 Welcome to much more on Medicine on the ThinkTech live streaming network series broadcasting from our downtown studio at Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Joining me in the studio today are Anthony Crisco and Eileen Pello Crisco. Today we present Getting to Know Your Fascia and be pain free every day. Remember that our talk shows are streamed live on the internet from noon to 5 p.m. every weekday and earlier shows are streamed all night long. All our shows are streamed on livestream.com. If you want the links to our live streams or previous broadcasts which are available on YouTube.com or if you want to subscribe to our programs or get on our mailing list and get our program advisories go to ThinkTechHawaii.com. I'm delighted to be talking with Anthony and Eileen who are co-authors of the book Pain Free Every Day. Anthony Crisco is the inventor of the fashionator self-mio-facial release roller and the fascination method rolling class. He's a founding member of the Fascia Research Society. Eileen Pello Crisco has spent decades doing medical research. She's a certified personal trainer and she also conducts Fascia specific workshops. So Eileen tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you've worked with a Nobel Prize winner. Yes, yes I was very fortunate to do that. It was in California Pacific Medical Center where I was doing breast cancer research. So I was very fortunate to have a collaboration. My boss had a collaboration with Elizabeth Blackburn. She won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for physiology and medicine and her research was on telomerase which has a lot to do with aging. Okay and Anthony why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that I met you first when you were a trainer and that was before you started all this. I'd like to hear a little bit more about how you got this started and what led you to do this. All right great well I learned about foam rolling back in 2005 with the National Academy of Sports Medicine. However as time progressed and I was working with many many people with injuries in my field of post rehabilitation. So it's after physical therapy are they better or they're not as good as they need to be to continue activities of daily living. So I started working with all these people with these injuries using the principles of the basic foam roller. But as time went on I realized wait this thing is too big and it's too soft to get to the really tough spots that these people were not able to resolve by using this foam roller. So flash forward 2006 we moved to Hawaii. I met the Honolulu Club. One of my clients he was an architect. He brings me this cardboard tube that was a lot harder and a lot more small in its diameter. I started applying the same similar rolling principles as the foam roller. But again as the years went on we're talking six seven eight years went on. I realized wait you don't have a place to roll the forearms or the underarms or the neck or the muscles of the the front of the cervical spine. And I started working with more people around 2012. This book came out he was called a fascia. The intentional network of the human body and in it was like all of it was the holy grail of fascia research which said hey you can help with autoimmune diseases. You can help with carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger finger, frozen shoulder, all these other issues. And to date we've got about 75 different medical quote unquote diagnoses that we've been able to rectify or at least ameliorate temporarily by using our roller and our methodology. Very interesting. Yeah. What is fascia? All right. Great question. Your fascia was actually classified as the largest organ of your body in 2012. So I want you to think about it. It's the stuff that inhabits all the space around the 80 trillion cells in your body. And we have a few images to look at. If you can go to slide one we can give you an idea of what this looks like. Now, yes on the left there's a big image of a cadaver. They took the skin off what's underneath is the superficial fascia. The image in the middle that was when I was cooking a pot roast a couple weeks ago and I just couldn't help myself. I said, look there's fascia here too. And on the third image on the right you can see a zoomed in image of this stuff. It looks like spiderwebs. It's actually made of collagen and water. And it's this collagenous fabric material that wraps all 80 trillion cells in our body. Hey, why is fascia important in maintaining health? Well, with aging our body tends to lose the ability to hold water. So with aging we can get stiffness, we can get inflammation, we can get ad postural faults, we can have biomechanic problems which then causing me to have a need for joint replacements or what have you. If you take care of your fascia, we have a little saying, you take care of your fascia, your fascia will take care of you. And what I mean by that is you're helping purge cellular waste that causes inflammation, neutralizing muscular