 Aloha, Hawaii. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm your new friend as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from downtown Honolulu from the studios of Think Tech, Hawaii. We are located in the Pioneer Plaza right in the heart of downtown. Today our topic of discussion will be on fascia, the missing link to the majority of unexplained aches, pains, and ailments. Fascia can be your best friend or it can be your biggest nightmare. Today my guest is Anthony Criscoll. He is a founding member of the fascia research society and the inventor of the fascinator roller. So not to be confused with the fascinator hat that the Brits use, especially on that beautiful wedding that we just experienced, and the fascination method of self-mio-facial release. Anthony, great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me on Health Tech, Wendy. Yes, very good. So Anthony, you and your wife, Eileen, are the founding members of the fascia research society. Oh, what a mindful. And you both have shifted your careers, which was very successful. Twenty years of doing all kinds of great things on fascia and how it relates to health, fascia must be exciting. What is fascia? That's a great question. Fascia, what is it? I want you to imagine if you had an orange. Okay, if I peel the orange and I see all the insides of the orange with the sinewy white pulpy stuff and all those structures that aren't orange, well guess what? Our bodies are made in a similar way. Fascia wraps all your bones, your ligaments, your tendons, your nerves, all 80 trillion cells in your body. It is the connective tissue, but more importantly, it's the largest organ of the body. It's classified in 2012 as the largest organ of the body by the Federative Committee of Anatomic Nomenclature, in case you're wondering. Okay, now I know we have a couple of slides that can show us what that orange looks like. So if we look at the orange slide, I want you to imagine you're peeling an orange. You have the white stuff around it, and then you see what separates those wedges of oranges. What is that clear membrane that's keeping the orange slices in its wet? What is that membrane? Think about that as the fascia of the orange. And like the slide says here, it is the largest organ system of the body. Yes, larger than the skin. Many people say, but isn't it isn't the skin the largest organ of the body? It was before the year 2012. And that's again when fascia was classified as the largest organ of the body. Now, where is the fascia? Well, I think the question should be where isn't the fascia because it's everywhere. It wraps all 45 miles of your nerves, all 60,000 miles of arteries, veins and lymphatic vessels, all 1000 lymph nodes, all 640 muscles and all of their individual muscle fibers and all of their different bundles of fibers that make up more and more pieces of this body. It wraps all 206 bones. It wraps all of your other organs. And yes, it wraps all 360 joints. And I might as well throw in there the 900 ligaments in our body as well. So again, where is fascia? No, where isn't the fascia? That's the question. That is the question. You know, and honestly, Anthony, I thought the heart was the largest organ. And that shows you how much I know. And that's why we're having you here today, so that you can explain to all of us what the heck is fascia. Because until I met you, I didn't know what that was. And then I'm sure in the audience, there's a lot of people at present that still don't know what fascia is all about. That's a great question. And think about if I went to get a big steak and I peel that steak apart, what is that shiny, silvery substance in between the red meat? That's the fascia. That's the stuff that gets stuck in your teeth. And we give it to our dog under the table, right? Because it doesn't chew very well. It doesn't go down. It's made of collagen and water. Right. Wow. So fascia seems like it's a carrier of liquid throughout the body. And so what you're trying to share with us is that if we block it, that means it causes a lot of these different issues. That's why we need to love our fascia. That's right. So may, is it safe to assume that if I drank a lot of water or enough water that my fascia is okay and healthy? No, I would say that's not a good assumption just because you're giving your body the building blocks, but not giving it the stimulus to utilize those blocks. That's what's missing is the stimulus to take this freshwater and to get it pumping through our lymphatic system. Now, there's some ideas about how fascia functions with regards to water. And we can highlight those on the next slide. It's very clearly laid out. You think about your fascia as being simple type of material, a sponge. When you get older, Wendy, what kind of sponge do you want to be? Dry and angry and bitter and bent out of shape? Or do you want to be moist and pliable and bubbly all the time? Well, I think I'm the first one and I want to become the second one. That's right. Yeah. And so that's why we're having you here. You're going to teach me how to become pliable, bendable and more healthier. And when we look at the properties of fascia with regards to applying this stimulus that I just mentioned, let's take a look at that slide. When we look at the water, you want to understand your fascia from the very beginning. It has the capacity to hold four gallons of water in your body. If you're a little bit