Did you know your entire body is held together with a fiberous network of collagen called fascia?
And did you know that this fascia is all semi-conductive, and gets grounded immediately the minute your body touches the earth?
And did you know that this conductive interwoven collagen dense system is basically an alternative delivery system that interconnects your entire body?
This is why grounding does not depend on circulation to affect your entire body from head to toe. It doesn’t depend on digestion, or lymphatic flow, or even nervous system functioning — it is because our connective tissue interconnects every organ system in our entire body and the minute one part of your body gets grounded (like touching the earth with one tiny fingertip!) your entire body becomes grounded from head to toe. Like flipping on a light switch — boom, you are grounded.
Ground one toe and your entire body, including your brain at the top of your heat, is grounded.
Ground one fingertip and your entire body, including every organ deep in your chest and abdomen, is grounded.
It’s all conductive and it’s all held together with conductive connective tissue, made up from not only our bones, ligaments, muscles and tendons, but also our fascia.
So I was incredibly interested when I found out (through a dear reader! Thank you for the suggestion!) that there was a therapy that specifically targets fascia health — it’s called Bowen Therapy. Or Bowenwork.
This immediately appealed to me as I know that the fascia is so incredibly interconnected that it’s one of the reasons grounding is so effective. So today, Stacey and I went to a Bowen practitioner to test it out. And here is what we found:
Click here to watch on YouTube:
Collagen is the most abundant protein in your entire body. It’s the glue that holds our entire body together and it also holds an immense amount of free nerve endings, so plays a huge role in pain perception.
Long term grounding decrease pain because of it’s ability to boost vagal tone, decrease stress, decrease inflammation, regulate and soothe the central nervous system as well as boost the parasympathetic nervous system. But short term — meaning immediately — grounding also works to decrease pain because there are so many nerve endings embedded our fascia, and the minute all that fascia becomes grounded that means all of those nerve endings are instantly grounded too. Again, like flipping on a light switch… that’s how immediately you can begin to experience pain relief through grounding.
All in all, if you want to support your body’s fascia and improve your body’s health through your connective tissue, you can do three things:
- take marine collagen supplements,
- ground your body daily
- and consider Bowen Therapy.
Here is more on each of these 3 crucial steps!
3 Ways To Support Healthy Fascia:
1. Collagen Supplements:
If our facia is so profoundly important, and if it’s such a great avenue for supporting our health, do collagen supplements actually do anything to improve our health?
Yep.
That’s because collagen is found in hair, skin, nails, bones, ligaments, gut lining, joints, cartilage, muscles, and even blood vessels.
Have you noticed as you’ve gotten older your skin elasticity has declined, your bone density has dropped, your digestion is getting more sluggish, you have more acid reflux, more abdominal pain, more issues with gut absorption and malabsorption, and/or your joints have become more painful?
I know, I’ve noticed too, and it sucks.
That’s because our production of collagen begins to slow down by our mid 20s — and damn that is so early on! So we need to improve our collagen integrity by consuming collage building blocks, which gets more and more important the older we get.
Improving collagen integrity has far reaching positive health benefits, with boosted wound healing, improved gut integrity, increased bone density and prolonged joint health, and of course, improved cosmetic appearance of the skin, nails and hair.
- This study (published in 2020 in the Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neuronal Interactions) found participants who supplemented with collagen peptides improved bone health, with boosted bone turnover, compared to participants who took Vitamin D and calcium alone.
- This study, published in 2020 in the medical journal Burn, found that burn patients who took collagen supplements significantly improved wound healing and even decreased the length of hospitalization required for their burn injuries.
- This study, published just a few months ago in 2022 in JMIR Formative Research, found that over 90% of participants who took a collagen supplement had fewer digestive symptoms, such as decreased bloating, decreased constipation, decreased stomach pain and decreased acid reflux.
- And this huge review study, published in 2021 in the medical journal Polymers, looked at all current medical studies on collagen supplementation and skin health and found that oral collagen supplements made clinically significant improvements in skin hydration, wrinkle reduction, skin rejuvenation, skin elasticity, and skin aging reversal.
Interested on trying out collagen supplements?
