Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of soft tissue injuries and the crucial role fascia plays in our healing process. I emphasize that understanding and caring for your fascia is essential for effective recovery from any wound, as it connects everything in our body. We'll explore the various injuries you might encounter, from bruises to joint issues, and discuss when it's necessary to seek professional help versus managing it at home. I also share my personal experiences with injuries and the importance of maintaining a positive mindset during recovery. Join me as we unpack the best practices for healing, including the use of heat, castor oil packs, and essential oils to facilitate recovery and promote overall wellness.

Chapters:

• 00:04 - Exploring Soft Tissue Injuries
• 07:35 - Understanding Fascia: The Body's Connective Network
• 15:43 - Understanding Fascia and Injury Repair
• 21:47 - Healing Techniques for Injuries

Info@therealityofhealth.com

Links referenced in this episode:

• strollingundertheskin on YouTube
• 
  
• queenofthrones.com

Welcome, healthy friends.

Today we're going to talk about a different type of wound.

Touched upon it last episode, but I want to get into more of those larger, more interesting injuries to the soft tissue of the body.

You know, stubbed your toe, got a definite bruise, something hit your arm or you smashed your head into something or maybe even broke a bone, which I'm going to touch upon you.

You know, you got something that is not quite needing surgery, but also, like, hurts really bad.

And, you know, I better do something to fix this.

Here we have just an example of some of these things.

So let's say you fell and you hit your hip or your, you know, your butt muscles.

And you're like, oh, man, I got a hematoma back there.

And it hurts like heck.

You know, you dropped something on your foot or bashed your elbow into something.

You know, you can see this.

This is just a bunch of pictures of different types of injuries.

Okay.

Maybe you haven't did something like got up out of a chair or did something and you're like, oh, that was my back, or, oh, my knee.

What did I do?

Well, I'm going to show you kind of what you may have done.

Going to put into perspective the tissues that you need to be worried about, concerned about, and understand what's going on about.

That makes sense.

It did in my head.

So these are kind of like those injuries that you think, should I go in or should I just handle it myself?

I will tell you.

You should definitely decide on that quickly.

Let's just go over what you're feeling.

Pain, obviously.

Swelling, obviously.

Bruising and discoloration.

Could have muscle spasms.

Inability to use an injured part.

Loss of feeling.

Yep.

And a part that looks distorted, bent, or out of place.

Obviously, because you injured something, you're like, yeah, that doesn't look right.

Probably should go see somebody.

You could experience bleeding.

Bleeding.

I sort of.

Did I really go over it last episode?

Not enough.

There's lots of ways to stop bleeding.

Maybe we'll do a bleeding episode in the future.

Blood vessel damage, nerve damage, joint problems.

So those are the basics that you're going to experience.

Okay.

Obviously, you know, because you've had those things happen to you, you know what you're feeling and you know, what I'm trying to talk about here?

What I want to kind of address is if you have something like joint issue.

Yeah, you're going to want to go see somebody.

This is not something you want to handle at home.

If it's very minor and you're like, no, that My knee hurts, but it's not that bad.

Then you don't really need to go in unless you're that worried.

But if you are, you got the intense pain.

That stinging, sharp pain, that's not good.

A little ache is one thing.

Stinging is not good.

If you feel that, let's give it a threshold of anything under 50%.

You're like, I can handle this.

It's not that bad.

I didn't hear anything snap.

I didn't hear any noises like breaking bones, nothing like this.

You're probably all right if you hear a noise.

Usually not a good sign.

Okay.

But I would say if you have a relationship with a chiropractor or even a massage therapist or somebody who does joint manipulation or fascial manipulation or everything from maybe an acupuncturist or acupressurist, any of those people that can kind of just look at the situation and say, yeah, just a little soft tissue damage, no big deal.

If they say, this isn't good, I know what this is.

Now, you can go in and, you know, get further into the medical profession, but this episode is just going to be based on things that you can handle at home.

Okay?

