flow is part of it and the other is just simply the
direction of mechanical strain. So if you consistently stressed issue, you're going to ask it to form, denser fibrils that are going to provide greater. Stiffness and and and the fossa is going to stabilize one muscle against its neighbor. So if you're trying to do, you know, say a dead left, right? And you're going to load different muscles throughout the kinetic chain as you perform the functional move. The fossa is going to be the choreographer in that.
It's going to sequence how that movement is able to happen as one muscles. Pulling against its neighbor. And if you don't have stability on What's called the intramuscular SEPTA, if you don't have the ability for that five sets of stiffened and how is those muscles, you're going to tear a muscle, you're going to load tendon, you know, beyond
what it's capable of doing. So the fossa is plays a critical role in in the training and blood flow is part of it, but it's really the repetition and causing kind of simulating the type of In that the tissue is going to be under so that you can stress the tissue and give it a chance to repair and strengthen. So that that process, again, I use the example. A lot of times.
We have a high school athletes that are that are playing different sports and different seasons and you oftentimes will see, super fit kids, get hurt as they go into the first, you know, a couple weeks of a new season and it's because they have the fitness, but they don't have the repetition yet. Set of, you know, Court Sport, and cutting, you know, they've just come from, you know, maybe, you know, attract season or cross country season or something like that.
And then they go to Accord Sport. Now, they're pivoting and they haven't really given the tissue a chance to adapt you. Right? So but they have the fitness to go and really, you know, put the time in makes sense makes sense. So I've taken a really Keen interest lately into honestly just proactive Health like working on my mobility of working on my flexibility. Working on minimizing my, my physical stress, my mental stress and just recovery optimizing recovery.
Basically, that's something I'm not naturally been very good at. Like I'm kind of the guy that works out really hard, but then it doesn't ever stretch. Doesn't ever do any type of cool down or warm up any that stuff. So in putting more focus on that. I've kind of been experimenting with, you know, deep tissue massage Chiropractic work.
MobilityWorks stretching all that stuff if knowing what, you know, and having been in all these different entities and really got your hands and all of it. Where would you say the most bang for the proverbial Buck? Is if you have a limited amount of time to spend? Where would you prioritize that time spent in different Mobility practices? Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's a, that's a good question.
You know, obviously I think tissue work, is, is a wonderful thing to receive if you're working with a therapist. That's really competent. Right. So there's the Spectrum there as well. But you know, ultimately, if if I am looking for what is going to be the most effective to help you recover from an effort. There's a mechanism there that that has to be acknowledged. And then you can talk about how to most effectively trigger this
mechanism. But the mechanism is, when you are in a high demand situation, you need to be in a sympathetic Drive, which is a high-stress situation. Ation high stress response, but once you're in a low demand situation where you're trying to rest and recuperate, you need your nervous system to kick over into a parasympathetic mode.
And unfortunately, a lot of people stay in a sympathetic Drive, they stay in a high stress response, even though they're in a low stress situation, either due to Performance anxiety because they're, you know, they're really nervous about a competition that's coming up or, you know, they're These workouts in between, you know, a busy workday and between getting up early before the kids get up to get their workout in and then there's like there's like go go
go go go and they're not taking the time to down regulate their nervous system. This has the biggest consequence in terms of metabolic factors that influence recovery. If you are not getting into a parasympathetic State, you are not getting good. Blood flow to the extremities. You're not getting proper absorption of nutrients. Not getting deep restful REM sleep, you know, you're going to basically continue to tax your body when it's recovery time.
And and and this is going to catch up to you. Now when we talk about the triggers of, how do you get the sympathetic nervous system to relax and the parasympathetic nervous system to kick on this does involve soft tissue maintenance. This does involve stretching, you know involved Mobility work that helps to get the hip flexors to Soften and relax making sure that you're doing some work that involves deep diaphragmatic breathing.