bigger, maybe there's more water. If you're more petite, maybe there's less water. But on average, the science shows us the fascia organ system can hold about four gallons of water. Now, this water is also referred to as the lymphatic fluid that flows through our body. So let's break that down. How does this work? Well, when pressure is applied to the fascia, whether it's from stretching or rolling, shiatsu, massage, any type of physical body work, old water is squeezed out. Now I want you to think about this old water as inflammatory waste. If I have a lot of inflammatory waste pooling in my body, am I going to be free of motion or am I going to have stiffness and aches and pains and inflammation and altered mechanics because everything on me is so tight? Okay. When we apply that pressure, we squeeze out the old water. I take the pressure off. A higher percentage of fresh water starts flooding the tissue as if I took that dry sponge. If I dipped it in water, what does that dry wrinkled sponge going to do for me? It's going to expand and open up, and it's going to take all the restrictions off of my arteries, my veins, my nerves, and other pain-sensitive structures that are within this tissue all over my body. So after we roll it, the next part is proper hydration and nutrition. Again, if this capacity is for four gallons of water, and I'm eating all this junk food, isn't my body trying to deal with this junk? How do I flush it out? No pun intended. You need water to move the old stuff out. You need that water to help with the fluidity and the slipperiness of the tissue, if you will. A great example of that, another one, is if you bought a chicken, you open the package, you pull the skin from the muscle. What is that clear, slippery stuff in between? That's the fluid that the fascial tissues make. And those fluids are what allow all your structures to glide amongst each other, instead of if there's a knot, it acts like glue. So if I put super glue on my forearm, stuck it to my other forearm, pretend these are individual muscles. I move this muscle, but because it's attached to that by the sticky glue, where do I feel pain? I feel pain here. I get it. So just because I hurt here doesn't mean I'm hurt there. Right. The root cause is the stickiness of these fascial layers at various junctions throughout the body. And this is what we've developed. That's how we have been helping thousands of people over the last decade. Wow. Seems to me the topic of conversation right now is hydration. Hydration, hydration, hydration. And so basically you want to keep your body fluid. And so I have a trivia question for the audience out there. How many of you know how much water you're supposed to drink daily, Anthony? Well there's a lot of information out there. We stick to a general rule of half your body weight in ounces. So if I'm 180 pounds, which I'm not. And if I was a hundred pounds, which I'm not. Then I should be drinking 90 ounces. And 50 for me. But so just take your weight divided by two and in that the amount of ounces is how much we should be required to have. Daily. Minimal. Minimal. So that's pretty much what the rule of thumb is. That's right. Right. So now Anthony, what are the symptoms of dry fascia? Oh great question again. Let's go down the list, shall we? Okay. I will start with the foot and I'll just gingerly go up the body. Some of the symptoms include inflammation, knots or what we call them adhesion. So if you're like rubbing your back against the wall you're trying to rub that knot out. Immobility or stiffness, decreased range of motion. So instead of being able to raise your arm up, you kind of compensate with other muscles that aren't moving as much. You can have various types of pain, whether it's a dull, achy pain in the appendages. You can be a sharp pain in a spurt and spot or it can be chronic pain, which is from the moment you wake up to right before you go to sleep. You're constantly in pain of some sort of some type. Other issues related with stiff fascia are poor posture. So a lot of the times people say, Oh, I'm getting old. I have this my old is my posture. My posture is bad. Well, guess what? If you address your fascia, this fascia organ system will help you stay upright. It will help you with your imbalances. If it's dry, it pulls you out of position. If you've had prior surgeries, whether it's for knee replacement, meniscus cleanup, frozen shoulder, plantar fasciitis surgery, achilles tendonitis surgery, carpal tunnel surgery. It also helps with managing the scar tissue that was introduced by way of the surgery. So surgery can be great if I need it. But sometimes it's not needed or sometimes the end results aren't as good as we would like. A little more symptoms of this stiff fascia, your body awareness and the ability to maintain yourself keep from falling down. So out here in Honolulu, we have a lot of seniors and I see a lot of them. I see them fall on the street. Right. These people have been taking our class for a year or two years. They're like, Anthony, I almost fell in a pothole, but I righted myself this time. Last year this time I slipped, I broke my foot. So thank you for what you're doing. And that's why we're here. We're trying to help more people understand. There's an option for you to take charge of your life. And instead of saying, well, I'm getting old. That's what happens. No, I disagree. You can rehydrate your fascia. You can improve