So the number one way that you hurt yourself and you get the most pain, in my opinion.

And of course, I got to start off with saying, this is my opinion.

This is not medical advice.

I'm not telling you what to do.

I am not a doctor.

But I will tell you that as much as I've studied throughout my entire life, this is the most fascinating thing that you can.

You can think about in the body.

Yes.

That was a pun.

Your fascia has 10 times the neurons that your central nervous system does.

When you pull a muscle, sprain yourself like a.

Like a wrist or knee or ankle, something like that, or finger, you are also disrupting the fascia network.

That fashion network is incredibly interesting in the sense that it's always pliable and moving around.

Yet if you pull on it quickly, you can tear it.

It's kind of like water.

It's soft until you fall face down into the water and smack it.

And you're, like, stinging because it doesn't move away that fast.

Fascia does the same thing.

Notice how clear it is.

It is loaded with water.

It is basically protein, and water and nerve endings essentially has a lot of silica in there that conducts energy.

And so when you get a bruise, something big, you know, contusion, bruise, hematoma, whatever you want to call it, any of those three, you are not just damaging Blood vessels, nerve endings.

You're also damaging your fascia.

And if you don't heal properly, this fascia turns into scarring or it takes forever to heal something.

You need to work on fascia as your number one tool to heal any wound.

Any wound.

I don't care what it is.

This is what holds you together.

Without fascia, you would just be a complete mess on the floor.

You don't have any structure at all.

It encompasses every single, if you want to call it cell, from cell, up to smaller tissue, up to larger tissue, up to even larger tissue, all the way up to your entire body.

You pull fascia network out of your body, you will just completely disintegrate.

This is the number one thing you should work on in your life and take care of.

So let's just quickly watch a small video.

Now, this isn't graphic.

This is basically under your skin.

And if you've never seen this, this is for me, the most interesting documentary I've ever seen ever.

If you are sensitive to seeing body parts and blood and stuff like that, you're going to want to skip.

So don't watch the beginning, like, first third of it, kind of go towards the ending stuff.

But what I want you to see here is how this rigging is always moving.

And then as it gets stressed, it'll split and create more rigging, more ropes.

Think of almost a spider web.

If you could work on that spiderweb, and as you pushed on it, instead of breaking it, it created more tendrils to create more of the spiderweb, it never went away.

That spiderweb was always there.

It just changed shape because you were touching it.

That's what's going on in your body.

If you rip and tear this stuff, you're going to feel it.

It has nerve endings.

It has a full neuronal network.

Gary Lynum states that he believes quite possibly that your fascia network could be more of a brain, less of a nervous system tissue.

He's got some good points.

I'm telling you.

You should look him up.

The guy is incredible at healing.

Anyway, if you were to see your fascia, more like the rigging of a sailboat, okay.

And when you want to maneuver the boat, you would crank on, you know, the pivot areas to move the sail, which you could let more air in or less air into the sail.

You could move and steer and manipulate the direction of the sailboat.

Your fascia is literally doing that underneath your skin and in your skin and in your organs and around your organs and Your spine.

All of the connective tissue in your body is fascia, and it's called connective on purpose, because if you want to connect the rib to the spinal column, well, you need connective tissue.

And if you want to connect the skin to the muscle on your arm, you need fascia.

Ever, you know, take a chicken breast that's got skin on it, and you lift up the skin and it's being held onto the meat, the chicken meat itself, the muscle, all of that movable, kind of liquidy, you know, slippery substance.

That's fascia.

And it's doing what you're about to watch in this right now.

Okay, maybe that is a.

I'm going to have more episodes on fascia.

And if you're interested, please listen.

If you're not interested, that's okay.

I don't mind.

But this is the most fascinating thing in the human body, bar none.

There isn't anything more fascinating to me.

So I might have to do more episodes.

Ready?

Here we go.

Now they're showing a computer rendering.

Like, these are photos showing you how it's actually, like, changing.

See how here it's splitting?

Watch, it's moving.