imbalances, pop the bottom left to right, front to back. Think about it, if my body was in the neutral state all the time, would I have these crises of autoimmune diseases or cancer or as most people say, I don't know what happened. All of a sudden my body started falling apart. Well, it's all of a sudden after 30, 40 years of neglect. So do you believe that if you take care of your fascia you can reverse the aging process a little bit? Yes, as a matter of fact, people who have been taking my class before between a month and now up to five years, if you take my class for a month, you'll say I feel 10 years younger. I have a gentleman you might even know him. His name is Al Wong. He's turning 89 this year. He's been taking my class for five years. And he has put off a knee replacement ever since he started taking my class. He still golfs 18 holes every Wednesday at the Wildlife Country Club. Okay, that's almost enough for me to do that. And what do we have in front of us? What is that? This right here is our invention. It's called the fashionator. And why do we call it that? Because fascia is that largest organ of your body. And what better name for it than what does they do? Oh, it's for your fascia. Okay, that's what we call it. All right. And so is what are the pathologies that cause your body to be stiff or the fascia to be stiff and dry? Great question. Okay, so with repetitive use things like computers, or as you would know, as a triathlete in your in your days, recycling 50 miles a week for mileage swimming and running, all these joint movements, that's great, they're moving. And then you're doing strength training to make it stronger. What are you doing to reset the imbalance of tension in your tissues on a daily basis? This is very similar to brushing your teeth. I have to brush them in the morning. I go through my day. And at night, I brush them again. What do I have to do the next morning? Brush them all over again. Why? Because it's making waste products that get stuck to your teeth. Well, those 80 trillion cells we mentioned earlier, your body's producing waste product, put in food, your body utilize it, you have waste. Who's taking out the trash in your body? Interesting, I see something on the table here. What is that? This is my model, it of a what we call neuro vascular bundle. Can you say that with me? Neuro vascular bundle. And it means this nerve neuro arteries veins, lymphatic vessels, the vascular system bundle, they travel from the torso to the extremities and they perforate various parts of your fascia get to the end of these extremities. Well, in our experience now, seven years of helping people even able to cancel surgeries or neuropathy, cancel surgeries for carpal tunnel, trigger finger, golfers elbow, tennis elbow, migraines, we don't need 31 Botox injections in your skull for migraines, you need to free up the neuro vascular bundles from your skull, your torso. Okay, are you saying that when I had to get an injection in my elbow for tennis elbow or golf elbow, that had I been rolling on the fascinator, I might have been able to avoid that? Not might have, I guarantee you you would have been able to prevent that shot. Okay, now, I know that both of you will go to, you know, or at least you used to go to the Honolulu Marathon Expo. And I remember running into you, Anthony, and you told me about some testimonials of how the fascinator had made a huge difference in people's lives. Can you share that with us? Absolutely. One particular client of note up, she got polio at eight months of age as an infant. And therefore her right leg was not normal. And she used to cane and she met me at the age of 60 years old. Her sciatica was so bad, she couldn't even fly on an airplane to visit her family in Mexico. Well, it's been seven years since she met me. She just sent me a Facebook message last year. She goes, Anthony, just got back from Mexico teaching my family about the fascinator. Oh, and by the way, my sciatica is still gone, baby, I canceled my back surgery. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. And Eileen, I know that you teach some groups with the fascinator. Have you had some great results? Oh, yes, I teach women's workshops. I love to focus on women. And a lot of times we don't give ourselves the care that we love to give other people. So around 40s, 50s and 60s, women's shoulder area likes to dry up, you know, that as we age, our tissues dry. And so what I teach them what we teach is how to correct the imbalances and the tightness, the tissue tension that are in the issues that are surrounding the shoulder, so our chest, our neck, or trapezius, and they're able to get after rolling and just using this fascination method, like brushing your teeth, it's a process that you want to practice every day, or every other day, they are able to get better mobility. Of course, right after the workshop or even during the workshop, they actually do receive more mobility, but we want to keep that right, you know, this isn't a quick fix, didn't take overnight