If your fascia is not healthy it affects how well your body moves and recovers. Unhealthy fascia can lead to a variety of symptoms, as it impacts mobility, pain levels and overall function. Tight locked fascia can lead to chronic pain, stiffness, fatigue, muscle weakness, inflammation, and tingling or numbness. Restricted fascia can also negatively affect mood and has been shown to increase anxiety and cause poor sleep.
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What is Fascia?
Fascia is your body’s hidden support system—a stretchy, web-like connective tissue that wraps around muscles, organs, and nerves, keeping everything in place and working smoothly. It helps you move with ease, supports flexibility, and even plays a role in pain relief. But when fascia gets tight or restricted, it can cause stiffness and discomfort—so keeping it healthy through movement, hydration, and self-care is key to feeling your best!
Fascia Facts
Without fascia, we would be a puddle:
Fascia is the living architecture of our body. It is a web of connective tissue uniting, supporting, and protecting all of our parts and holding them in place.
Creates sparks and flows:
Fascia is a sensory organ transmitting signals to our brain, crucial for proprioception. It facilitates the flow of fluids like blood and lymph providing nutrients and removing toxins. Fascia transports immune cells and hormones regulating physiological processes affecting our digestive, immune, and hormonal systems.
Health in the space between:
Fascia needs space for flow of fluids, movement, elasticity, and for efficient transmission of forces and signals between structures. Fascia thrives when there is enough space between tissue layers to glide smoothly, reducing friction and enhancing mobility.
Holds the life story:
Fascia is the unifying factor in the body, connecting all body systems. This interdependence means that any impairment in one area is felt throughout the body. Immobility, repetitive movements, poor posture, injury, and unconscious holding patterns harden fascia, molding and shaping us, imprinting the story of our lives.
More than physical:
Fascia is more than just a physical structure; it is deeply connected to our emotional needs and our spiritual experiences. Fascia can become hardened and restricted or gel like an expansive depending on how healthy our fascia is. This feeling of being restricted or expansive seeps into our consciousness and affects our emotions and feelings of well being.
5 Ways to Fix Your Fascia
Healthy fascia is flexible, hydrated, and plump. Posture improves, circulation flows, and movement occurs without pain or restriction. When your body moves freely and lightly the body is energized with a clearer consciousness fostering a deeper connection between mind and body.
Myofascial Release Massage
Myofascial work addresses tensions in the fascia which leads to improved flexibility, pain relief, and overall mobility. Clients receive long lasting benefits not only decreasing pain and muscle tension but improving range of motion and allowing a greater sense of balance and harmony throughout the body. Myofascial release techniques include postural evaluations, dynamic movements and stretching, gentle sustained pressure, lifting and releasing fascial tissue to create space and improve circulation, positional release techniques, and craniosacral therapy.
Fascia Foods
Including nutrients that are focused on connective tissue and hydration are key to healthy fascia.
- Water and fluids: Fluids are important for keeping your fascia soft and supple, and plump. Water, natural juices, herbal teas, clear bone broth.
- Vitamin C and Zinc: Crucial for collagen production; a key component of fascia. Foods high in vitamin C: citrus fruits, strawberries, broccoli, and bell peppers. Foods high in zinc: nuts, seeds, legumes, red meat, and eggs.
- Fiber: Fiber contributes to a healthy gut allowing more absorption of nutrients to nourish fascia. High fiber fascia foods: nuts and seeds, legumes, raw veggies like celery, carrots, broccoli, hummus.
- Healthy Fats: Omega 3 fatty acids are important for decreasing inflammation in the body to support fascia health. Cold water fish, nuts and seeds, flax seed oil.
Fascia Flow
Get up and move, often. Immobility is one of the most important causes of tight and restricted fascia. Yoga is important for fascia because it actively stretches and stimulates the connective tissue network throughout the body, promoting flexibility and overall tissue health.
Red light Therapy
The healing effects of red light therapy on fascia include: stimulating lymphatic flow for detoxification reducing inflammation; promoting an analgesic effect reducing pain and relaxing the nervous system; stimulating cellular repair and collagen production.
Infrared Sauna
The health benefits of an infrared saunas are a balm for healthy fascia. Detoxification, relaxation, improved circulation, pain relief, anti-inflammatory effects, cellular repair, anti-aging, muscle recovery, improved sleep and increased immune system function.
Free Red Light Therapy or Infrared Sauna
At Vitality BioMed we can support you and your fascia in many ways! Until February 15, 2025 book a massage with Lisa Gossen, RMT or Helen Husak, RMT and receive a free Red Light Therapy or Infrared Sauna Session! Don’t wait, get the relief and relaxation you deserve by calling 403-300-1698 or book online!