See how it moves?

Ready?

I know it's a little pixelated, but now they're showing you how it's sliding, just like rigging does on a sailboat and other things.

See this right here?

It's moving along.

These tendrils are moving as you stress the tissue.

Here's the rendering.

See how that works?

Watch this.

Here it is.

You're stressing it.

Watch it split.

Now it's splitting, creating more tendrils.

It's moving around.

It's always staying within shape.

Okay.

It's never not connected.

It makes more tendrils to keep the strength and to keep moving.

That's insane.

All the while, it's just protein, water, and nerve endings.

Simple.

Very, very simple.

So I encourage you to watch this.

It's called strolling under the skin.

There's a lot of YouTube channels that have posted this.

I mean, when you watch it, you're just like, wow, that's actually going on underneath my skin, everywhere in my body, all the time.

It doesn't matter if you're playing a sport or you're typing.

Everything is moving, and that fascia is keeping everything together and allowing you to move and stay into one shape but still be pliable.

It's amazing.

There's so much more to this.

You could do years worth of episodes on just fascia.

So here's a good rendering.

I really like this drawing, this is kind of showing you why the fascia works.

So over here we have all the white is holding all the muscle together.

And then you got your tendon, which is more connective tissue, but your fascia is around and holding everything together.

Literally everything.

It's like a water balloon.

You want the water in there, you need the balloon.

Well, picture the water as your muscle tissue or your liver or a bone.

Everything is encapsulated with fascia.

See all that white fascia?

Here's the network that I was just trying to show you there in that video.

See how they took a photo of, like, how it's rigged.

It's holding you together, keeping you together.

Your nerves, your arteries, everything.

So not only is your artery and your nerve encoded in it, or, excuse me, encapsulated in it, but then it's got more fascia around that so it doesn't fall apart.

You imagine no fascia.

You just literally fall apart.

You just.

You could just remove your fingernails, you could just pull your hair out.

You could do so many things.

This next photo I'm going to put a warning on.

So this is the only graphic photo in this episode that if you want to turn away, you don't want to see a cadaver.

It's a part of a cadaver, but it's not the cadaver.

It's really hard to even tell what part of the body it is, but if you can just look through your fingers, maybe, you know, do one of those things.

Completely awesome.

This is a fantastic photo image of what fascia looks like.

Now.

It is outside of a living human, whereas the video we just watched, that's actually a living person.

That was under the skin.

You could actually see it happening.

This is afterwards.

Ready?

One, two, three.

Here we go.

That's not spider webbing, that's fascia.

Look how it's holding all this tissue together isn't amazing.

Without it, it would just fall apart.

Yeah, and it's white because it's just pure protein anyway.

Look at the striation of the muscle, all webbed together.

Look at all that.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Man, if you don't find that fascinating, I don't know what to tell you because that's in your body right now and it moves with you.

Moving on.

You also have fascia banding.

And let me just stop here real quick.

You're probably saying, I thought we were talking about wounds.

Well, we are talking about injuries.

Okay?

But you have to understand that it first starts with fixing your fascia.

You've got to get the fascia fixed in order to fix the injury.

Okay.

When you understand the fascia, you can understand how to fix your injury.

Notice how you can go from the top of your head all the way down your back, down your hamstrings, your calves, all the way to your heels, even into the top of your foot.

You have these bands of fascia.

Okay.

They run.

Here's the front run through all the way from the.

From the top of the neck all the way down to your toes.

The side of you.

You can see this.

It's holding you together.

These bands are why you like.

For example, let's give you this one.

This here.

You know this as an it band, maybe, if you know anything about that kind of anatomy.

Well, it's more than that.

It's actually your entire quad, your thigh, the whole thigh.

When they pull the muscle back, they only see this one, and they think there's only one.

But see how your whole structure is held together?

See these bands coming across?

They're crisscrossing to keep you balanced.

Amazing.

Lift your arms.

Look how the pectorals from your arms come down and connect even to your femur.