your posture. You can improve your digestion. You can improve your range of motion. You can stop hurting and stop taking pills, but you got to do a little work. Right, Wendy? That's right. And you know, so it's an age is just a number. But how do we approach that age matters? And so by taking care of your body and understanding how the chemical makeup or even the fascia makeup and understanding that like you just said, yes, I see a lot of people fall simply falling out of their bed, not even falling over a hump or a curb, but just falling out of bed. And you know, the whole saying as we get older, the age number, you know, we fall, we get hurt. Do you think that leads up to a lot of different chronic diseases and issues of the elder? Absolutely. Let's say I'm 80. And let's say I used to walk my dog around the block every day. Because that's what happens. And then one day I fall, I land on my pelvis, I shatter my pelvis because maybe I had osteoporosis because I'm 80 years old. Next thing you know, you're in a convalescent home because they are not moving as much as they used to. Things start to settle old inflammatory liquid start to pull in the body. And one of the first things that happens after a convalescent home visit is pneumonia. Wow. Because it doesn't keep they don't move around. That old water pools at the base of the lung. They're breathing in this air that's probably recirculated because of the home. And guess what? When that little piece of bacteria falls in that dirty water in the bottom of your lung cavity. It's like giving a toddler a big bag of caramel. They go crazy. And that pneumonia starts to develop to develop in the lung and flourish. Now, in November 2015, I went to the first joint conference on fascia oncology and acupuncture. And one of the results of some of the studies they did, they were able to prevent the formation of pneumonia in the lungs by pushing and removing the old cellular waste through the body so it can be filtered, leaving more opportunity for repair versus more opportunity for these these these hijackers of our immune system. If you will, they get in and they take over. Well, if you move your body regularly, and I mean like every day, then your body will be less susceptible to body infections, and it'll be more prepared to heal you when you when you're done with your walk, you'll go gardening and go, Hey, I garden for three hours. I'm not even tired. These are the stories that we get. Wow. I mean, and it's and we don't even know that this thing exists in our body. And so that's why it's so important that people learn and want to learn more about how we can maintain and take our health back. Right now, we're going to take a 60 second break. And we're going to come right back with Anthony Kruskal and more more knowledge and education that we can absorb so that we can age more gracefully and even for the young that they can live a healthier, more abundant, fulfilled life as they get older in life. So we'll return in 60 seconds. We'll be right back. Aloha. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4pm. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4pm on Think Tech, Hawaii. Think Tech, Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at 3pm. And I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Aloha, and welcome back to Think Tech, Hawaii. And we're live here at the studio in, at the Pioneer Plaza. We have Anthony Crisco here, and he's just simply telling us about fascia. So what is fascia? I mean, like heck, I didn't know until he took the time to explain. And then I actually went to one of your classes, and I learned more about that about fascia. And I was so intrigued that I wanted you to come on board and share with the people of Hawaii. What is fascia and how important is it for our day to day well being? And he went through a lot of the very simple, simple information, but yet very intense. So we want to just continue on at this point. And you know, Anthony, there are so many scientists and doctors of the Martin Day fascia movement. Can you just share with us a little bit about what you've experienced with them? Absolutely. I've had the opportunity to meet these people firsthand at the first joint conference on fashion, oncology and acupuncture. And Tom Myers is the gentleman in the white shirt with me in the green shirt. He was here in Hawaii, and I had the opportunity to spend 40 hours with Tom Myers. He's a structural integrationist. He is he's the man when it comes to massage. He he wrote the book Anatomy Trains. I highly recommended. And what he did was in dissecting these various bodies instead of cutting the muscles off of each attachment, he would find where the muscle was attached to the bone. He would turn the scalpel to the blunt edge and he would just go underneath the connective piece and then go into the next muscle. And what it turned out is he was able to maintain continuity through many, many structures. For example, the top of my for my head right here, this is your frontalis muscle. It goes all the way back down your spine becomes your erector muscles crosses over a little ligament across your hip sacro tuberous ligament becomes your hamstrings becomes your calves becomes your Achilles becomes your plantar fascia. Those are all one structure connected by fascial structures. Thus the term anatomy trains. Okay, Dr. James Oshman in the upper right corner there, he wrote the book energy