for the tissues to get bound that way. Right. So what we teach them is to use this practice, do it every day, and you'll have lasting sustainable results. Okay. And I know that, Anthony, we had a conversation before about hip osteoarthritis and whether what one could do to improve hip functioning and maybe decreased pain. Can you tell me what, like, what kind of exercise would I do for that? Well, we have some slides available, we can show you about four different areas, and I chose the four areas to roll that are the most prevalent and common in terms of people that have to go to the doctor and then they get told, oh, you need hip replacement. The one you're seeing right here is where we're rolling not just your gluteal muscles, but we're rolling the six internal and external rotators of your hip that live under those gluteal muscles. And here's the thing, people with sciatica, they use this technique and the sciatica goes away. And the reason is in between those deep hip muscles, the sciatic nerve is penetrates in between two of those muscles. If my hip muscles are tight, they squeeze that sciatic nerve. And as a matter of fact, your fascia has been measured with about 2000 pounds of pencil pressure per square inch on your pain-sensitive structure. Now, to give you an idea of how much pressure that is, that's the equivalent of being 4,613 feet underwater. That's a lot of questions. Should I cut your back or something that can be easily minimized by rolling on my roller? Or get a hip replacement? Well, yeah. And what this does, when I loosen the fascia, when you roll it, it sucks up fresh water. If I took this dry sponge and dip it in the water, what will the sponge do, Catherine? It would inflate. Yeah. And it would regain its normal shape, thereby taking pressure off of the nerve. The other thing it does, if all these muscles, I have around 18 muscles surrounding my hip joint, if I loosen all these muscles and let them rehydrate and fill up with water, and I then create a space between my femoral head and my hip joint, that cartilage called the acetabulum. If I can create space between my bones and my cartilage, will I wear it down or will I keep on trucking? So if someone is rolling out their hips, for example, would that increase function so that would they be able to do things maybe they wouldn't have been able to do before? Absolutely. Matter of fact, we have testimonials in our book here, pain free every day. These are real stories from real people. The one in particular, this woman had a double knee replacement, a bilateral knee replacement, same time. And about 15 months after the procedure, the fascia around the metal started tightening up. Couldn't cross her leg, she could only bend her knees to 20 degrees. If you look at her now, you can squat down her butt hits the floor. Wow. So not only can it help with prevention of those inflammatory based injuries down over time, it can help postoperatively with hip replacements, knee replacements, carpet can help with all kinds of things after surgical intervention, because maybe it was necessary. Right? Surgery is not bad. It's just, is it necessary for the person that's getting it? And so why have we not heard about this before? Well, the reason we haven't heard about it is there's a lot of there's different schools of thought who for a long time, as matter of fact, 300 years, medical, westernized allopathic medicine has ignored it. When you go on the when you do when you're dissecting a deck, a cadaver like I did for years. The first thing they told us was Oh, yeah, cut that stuff off and throw it in the trash so we can see the muscle. And just think the thing we were cutting off to see the muscle has now been identified as the root cause of the majority of the musculoskeletal aches and pains that people are getting injected for taking pills for and getting surgery. Wow, this is really selling me. It's making me think that I need to get on that roller and and take your class. If you want to feel awesome every day, maybe you should get a hold of me after the show. Absolutely. So okay, we're taking a short break. I'm Catherine Norr. This is much more on medicine on the Think Tech live streaming network series. We're talking with Anthony Crisco and Eileen Palo Crisco about getting to know your fascia and being pain free every day. Hello, I'm Stan Osterman, Stan the energy man every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. If you're really interested in finding out what's going on in energy, especially here in Hawaii, but also all the way around the world, and especially if it has to do with hydrogen, look into Stan the energy man every Friday, 12 o'clock, Think Tech Hawaii. Be there. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success, and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person, and want to improve your life, and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11am as we go beyond the lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. We're back. We're live. I'm Catherine Norr, and this is much more on medicine on the Think Tech live streaming network series. And we're talking about getting to know your fascia and being pain free every day. So, Anthony, we talked about the hip. And now we're going to look at slide three and talk about the shoulder a little bit. I know that a lot of people, they use their shoulders for sports. And I mean, we use them for everything, even if we go on an airplane, and we have to pick up our carry-on luggage and put it up. So why don't you tell us about what we can do to make our shoulders much better? All right, well, the shoulder in this technique, I'm simply laying on my underarm, and I'm rolling out a muscle called the latissimus dorsi, or your wings as they're called. More importantly, this can affect women in different ways, because when women hit menopause, there's fibrotic adhesions that form around the neurovascular bundles. And that's what causes this frozen shoulder. And if you look in the medical journals, they say frozen shoulder comes for no reason, stays for about two years, at least for no reason. Well, is it no reason? Or is it natural changes due to hormonal changes through the lifespan? And now we know. Absolutely. How about elbows? Okay, and I, you know, I have to say that I've had a few elbow problems, you know, biking, where, where I'm in this position on the bike, or I know golfers and tennis players, they have those issues. Is there something one can do about those? 100% there is. Now, with golfers elbow, it's what we call on the medial epicondyle. We roll the forearm muscles out the forearm flexors, and the tension of all these muscles tugging on their attachment causes the loosen these muscles, then that tugging reduces, and then the fascia around the bone of those bone of those muscular attachments, it becomes less inflamed. Also rolling these muscles can reduce and eliminate carpal tunnel syndrome. Now, I flip it over and get the forearm extensors. That's where tennis elbow comes from. All those muscles are on attached to the outer elbow. Roll these guys, not only will you get rid of tennis elbow, you'll also get rid of trigger finger. Instead of having them fuse your joint at the end. Okay, well, let's show slide four. And why don't you explain to us what you're doing here? Yes, on this one, I'm rolling the forearm extensor compartment, and those extensors are the muscles that help straighten your fingers out. Okay, fantastic. Okay, and you know, let me ask you another question about the elbow. I know that I had a bike accident one time and I fractured an elbow. Does the fascinator help with scar tissue? Yes, it does. I have another friend he actually crashed on a moped and he lost the range of motion in the radial ulnar joints were for that pronation and supination or turning your wrist. We rolled them out. I have a picture before and after he was here in the beginning. After we rolled the muscles out, he increases range of motion by double terrific. So scar tissue anywhere in your body would be impacted by doing this. Okay, fantastic. Okay, so now let's talk about the neck. Now, so many people have neck issues, and you get neck issues from even doing as little as sleeping the wrong way, right? Okay, but then, of course, many people their necks are injured because of a car accident or something at work. So is can you do anything for the neck? Absolutely. So when we roll, let's go ahead and look at the next image where I'm rolling my muscle here, this area of the neck that I'm rolling, a fancy and long name muscle called the sternocleidomastoid, we'll just call it the side of your neck. When you roll this area out, not only can you make the neck more free in its movement, meaning less crackling when you turn your head, but I can also take pressure off the nerves that go to my ears, eyes, nose, throat and all of my organs because under that muscle are 12 different nerves that go to your senses. So optic nerve, facial nerve, a whole bunch of them. And if I loosen the fascia in this area, guess what? People who had vertigo that were dizzy, they're not dizzy anymore. People that had night vision blindness. After eight months of rolling now, you know, it takes time to change. They drive at night now. And I love that test motor because she's a retired surgeon. It was skeptical. It was skeptical in the beginning. After eight months, her night vision blindness went away. She's now one of my biggest, most ardent supporters. That's incredible. Now, you know, we've talked a lot about different rolling different body parts. And now I know Eileen, you're a busy mother and you have two kids. And so how much time does this take? Can you explain a little bit about whether it's worth putting the time into it? How much time? It is definitely worth putting in the time into. For starters, for beginners, it can take maybe about an hour to do the whole toe to head approach. It's 52 positions of the fascination method. But, you know, when you do it every day, practice it every day of every other day and get the hang