Yeah.

When you want to know why your shoulder hurts, you know, I'm going through physical therapy with my shoulder because I have an impingement problem.

And they work on areas in my.

In my pelvic region because it's all held together.

So all this network that's holding you together, these banding, is phenomenal.

So you might say to yourself, all right, now what do I do?

I hurt myself.

And the first thing you're told to do is go ice it.

Well, I'm going to say something that a lot of people might not like right now, and that is, I don't like icing.

I see no reason for icing at all.

It's amazing that your body has an entire mechanism of inflammation on purpose, because you heard it.

So whatever it was, you got an injury, it inflames, and then what happens?

Gets hot, gets a lot of blood flow, which means it's bringing nutrients.

And when you ice something, like when you ice a lake, it doesn't move anymore.

There's no more water.

Currents ice a river, it stops.

You want flow, which we've talked about I don't even know how many times at this point.

You need flow in and out.

You've got tissue that's dying because you damaged it.

It's got to get out.

You need new tissue, nutrients to come in in order to fix it.

And Heal it.

You also need the inflammation to solidify the area.

That inflammation is your body's wisdom to heal.

Think about it.

If you were to do something, what would you do?

If you hit yourself, like a knee on something, you grab it with your hands, you go, oh.

Oh, man.

Okay.

All right.

You're just.

Natural instinct is to grab it.

Well, your body's natural instinct is to solidify the area, kind of just to hold it in place a little bit and then bring the nutrients, everything, Oxygen and blood and water.

And then now it can start working on the fascia.

If you freeze it, you stop all of that.

Eric, there's a case for cold therapy in this situation, and maybe not in that situation.

And then heat's good for this, but not good for that.

I don't see it.

I mean, of course, you put cold on something, yeah, you might not feel the injury as much, but are you healing or are you just basically blocking, like taking aspirin?

Aspirin didn't heal your wound.

You don't feel it much, but you definitely didn't heal it.

You just don't feel it as much.

Now, there might be a case for doing both.

That could be a thing.

I'm going to say maybe.

I know there's athletic teams that do it, and there's places that teach this.

I know.

I get it.

But unless you are hurting that bad, you really should be warming it.

The warmth creates the circulation, brings all the nutrients, which is what you want.

You don't want to slow it all down.

You know, nowadays they even talk about, you know, if you minorly sprained an ankle or did something to a wrist or something, you should actually use it, like, move it around.

It'll actually heal faster.

If you do the Rice method, you know, rest, ice, cover it, and then elevate it.

Right?

Cover.

No, I forgot what the C stands for.

It doesn't matter.

Do that whole method like they've taught, forever.

Yeah, it just takes forever to heal.

So the other day, I hit my hand on a door handle, and I hit, like, two of the tendons across the back so it'd be the first and second finger.

Oh, my gosh.

My whole hand ached the entire day.

And I got home, and I was like, you know what?

I was gonna put a castor oil pack on it, and I started.

You know what?

I'm gonna use it a lot.

I'm gonna start doing the flexing, going to grab things.

I took the.

The exercise ball.

I started working it, and you know what?

Next morning, gone.

No soreness at all?

Zero.

Because I worked it.

I didn't do enough to damage it more or hurt it more.

I did enough just to work it out.

All right, so best way to do the heat is a water bottle.

That would mean no heating blanket, heating pad, nothing that's electronic because those all have bad EMFs.

You have an injury, why would you put bad EMFs, bad electricity, non native EMF on that area of your body?

It's terrible.

Hot water bottles are fantastic.

Wonderful.

You should have this in your house.

Use it all the time.

Awesome.

The other one you can do is make yourself a rice bag or a rice pouch or whatever you want to call it.

Use good fabric, obviously.

I'm a big fan of linen.

You know that already.

Or cotton.

You could do wool.

Nothing else.

No bamboo, no polyester.

None of that garbage.

You want natural fibers.

Okay.

There's two ways you can do this.