medicine, the scientific basis. Now I got a chance to meet him at Harvard Medical School, and he's a lot older in this image. When I met him, I told him, I said, thank you for your work. I use your, your studies and your information in teaching my professional workshops around the world. And he's like, well, thank you. And he wrote to me, he signed his new book to me. He goes, Anthony, thank you for your work in fascia. And I couldn't believe it. This pioneer of fascial work is signing his book to me is thanking me for my work. I was like Elvis in Graceland. You know what I mean? What an honor. Okay, the other people there, Helen Longbin, Dr. Longbin, she is the director of the Osher Center of Medicine for Women and Children in, I think it's in Boston also. She's the one there's a new study she just put out. It's on my Facebook. They were able to demonstrate the shrinkage of tumors by 52% with just stretching alone. Now, we don't have time to cover all the details of that study. However, it is on our Facebook. You can, we'll talk about that later. Look it up. This information is out there. You just got to arm yourself with knowledge and be aware of what science is showing us today. Right, exactly. And so thank you to think take away for allowing us to be here live and sharing all this information. And finally, the two gentlemen on the bottom. That's Thomas Finley and Dr. Robert Schleip. Robert Schleip was a Rolfer or a structural integrationist. And he decided, you know, I know these people that I work on are getting better. I want to know how. So he got himself a PhD in molecular biology. And ever since then, he's been studying the fascia not just on the global scale, but at the microscopic even the atomic level where there's particles in your body that are living in your fascia who tell other cells to do other things to fix the body. OK, we can't even get into it. It's too much. Check out our YouTube channel too. But I'm leaving for Germany to be with Robert Schleip again. I am one of 26 people that's going to be on the first ever fascial placination project in history. What is that? You might wonder. Well, who's ever seen the bodies exhibit where they put all these bodies in different contortions in the is either the blood vessels or the nerves or the muscles. Well, no one in history has died, has been able to dissect the fascial organ system out of a body. And I am one again of 26 people on the expert dissection team who has the incredible opportunity to remove the fascia from a body at which point they take the water out and replace that water with a plastic polymer. Then you really see it's like if I took all the orange out of the orange, it'll be like that. Well, yes. Friday, I can't wait. This is so exciting, Anthony. It's because you're teaching us to maintain our body by simply being aware of the fascia and then how do we maintain it and that's what you're doing so we can probably avoid surgery where it's not necessary that we can go and just take care of us day to day and I take care of it every day. So that means no hospitalization for Wendy and that's my goal. You know you're talking about Harvard and all these scientists and all that but I see you brought some toys here so what the heck is that? This little thing here this is called a tensegrity model so I want you to think integrity and tension so the integrity of the tension throughout this structure as you can see this resembles a pelvis and I got this at Tom Myers workshop when he was out here last time something so simple dowels and elastic string but it demonstrates I have muscles in the front of my leg muscles in the back of my leg those muscles apply their tension to the pelvis if I sit a lot and my quads are tight it pulls my pelvis forward which in turn pulls my spine out of whack do you understand how that picture works yeah the other thing is what if I have imbalances left to right my left side is tighter so these muscles are pulling my pelvis down next thing you know someone's telling me that my right leg is shorter than the left leg well it's not shorter the muscles that attach those bones and hold them steady in those joints are tighter thus pulling the joint deeper into the socket and that's what leads to the inflammation the friction the joint problems and this little diagram this little 3d model shows you how that works and it's all about simplicity if I can educate you to the simplest form of understanding what are the chances you'll get that down that's right I mean I can understand that and so you know wherever I go Anthony wherever I go the mall you know the beach when I see people alien like just doing this when they stand up or limping I'm always thinking they got to see Anthony they got to work on their fashion they I mean immediately because I know I know what you're going to say what the cause of the problem is and it's just unbalanced or just tension that you could probably help them roll out and fix you can manage mitigate and ameliorate the aches and pains that have been plaguing you for your whole life no joke so as a personal trainer for what 20 years 24 years with a focus on post rehabilitation you've developed a simple program that even I can do that addresses the tight fashion the facial restrictions what is the program that you've developed all right well this methodology that we actually own the trademark for is called the fascination method why because fashion is fascinating