Making sure that you're not allowing the connective tissue to adhere and lose, you know, the ability to communicate with the rest of the system. This gets into factors that really make a big difference over time when you're looking at the sustainability of a high-performance athlete. Gotcha, gotcha, so it's not it's not nearly as effective, too. Have a great workout and then do some stretching afterwards. If I'm super stressed out while stretching, if I'm thinking
about all these things. I'm like wired that's going to drastically. Minimize the positive impact that stretching could potentially provide if the headspace and everything else isn't following suit. Absolutely. And a lot of people, you know, we've kind of gotten into this mentality because people have, you know, the percussive massage tools, like the hyperbole to They're gone or they're, you know, they've heard okay, foam rolling. I got a foam roll.
I got a foam roll or use the lacrosse ball or, you know, some of the massage tools that are out there. A lot of people do so in a manner that's painful and it causes them to tighten up and it's actually triggering more sympathetic response instead of, you know, backing off on the amount of pressure that they're using so that it's not painful, but just using enough pressure to pin tissue in place.
And then breathing into it and softening into it to go a little bit deeper using that that tool as a fulcrum to, then, you know, pin that tissue while you're doing an active range of motion, you know, like for the calf, for instance, you know, find the tender spot in the calf stack, the other foot on top of the calf to create some downward pressure, but then you want to do, you know, Dorsey and plantar flexion and circumduction of the Foot and Ankle to soften and organize.
Those fibers, that's going to be the mechanism that actually You know, gets organization back to the tissue and restores Mobility. A lot of people just push right through that to where it's painful and everything is tightening up and they cut off from their breath and now guess what? You're really not being very
effective. Yeah. I'm assuming with you being in this as long as you have and you kind of just seen how things play out over time with the ease of being technologically connected in our current day and age. It's made people's ability to Return to that. Parasympathetic State just insurmountably more difficult than it was 15 years ago. Yeah, man, we're counts. We, if we have constant access
to stimulus, right? It's like you really have to carve out with a lot of thought and intention to remove yourself from stimulation. You know, I mean, you depending upon who you talk to, they'll even say that the emfs that your Wi-Fi, you know, kicks off our, you know, stimulating your system while you're trying to sleep and don't sleep with your phone, right? You and you know, different
types of light spectrum. I mean, it depends on how deep you want to go into it and how you know highly sensitive you want to get but even just putting your phone down and taken a minute, you know on the hour or something like that to do some deep diaphragmatic breaths.
It'll reset the nervous system so that you can, you know, kind of keep up with the demand of your day, you know, I talk about, I use this as an example, a lot and it's convenient right now with You know, March Madness and stuff just having happen but the the idea of, you know, being at the free throw line with two seconds left on the game clock and you know, being super stressed out and just saying, hey, I need a minute and going to half court and meditating for 10 minutes is is ridiculous.
Right? You're going to you're going to Center. You're going to take a deep breath. You're going to do a postural shift and you're going to Center yourself and balance, and that balance is actually calming the nervous. System, that allows you to focus and take the shot. And so, you know, it's not just the what we do after the workout. It's what we do between sets.
It's what we do right before we're going to, you know, go for a PR lift, its, you know, it happens in real time or we have these little moments of reset, but then when we're not in a high demand, high stress situation, yes, we need to go and just lay flat on our back and and put our feet up and do some deep diaphragmatic breathing and try to get that parasympathetic. System to kick in so that we're able to maximize our recovery time.
I think this the the importance of this really manifests itself to me when I recognize that you like for me is a body but I'm tracking macros and tracking what I'm eating and I'm just being, you know, incredibly rigid with all that during the period of time that I'm in a competition prep, but when I realized that, if I'm super stressed down throughout the entirety of my consumption window and after consumption my bicep, To absorb those nutrients efficiently is just incredibly
hindered. So I might be tracking macros perfectly. But if my body is, is not absorbing them to the full extent. It's almost like the tracking is for not. So I've really driven exactly picture man. Yeah, so you can do everything right? But if you're still doing too much of it or you're still stressed about it, right stress doesn't discriminate it. Do body doesn't care if it's mechanical stress.