You can seal it up and then put it in the oven and get it hot.

Just obviously keep an eye on it.

It's not going to cause it to catch on fire or anything.

Or you make it sealable, like with a zipper.

And then you can heat the rice on the stove and then put it in the pack.

Okay.

All right.

The best thing you should use right away, after you get some heat on it or used together is the castor oil pack.

Eric, you talk about castor oil pack all the time, like.

Well, yeah, because it's.

I mean, is there a better healing tool?

I mean, it's one of the best healing tools ever.

And Queen of Thrones makes the best.

None of the castor oil leaks through.

It's totally organic cotton.

It works great.

The straps are perfect, and she has the best oil you can get.

All right, so let's think about it like this.

Let's say you did fall and you fell on your right, maybe hip, buttock area.

You can use the pack, you add the castor oil to it, you put it on that area, you wrap it around your abdomen zone.

Go lay down, sit down, whatever, go to sleep.

This kind of thing, the castor oil will help heal.

It's anti inflammatory in a good way.

It increases the circulation and it allows fats to move around water to move around to get healing.

It's kind of like the great referee.

It's sort of just making everything work right.

And no, you stay there and you stay there.

No, you move now.

You move this kind of thing and it feels good.

First of all, you get a tiny little bit of pressure.

Not a lot, just enough.

It's Warming, which is what we want.

And then you can also add the rice pack or the water bottle to this on the outside to give it a little extra warmth.

Doesn't need to be hot, just needs to be warm.

Okay.

This right here is easily the fastest way to heal any of those kind of bruising, contusions, including deep.

I mean, deep, even a bone bruise.

Is there such a thing as a bone bruise?

Now that I think about that, we always said that that would be a fascia.

That's the protein structure of your bone got damaged.

But anyway, so yes, I would do this.

And then there's three oils, the main one being helichrysium for essential oil that you would add to the pack.

Okay.

So you put a couple tablespoons of castor oil there.

Then you can either put some drops of helichrysum on there and maybe geranium, rosemary, Some people say lavender, German chamomile, some of these.

But this is the number one to use.

Okay.

Th.

This yellow flower is so powerful in the essential oils world.

It is a mainstay in my essential oils first aid kit.

Here's why.

Scars, skin regenerating, wrinkle reducing trauma relief.

Skin soothing, anti inflammatory in a good way.

Analgesic right there.

Helps with pain, wound healing.

Whoa, look at that.

As we've talked about this episode last episode, nerve regenerating.

Like if you really hurt yourself, it can help regenerate.

Yes.

Burn relief, like we talked about last episode and bruise relief.

Wonderful stuff.

Smells great.

Amazing.

By the way, let me just say real quick, all the essential oils that I just mentioned, but especially this one, you can put it in a spray bottle.

So you use witch hazel as your base.

Get in a spray bottle, put as much oil as you want in there of these and other ones too, you could use frankincense is great for bruising and circulation.

Add all those in there and then you can spray the wound or injury rather than rubbing it because it might hurt.

You know what I mean?

Like it's.

You could use the castor oil straight with some oils on it, rub it on.

You're like, ow, that hurts.

Well, if you make a spray, you're not touching it, right.

I have so many sprays of different oil combinations and then also roll ons in my house.

It's insane.

You'd be like, you should just start your own essential oil company.

Which I will one of these days.

But what I mentioned earlier was you have to move.

You got to move it.

You got to use it.

Unless it is severe.

If it's not severe.

Let's pick your ankle as an example.

You need to start walking on it gently, slowly, a little bit, and start increasing.

It will not damage it further again unless it's severe, but you will get it to start stimulating the sympathetic nervous system to start saying, okay, we got a problem here.

Obviously you want to use this ankle, so let's get into repair mode.

So now you'll start gently getting into your parasympathetic and start healing faster, which is what I did with my hand the other day.

Instead of babying it, walking around like this and wrapping it up, I used it.

Didn't feel awesome when I was using it, but it wasn't that bad.