that's why and what does it entail it is a total body self-massage program using a roller we're not using a foam roller though we have a hashtag hashtag it's not a foam roller this roller was designed using my 25 years 24 years of post rehab experience working with hip replacements knee replacements broken necks broken backs amputations working with the troops I've seen a lot in in my two and a half decades in personal training and post rehabilitation what we did instead of using foam rollers I decided you know what these other rollers are too big you ever try having a 75 year old person sit on something six inches high and say balance on that doesn't work too well our fascinator roller is just three inches in diameter it's about 20 inches long there's no foam around it the reason we don't use foam is the restrictions the knots in our body are typically harder than the foam rollers that people have been using and again we've been in this business a long time as soon as someone tries a fascinator they're like whoa this is completely different I didn't the other roller I don't even feel anything I put my roller in the garbage now I need another one I let my friend borrow it they took it or they can use it for an umbrella stand or something else that's right you can use it it's not for your body it's not it's not so can you elaborate on neurovascular bundles sure that's a that's a big long word right a big one neurovascular bundle why don't we pull up the slide real quick and we have a nice little illustration for that so I want you to think of the words first neuro nerve vascular arteries veins lymphatic vessels bundle they're all bundled together so if I have all these wires and arteries and veins traveling through my body there's various places within the body that they penetrate sheets of fascia and these perforations these holes in our fascia is where these neurovascular bundles get pinched now with that said in the image you see there's the hole and there's the structures going through the hole imagine that hole now was squeezing the artery vein nerve lymphatic vessel with up to 2000 pounds of pressure per square inch wow that is the tensile pressure that has been measured at the cellular membrane level when you have fascia that has been unattended and when that fascia squeezes my arteries my veins my nerves my lymphatic vessels I can get things like neuropathy numbness and tingling the the actual definition of neuropathy is numbness and tingling of an unknown nature so anything that ends with apathy means idiopathic means well you have numbness and we don't know why have some pills okay I've been working with many many many thousands of people with the same issues and it always ends the same we roll out the structure in question they begin to feel tingling and they can close their hand they can make a full fist that's just the way it works and it doesn't need to be complicated and that's what the fascination method is we've broken all the hard stuff down so if you follow instructions you'll be successful so Anthony you know I mean I found you by chance and I myself I just want to give a personal testimony really quickly so I do a lot of trade shows so I'm standing up for 10-12 hours a day and you know then the next thing I have to go back into the trade show and do it again by the first day my body my legs are so tight and they hurt and I just dealt with it and yes like you said I would have to take some aspirin or something to take down the pain but since I've learned how to roll out my fascia on my body all I do is I come home on the first night and I roll out my legs in the morning I'm fine then I work another 12 hours standing up on my legs and I roll it out again and I'm fine and then the third day which is Sunday one more time so no more medication no more painkillers and you know what I wish that so many people would just understand the simplicity of all that you have to share with them so at this time I would just hope that they were tuned in and that they could hear more about what we're doing so at this time um I know that we're we had so much to say and I know we're going to come back again so maybe can you let the people out there know how can they get in touch with you absolutely you can visit us at our website thefashionator.com make sure you spell it right now fascia f-a-s-c-i-a if you put in fasinator.com it's going to be those little feathery hats from the roaring 20s and I don't do those very well very good so we're so excited that you came and you joined us here today at Think Tech Hawaii and we're just so I mean honored that you were here is there anything else you would like to share with us as you say goodbye to your audience or our audience here I have one thing to say to you your fascia needs you you should need your fascia come see us we have classes all over the island when you go to the website look under schedule of classes and you'll see everything you need to know so again your fascia let it be your best friend or it's going to be your worst enemy and I want it to be my friend because it is the largest organ in our body so we better buddy up with them as we approach the years ahead we need to make sure that we're taking and addressing all of that that makes us better so until next next week we're going to see you again live here at Think Tech Hawaii so mahalo to you Anthony Chris go for being here representing fascia thank you aloha everyone