Emotional stress, situational stress, the reaction, to stress our system, is we have an on and off switch and it doesn't matter what triggers the on switch, if it's on, it's on. All right. It doesn't matter how you get the off switch, if it's off its off. So, you know, you can be doing all the right things. But you're you're you're stressed out about doing all the right things. You're only getting part of the picture. Walk me through like a perfect day man. What is what is 24 hours look
like in a perfect case scenario? Like what what? Apps can be used, what tools can be leveraged. What breath techniques can can people Implement, like, what is a perfect day and what are some things that you've personally found to be beneficial for yourself. And for clientele that you worked with that people listen to, this can start to implement. Its I'm big on the idea of Bio
individuality, right? So what perfect day for me might not be a perfect day for somebody else and and the right diet for me might not be the right diet for somebody else. And you know, kind of now my goal is to try to Pain Enlightenment, you know, my perfect day might be, you know, getting up at 3:00 in the morning and go into the cave, you know, and and and you know doing chance for you know, six hours, but that's that's not, you know, that's not my goal.
My goal is to try to, you know, make a bunch of money. It might be, you know, getting up and checking the stocks and you know, but I think regardless of what your goal is, I think you have to try and find balance and balance is kind of the key and balance doesn't have to be it. Can it can't be a prolonged stay. It balances is our moments in time that you constantly have to seek again, right? So you might find a moment of
balance. And as soon as you like, I'm balanced now, you just lost it. Now. You have to find it again, right? And so balance, and censoring is both, you know, postural in terms of our alignment balance and censoring is about kind of Harmony between our goals, and our objectives, and what we're trying to accomplish in the physical world, and how that meets with. With the demand and our experience on the internal world, right? And when those two things are in sync together, man.
It's just feels like I'm living my best life. But if I'm feeling like inside, like I really need to go for a run and I got to get out of this chair and, you know, and I'm but I'm just cranking away at my computer. There's, there's a disconnect there. Right? But if all I'm doing at, you know, all day long is out, you know, meditating and running around and surfing and doing whatever. But I can't pay my bills and you know, Family, right?
Well, that's going to catch up to me to, you know, so I think the, the objective is to try to find that that resonance where we're living Our Truth. Both internally inside of our bodies, as well as can are what our actions are in the world. And when those two things sync up and I think you're living the perfect day. Yeah. Feel like, you know, I've often times said, balance is bullshit. And I agree with that, in the sense that I feel like people.
People, oftentimes have this, like, work-life balance mentality, in which case some things improving. But like, if you've got something on a fulcrum, something's going up, something's going down like a teeter totter, you know, that's not really optimal because you don't want something big going down. I try to craft a life in which everything is somewhat symbiotic in nature and circular and motion so that the everything benefits from any input towards another Factor.
If that makes sense 100% There's a term for that. That's like if anybody goes to our Data structure. Elements that come our main logos is 18, Sager. --T model and it since a gritty model is a system where the they're called compression and tension elements, there. They're in, they're in balance of one another. So any movement of that system, it's going to be felt throughout
the rest of the system. And that's That's the basis of Chinese medicine is really looking at that interplay Right Between The Young and the young or between compression and tension elements. And you know what, you just said I think is so true. Most People when they think of balance, they think of it as a division of time.
And I think that that's, that's a really toxic trap to fall into because work-life balance isn't about how much time you're at work versus how much time you're at the, with the kids versus how much time you're exercising or taking vacation? Balance is about how you are experiencing work, how you're experiencing family, how you're experiencing vacation, how you're experiencing Athletics and to find balance. It's being balanced within each of those things.
Not just how long you're doing them, you know, and that's that's a, that's a big difference between about what is I'm going to your website right now. What is the, what is that called? So the The that model is called tense a gritty. And and again, it's basically in the body or they call biotin say, Gertie, you're looking at. The bones is being the compression elements and all the connective tissue and the soft tissue being the tension elements.
Or if you're looking at, you know, an engineering, you know, looking at a Steel Bridge, the, the steel would be the compression elements and the cables that are, that are holding it together. Be the tension elements. And when those things are equal, right? We have back. Same. We have we have kind of a harmonious State.