If it was really severe, I wouldn't have done that.

I would have waited a couple days.

Anyway, you gotta move.

You have to get circulation in there.

You want to move that fascia around.

Showed you the fascia, what it looks like.

If you just let that sit, it will scar.

I don't like the idea of, like, scar internally like this, but it will scar, which means you get fascia there that is now dry, damaged.

And now you got to break it up later rather than moving it right now, which will get rid of it and put in new good fascia.

You see, it's.

It's that flow.

It's that bad out, good in.

Hope that makes sense.

And the last one I want to talk about is your mindset, Eric.

I fell on my butt.

I got a bruise.

It hurts.

We talk about my mindset.

Well, a lot of people get stressed out, and I think, oh, no, I can't sit at work.

Oh, man, I'm not gonna be able to sleep.

And what did I do?

Or I gotta go to the doctor.

Now they get in this whole mindset, full negativity instead of having an attitude of healing.

I love this.

Isn't this funny?

Winston Churchill said, attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

So that little dachshund dog is chasing the rhino.

Like, yeah, rhino's scared.

He's probably not.

They're probably playing.

But the photo obviously makes it look like the little dog is chasing the big old rhino.

He's got an attitude, right?

He's like, no, I'm dominant.

Well, why don't you be dominant when you get hurt?

Say to yourself, no, it's not going to stop me.

I'm going to move on.

And yes, it's going to hurt a little bit if I walk on this ankle, but I'm going to walk on it.

Yeah, it's Going to hurt a little bit if I, you know, work on a little bit of massage around the area of my contusion.

Okay.

Do it just be like, no, I'm healing this thing.

I'm not going to let this overtake me.

You have to have a right attitude.

And that's true for all of health.

As soon as you give up, you're done.

Then you're going to be in the hospital forever.

You're going to always have the injuries forever.

You're going to be on the crutches for six months.

You wonder why a lot of the athletes heal so quickly.

Obviously, they've got a lot of money and they can heal those people quickly.

But there's a difference.

Those people are used to getting hurt.

They know if I want to be on that field, I need to heal.

And they're not going to go, oh, woe is me.

Oh, no, my career is over.

No, they start the journey of healing.

They get positive.

They do the things it takes.

You may have to do the same thing.

Otherwise, that injury will take over your life.

It'll make everything worse.

It will grow and become a real problem in your life.

It will.

Doesn't seem like much.

You get a little bump or bruise and you think, oh, that's just it.

And, you know, you get negative, and then you don't think any of it.

And next thing you know, you're like, man, my whole arm is killing me.

Two years later.

Well, yeah, because you didn't handle it.

You got to handle it.

Okay.

Appreciate you guys listening as usual.

I just wanted to get a little, like, sort of first aid episode, you know, the last one in this one.

And, you know, because it's part of health, right?

I mean, health is more than just what nutrient should I be eating and what food?

And you also need to be able to heal yourself when you get hurt.

You know what I mean?

Like, you did nails and the hammer hits your thumb, and you're like, oh, no.

And it's all blue, and you know, it's nasty.

Well, how do you heal that up so you can get back to work?

Not to mention not feel terrible.

Like, my thumb hurts all the time.

It's attitude.

Get her done.

All right, enough of my diatribe.

If you have any ideas for episodes, let me know.

We're going to do a weight loss episode coming.

I got a request for that, and it will happen.

I just want to say that it's going to be a huge, huge episode.

It's going to be multiple parts.

There is absolutely no way.

If you know how much I can talk, you know, I can't get that thing done in 20 minutes.

It's going to be a lot of parts.

I have no idea.

I'm trying to organize it in such a way that you guys will be able to have a really good understanding where you fall into weight loss rather than just, I'm giving you 15 ways to lose weight.

That's ridiculous.

If that worked, everybody would have lost weight.

It needs to be done the right way.

Once you understand what weight loss is and how to solve it, you will be more successful.

Okay.

Thank you for listening.

Take care of yourselves.