Good idea, but make sure that they are high quality and contain the most important key amino acids (marine based collagen supplements tend to have higher concentrations of the more important amino acids, over bovine or chicken sourced collagen) as well as high bioavailability, so that the collagen supplements you take actually work. Here are the ones I recommend, depending on what your healing goals are:
2. Grounding Your Fascia:
The first medical study to reveal that grounding protects your connective tissue, muscle and bones was a beautifully designed study that looked at what happens to a grounded body when muscles and tendons are pushed to their limit and are purposefully strained (1). It was a scientifically rigorous, double-blinded placebo-controlled study, in which patients carried one-third of their entire body weight in barbells on their shoulders and did repetitive toe raises until their muscles were exhausted.
Going up on tiptoe over and over and over until the muscles are completely fatigued creates complete muscular exhaustion, which induces inflammation and damage to the muscle tissue. This muscle damage can actually be measured in the blood using markers of inflammation that are specific to muscle (like creatinine kinase). Researchers measured laboratory parameters that included creatinine kinase, white blood cell counts and cortisol levels before the study began (i.e. at baseline) and at one, two and three days after this fatiguing trauma to the muscle. Each participant also had MRI imaging studies to determine if the grounding helped mitigate the damage to the human body after muscle strain in a statistically significant way. All participants thought they were grounded through a grounding patch, but only half of the study participants were actually grounded, while the other half were only sham grounded.
- Without fail every single ungrounded subject not only reported significantly more pain and a longer recovery time but they also had higher blood cortisol levels, higher creatinine kinase levels, and higher white blood cell counts.
- In contrast, every single grounded subject recovered faster after the muscle damage, not only reporting lower pain levels, but significantly lower blood cortisol levels (which means the grounded patients were less stressed from the injury), significantly lower creatinine kinase levels (meaning they had less muscle damage) and lower white blood cell counts.
Now let’s go further.
Does grounding help improve muscular function when you are not even exerting yourself, but just at baseline muscle tension? Would grounding help with tension headaches or fibromyalgia or other baseline sensitivities? This was addressed in a larger study of almost 60 patients (2.)
In this study, researchers grounded the participants and monitored their brainwaves through EEG imaging and their muscular tension through EMG monitors. The EMG (electromyogram) was placed on the trapezius muscle, which is the large triangular muscle spanning the upper back, shoulders and neck (the muscle that is involved in fibromyalgia, tension headaches, neck pain and more).
The researchers then grounded the patients through a grounding patch on the sole of their foot, and instantly, with absolutely no discernible lag in time, their muscle tension immediately decreased in the neck and shoulder area. The EMG readings went down instantaneously, showing that even grounding through the bottom of your foot affects the muscle tension all the way up to the neck, instantly. And yep, that’s because of that conductive network of fascia! This explains why you feel good all over, instantly, the moment you step out onto the earth barefoot!
If we had to wait for our circulatory system to carry support from our foot up to our shoulders, we would have to wait minutes, not seconds (which is why it takes at least 20 minutes for an anti-inflammatory pill like ibuprofen to start to decrease pain… since it relies solely on your circulatory system to deliver the anti-inflammatory relief).
Most medical professionals just aren’t aware yet that the entire structure of your body (all of your ligaments, tendons, fascia, skin and bones) are all conductors. But the truth is that grounding your body grounds your fascia, releases muscle tension, protects your bones, and soothes your pain receptors too.
So if it’s cold and you just touch the earth with one finger and stay bundled up everywhere else, you’re grounded from head to toe.
If it’s warm outside and you can fully lay right down on the earth that’s awesome, but it’s not superior to just being grounded with one tiny little part of your body. That is how electrically conductive your body is — the moment one cell in your body becomes grounded, your entire body is grounded.
Want a free printable reminder to get outside and ground your fascia? I painted the earth grounding our fascia for you — and then I turned my painting into a free printable for you to tape at your desk, in your kitchen, in your bathroom, by your front door, to help remind you to go get grounded.
Just click on it and print it out right now!
Free Printable “Move Grounded” Reminder Poster:
(If you want professionally printed Giclee prints of this artwork you can find those here.)
3. Bowen Therapy
Lastly, if you want to give Bowen Therapy a try, like Stacey and I did in the video above, hop over here to find a Bowen Practitioner near you.
Just pop in your zip code and it will give you a list of folk to try!
American Bowen Academy Practitioner Database
In Summary:
Today, touch the earth for a minute and feel your muscle tension literally drain.
Then consider giving oral marine collagen supplements a try for several months to see what it does for your skin, your digestion, your joints, your bones.
Lastly, if you want a therapy targeted at fascia release, consider finding a bowen therapist near you.
To Your Conductive Health!
xoxoxo,
Laura Koniver MD