of it, it can be about 25 minutes to do the whole toe to head. So we recommend that you do roll out the whole body during the week. It might not happen every day, but try to hit some body parts every day. This cumulative effect goes a long way. Okay. And is there anything that this is contraindicated for? That's a great question. So contra indications are if you've just recently injured an area, rolling on the roller is not going to make it better. You've got to let the natural process of healing take place. So things like recent injuries, if you have screws or metal, don't roll over those areas. If you had certain type of like full hip replacements, there are certain moves in the full hip replacement that are contraindicated like crossing your leg. So we have modifications based on what our clients tell us. So they too can enjoy the benefits of rolling on the fashion. Okay. So I understand that they're for different injuries, like for example, if it's a fracture, that would be what an eight week or six week period of recovery. And then for sometimes I'll say 16 weeks for something. Do you have a particular time period that you would recommend that people use it after a particular injury? We stick to the guidelines of wait till your doctor releases you for normal activity. Okay. So this would be part of normal activity. Yeah. Okay. And so I exercise a lot at 24 hour fitness. And is this something that would be some good before or after or how would you recommend it? What would you recommend in terms of in relation to fitness activity? The answers, yes. Either way. Before or after. So before you use it to prepare your tissues to get ready to do these things. Like a warmup. But for after it helps to improve recovery time, reduce muscular tension, get rid of all that aches and pains a little bit faster. Okay. That sounds good. Now what like if someone in our audience really wants to learn how to do this and I know you explained Eileen the hour program and doing it from head to toe. How do they learn how to do that? Well we have classes all around the island. We also have instructors that are all around the nation and we also teach this method or we have instructors that teach this method in two different other countries. But we also have YouTube videos. We have a dvd out the whole fashion nation method. And we also have an mp4 digital download. So there's no excuse. You can find us. You can call us. You can email us. And again this book will give you step by step and the modifications you talked about. There's a there's a chapter in here where it will take you through the entire process. Those 52 different positions. Okay. So I would like to hear more about your book and I understand your co you co-authored the book. Yes. Was that that's been published recently right? Yes. It actually won't be out in bookstores in 2020. So this is my author's copy. Okay. Yes. Ken is it available online yet or do they have to wait? You can pre-order online but there is also the ebook version. I know a lot of us like to dog ear books and have the card copy but the ebook is out. Okay. So the ebook is available on amazon.com? On amazon. It's a kindle book. Okay. What do you go over in the book? What is what is a book discussed? Oh it discusses the fascination method of course and it also discusses things that you need to do to prepare yourself for this method. A lot of people aren't able to just jump right into doing an hour of rolling. So we do talk about some practices that can help you frame your mind to be ready for these changes. A lot of times you know the change that needs to occur inside of us has to occur with how we think about things. You know how we think about pain. You know some people are they think that they've tried everything and they've lost hope. But we have stories in here and there's stories that many women can relate to men and women can relate to where people will feel like oh yeah I think this I can do this it's not as overwhelming as it looks. You know I'm ready for this. Fantastic. Well I've learned a lot today and Anthony would you like to have the last word and tell us what you would like people to take away today? Yes I'd love to I always get the last word. So number one thing if you want to change your life if you want to live better take less pills and more of your free time with your grandkids and your family and less of your time waiting for your physician then give us a call look us up on our website www.thefashionator.com and we'll be there when you're ready. Fascinating. Okay we're out of time and we'll have to wrap it up. I'm Catherine Norr this is much more on medicine on the Think Tech live streaming network series we've been talking with Anthony Crisco and Eileen Palo Crisco about getting to know your fashion and be being pain-free every day. Thank you for joining us today and thanks to our broadcast engineer our floor manager and to Jay Fidel our executive producer who put it all together. Please join us for future Think Tech productions and much more on medicine.