Gosh. Yeah, I've actually this is this is kind of interesting man, because I'm building out a new brand as we speak and I've been like trying to think of a of a symbol or a like a like a sign something that that is right. But this break up the boundary conditions make it look fuller like just kind of the father doesn't take it to yourself. You just go in and do be kind of look. A lot of patterns exist in each other like that. It's pretty fascinating work, you know, be careful, you'll end
up falling down a rabbit hole. Well, you know, once you start paying attention to the stuff you people go as far as to say that are that are fossa is our Consciousness that it's the how the body self senses and is aware of itself. It's through all of the input from these, you know, connective tissue cells to the rest of the system. And it's bi-directional, you know, it's signals to the brain and the Brain signals to it. And it's pretty fascinating.
Where actually the the because I'll admit it man. I'm a pretty, you know, Hopeless nerd. When it comes to this stuff, where the, where the gold sponsor of the international Congress of fascia research, that's going to happen in September up in Montreal. And I've been, I went to the first International Congress at Harvard Med School, 2007 and have been like, a die-hard supporter and follower of this Society of researchers and clinicians, really looking at the mechanisms of how this stuff
works. And it's just like, studying space man. It's like endlessly, you know. So fascinating and and and it's just, you can always find a deeper layer to dive into. It's just this whole world that exists between the stuff that we think is important. You know, it's pretty wild. Do you feel like this is like, all of this is becoming more mainstream?
Or is it seemed as though, like, I feel like I'm hearing about it more like just, you know, overall health and wellness more because I'm in that industry mean that space. I'm putting out content around that subject matter. So I'm by definition kind of in that Echo chamber, so to speak. Do you feel like all of this is becoming more mainstream to the general population? Or is it 100% it is. And again I credit This research Society for that.
I mean there's been a ton of funding given out to Foster research in the last 10 years that is you know, showing mechanistically why it's important and how it's relevant. There's also there's a film called strolling Under the Skin and I won't take any Any blame or credit for how painful it is to watch? It's pretty cheesy, but the images in there are fantastic and this is using an endoscope which is like a tiny tiny, tiny little camera to look at facha
in real time. It's done by a French hand surgeon, and looking at this tissue and how this tissue is innervated. How this tissue is vascularized, how this tissue facilitates movement and it's just wild, man. It's just this.
World, but until we develop the technology to look at it and measure it and understand it. You know, it was just stuff that, you know, we cut away to be able to identify where the muscles are, you know, and but it's pretty wild when you start looking at at at how it supports not only movement but immune function and and again, you know, all of our hormone signaling and growth factor signaling and it's wild stuff.
So for people that have never liked aren't as familiar with Anatomy, I mean like I'm a Hunter so that when I'm skin and open a dear and I'm separating the muscle tissue and I'm you know, butchering them to grind them up and have dinner for throughout the year. Like I can see the fascial tissue. I can I can peel that off. I can, you know, maneuver around it with a knife. Like for people that have never done that. How would you describe what that tissue is and looks like yes,
it's translucent, right? So it kind of is clear, and again, All sorts of different types of facha and in a fresh cadaver, right? So after you've made the kill, you know, you the the faucet hasn't dried out yet. So you can still you know, take a muscle and tug on it and you're going to see it Glide within this like translucent, you know kind of wrapping and if you you know, look at a tendon the tendon is going to slip through a coating of this facha.
At the stuff that that, I'm most concerned with is, is really goes away. Pretty quick. After the heart, the heart stops beating and the fossa is really as dense as the IT band, which is a really thick like, I mean like the tensile strength of steel type tightness and it is as loose and gliding as like saliva or snot. Okay. And That, that level it has a
lot less dense collagen. It's just enough collagen to form which called The extracellular Matrix, we can which can hold fluid and suspend fluid in space. Primarily hyaluronic acid. And this is like just provides lubrication and if you have a tendon body that loses that lubrication you start to get irritation of the tendon body, right? So overuse injuries, they're not necessarily overloading the tendon as a First mechanism, they're drying out the facha and the lubrication and that is a
lot of the generation of pain. It's not actually even you know, tissue defect to the tendons themselves, right? It's really the breakdown of the the system that surrounds them, and this basically envelops every muscular body within a given. By like, it's not just, not only does it case. Each individual muscle, it cases each individual muscle. Fibril. So, all of that faucet, you think of like a box of spaghetti? Okay, most people think of like the cardboard box as the facha, right?
But imagine that each noodle in that box was individually wrapped, right? And then you take all of the wrapping of each of those individual noodles and the box and you kind of tie all that together up top. That's basically what a tendon is, right? It all comes together at a culmination point. And so, we have that. I've been around the periosteum of the bone. It's right beneath the skin on interrupted from head to toe. We have subcutaneous Asha.
Again. We have, you know, aponeurosis, which is like the the real thick broad bands of foster. That's found like in the low back at the thoracolumbar fascia or in the abdomen between the rectus abdominis muscles at the Linea Alba or at the nape of the neck of the ligaments of nutrition and and that's also fashion, but it's comprised of much denser fibers than the Fluid stuff that surrounds each of these muscle fibers and allows for the Glide and
functional movement. Has there been any research done on how like hot and cold therapy? Like do a nice bass or sauna impacts the faucet issue? Yeah. There's there's there's quite a bit and you know, I like again when when there's an opportunity to keep things simple. I like to keep it simple, right? And and there's a saying in Chinese medicine that takes warm water to clean a greasy pan. Okay, and, you know, we are
we're animals, right? We're comprised of lots of fats and fluids and the warmer, the, you know, environment, the more viscosity you're going to have to the tissue just like when you're trying to clean grease out of a pan, you use warm water and the grease melts away. Use cold water and it congeals, the body is is very much subject to the same principles. So a lot of conditions were we're looking to try to improve Mobility, are better served with heat, okay.
There are certain circumstances where ice is most effective in terms of trying to shut down the inflammatory process for something. That's red, hot painful, and swollen. But I think Isis is grossly over used for soft tissue injury, where we need to really improve that circulation and, and warm the area in order to effectively restore motion to the tissue make sense, like, given the option. I would prefer to sit in a sauna for 20 minutes then an ice bath for 20 minutes.
Thank. Yeah, me too. I mean, you know, there's There's definitely something to like cold showers. And and, you know, and even ice baths to some degree that they do. Give a big shot to the sympathetic nervous system. And once you learn to relax in that environment, it's like it's not just toughness training. You're actually, you know, you learn to work with your breath and in order to create relaxation under stress, and under strain.
And that's a pretty big, biohack in terms of the cultivation of Tools of getting the nervous system, you know more resilience. So, you know, there's there's a lot of mechanisms that play in. It's not just the intrinsic therapeutic value, but it's also kind of how it did it challenges Us. And how we overcome that challenge, not makes total sense, man. Total sense. What do you got? What do you got coming, man? What are you excited about? I mean, this is all super interesting to me.
Like what what's cooking for you is it, you know, I used to do a lot of these podcasts and and at the end it was always kind of a little bit of a letdown. Now because I feel like, you know, what we do at our clinics is really pretty Cutting Edge and it's pretty revolutionary. But unless somebody lived around one of our clinics, the conversation kind of stop there, you know, is like, you know, okay.
Good luck to you go, try to find somebody that does, what we do, you know, but what we do is is packaged pretty uniquely. And so, you know, we're really excited about is we've launched to subscription based platforms. One of them is to educate therapist to do what we do. We All that becoming an SEC network provider and and that's really exciting and it's 149 bucks a month and not only does it give all the educational background of what we've developed that structural
elements to therapists. You know, Petey's Kairos massage therapist, athletic trainers osteopaths acupuncturist, you know, they're they're all appropriate fit but also gives a bunch of resources, business templates and tools and you know, bang for the buck. It's an incredible value to help you become part. Part of our Network and and be part of a continued conversation that's focused on best practices. And you know, sharing case studies and really focusing on producing the best patient
outcomes that we can. But we've also launched what we call Se lab in lab stands for learning apply balance. And this is a patient facing platform. It's 11 bucks a month to subscribe and and that's that lab lrb. Lab dot. Structural elements.com is where you can find us there. And this is pretty cool. It's like broken down into lifestyle and self-care, and movement and there's all sorts of things and helping control inflammation in the body.
A bunch of different information on diet nutrition, but then there's all the self-care stuff that we talked about, how to properly foam roll, how to use the massage tools to release these focal adhesions understanding, you know, Global posture and some of the background of how to properly care for connective tissue. And there's all sorts.
It's kind of injury specific or body part, you know, specific treatment of back pain, that teaches you, how to incorporate Global movements and and and postural tools to, you know, to try to achieve neutral alignment and a bunch of tools to regulate your nervous system. So that you are optimizing your recovery and repair. So it's pretty cool.
You know, we're really proud of that and that just expands our reach exponentially, you know, so it's no longer whether somebody lives in, Maryland, or Wisconsin, where we Have our clinics. But now it's like anybody in the comfort of their home can can benefit from from, you know, the years of what we've been doing in our clinics with me, trying to really optimize this recovery of mine.
I think, dive into Dance. I mean, for 11 bucks, a month to have access to that is worthwhile expense in my opinion. Thank you. That's, you know, it's a, it's one drink, you know, at the airport, you know, it's it's it's really nothing when you think about it and then, you know, our kind of our gift to everybody is on that. Website at lab Dot Structure. Romans.com. There is on the top navbar. There's a section that just says traction and this is an exercise
that is our gift to the world. It's takes three minutes, right? You lay flat on your back with your knees, bent, your arms out to your sides, you get your spine into a neutral position and you lay there and do this deep diaphragmatic breathing for three minutes. And what it helps do is, you know through stimulating the vagus nerve and triggering the person pathetic nervous system. Like a reset for your nervous system that if you do once a day over the course of a few weeks,
it's going to change your life. And I don't, I don't throw things like that out lightly, but from the thousands of patients that have treated over the last near, you know, three decades. The people that do traction, they get better, you know, I don't care what they came in with, it's like the intrinsic, you know, ability for the body to heal itself and to repair just kicks in and takes over, when we're finding that parasympathetic response. And it's just phenomenal to watch.
And So that's its ahead of the pay wall. You don't have to pay the 11 bucks. It's just click on it and and, you know, watch the video but watching the video doesn't do it. You actually have to lay on your back for three minutes, you know, every day is there like a technique to diaphragmatic breathing that you personally recommend an advocate for?
Yeah. Well, there's you know in the video we go over pretty clear but there's there's a ligament that runs along the front of the spine and this is a big mess. Mechanism. It's called the anterior longitudinal ligament. And this is short and tight. I most people, and, and the hip flexors, the psoas muscle, which is a very powerful, very dominant muscle. That's hardwired to be part of our stress response because, you know, our stress responses fight or flight, right?
And so part of that fight and flight is you, we need to stiffen intention these hip flexors to be able to run, or to be able to get away. And so, we need to kind of really And that intersection between this anterior longitudinal ligament and these these hip flexors. The, so as, and this is a really important place where the diaphragm comes into play, because the central tendon of the diaphragm hits, right at that intersection.
So when you're, when you're flat on your back and your knees are bent, you're taking that responsibility off of the. So as and when your chin is tucked in your arms are out to your side. You're loading up that anterior. Longitudinal ligament then and only then, do you have access to getting that Central? In of the diaphragm to start to soften and relax and lengthen these structures. So there is a little bit of a technique to it, right?
You have to kind of press the abdomen out with the inhale, and that really pulls up on that central tendon and maximizes that stimulation. But, again, it doesn't take any special equipment. It takes the floor and three minutes of your time. And it's like, if you know, I really struggle with accepting that people can't find it within themselves to give that to themselves every day, you know.
Three minutes and and it will make the rest of your day, you know, much closer to that perfect day. When you're trying to describe earlier, awesome, man. Will, I will, I will 100% give that a shot to try it out. Basically this his podcast is over and see how it works. For me, man. So one more time, where do people go to find this information. What is the website and your social?
Yes, all of our handles and our social media is just structural elements and you can find us at our main site, which is structural elements. Dot-com and that links out to everything else. But this patient facing platform as Sealab is lab dot. Structural elements.com. And for the network provider its Network Dot Structure elements.com. Those are our main spots. But if you go to the main page at structure elements.com, it links out to everything else. Awesome.
I will definitely check this out, man. This is exciting stuff for sure. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to chat with me. I've learned a ton, really appreciate brother. Yeah, of course, my Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Have a good one, Doug and keep in touch, man. All right, UT.