FRC3 day 2: 3/29/12

Down the twisting road again from brudda Don Solomon's home we went. Michelle Doyle, Gunna Hojgaard, who owns 2, yep that's 2, massage schools in Denmark, and me, past the garbage can where the big ole black bear recently rummaged, right at the 2 tall pine sentinels that house the bald eagles, on thru heavily wood Stanley Park whose steep granite outcroppings embrace the road on both sides at times in shadowed chartreuse moss covered morning dew, over our bejewelled Lions Gate bridge and back to the Wall Center Sheraton North Tower for a new day of intellectual goodies brought to us by the likes of Leon Chaitow, Thomas Findley, Robert Schleip, Geoffrey Bove, and whomever else helped throw this FRC3 shindig.

Lotsa networking goin on here. That's at least half the value of being here, for most folks, I'm thinkin. Not to diminish the juiciness of the conceptual goodies being presented to our saturated brains, I'm on gray matter overload, an unfamiliar overtraining phenom for me in recent times.

Day 2's morning was about fluid dynamics, and it wasn't even raining for that themed grouping of presenters. I loved these presentations more than the first day's, especially Gerald Pollack's presentation. What a hoot of an elvin presence he brings to this gig. White beard and longish hair, twinkle in his eye, especially when he's presenting material that supports some of the more out in the fringe concepts held sacred by many of the manual therapists here. An open minded scientific explorer. He teaches @ University of Washington, professor of bioengineering. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a paper by him in our manual, (ahem, Leon) but his talk "Interstitial Fluid, The Secret Life of Water" was based on concepts he presents in his book: "Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life" That's one I've now got to get.

He posited some great questions at the end of his funny and informative presentation that had a whole gaggle of therapists levitating right off their seats: "Cells contain EZ (exclusion zone) water. Radiant energy drives charged flow in water. Can water contain/transmit info? He wondered impishly.
He explained his work with his students' advising them on their research projects, including fun illustrative stories about various discoveries in the exclusion zone (EZ). If I'd had him for a teacher I might not have lost interest in the miniscule preoccupation my college science classes presented to me, not to mention chokin on the pomposity of those pedantic stuffed shirts teachin em.

Here are a few chards from his talk that I managed to capture in my notes:

Exclusion zone in water near hydrophilic surfaces pushes away microspheres of a variety of types. It has increased viscosity, density, negative electrical potential compared with the water just beyond this zone.

That water just beyone the exclusion zone is +chged. Thus the flow that can be played with and discovered in the lab.
EZ water molecules are aligned, stable, constrained, it's liquid crystalline, excludes solids, non-dipolar.
This gel like zone might explain surface tension.
EZ exclusion zone is liquid crystalline water excludes positive charged ions.
IR(infra-red) Light increases the size of the EZ. 3000 nanometers -3micrometers is wavelength IR that counts the most to increase the size of EZ water.
EZ water is powered by photons from sun, (or hands?!*&) which imparts energy for building order and separating charges.
Incident energy must be absorbed. Light is transduced into mechanical energy in all aqueous chemical reactions.

That oughta whet your whistle to go buy his book. This is how knowledge should always be imparted, with humor, humanity, play and curiosity to discover. Big Wow!! His website is worth a gander too, water, matrix of life. Gotta love it. Hopefully increased appreciation will fuel increased preservation. It's certainly one thing we can't afford to squander to depletion.

Rolf Reed's presentation was also full of good information on fluid dynamics. His work was with burns and frostbite, inflammation and the behavior of interstitial fluid in these conditions including it's deterioration into a more fibrotic state as it becomes chronic, tho it is not predictable, apparently, exactly when that's gonna be. Many things can influence the inflamed condition in a positive way sending it back toward normalcy.....

I blew it and made the wrong choice for the afternoon panel I slithered over to. I started out by attending Leon's PP presentation opening the 'clinical methods' presentations in a room way too small for the number of folks who wanted to attend this series. After his slide show finished I wiggled thru the crowded aisle out to attend the lectures on the anatomy of fascia. BIG mistake. BIG!
First of all, I missed out on watching Leon pull off a perfect judo back fall off the back of the stage where there was some kind of glitch in the step. I heard he was so good at that move that he bounced back up as though someone had rubbed his hind quarters with a la crosse ball and gotten is tushie fascia revved into hyperdrive, like Cian Lanigan seemed to be able to do with the plantar fascia in jumpers. Who knew Leon had bounce in his hind quarters! I knew that ball rolling adds speed to concentric/eccentric shift and some benefit to height in jumping already, from anecdotal experiences, having worked with a few Olympic lifters who roll their arches before donning their lifting shoes as part of their warm ups for those triple extension lifts they so love doing, so that presentation was preachin to this choir regarding Cian's findings. The numbers in his research's support for this behavior might be good to know.

I wasn't interested in the presentation on fibromyalgia, "Myofascial Release Therapy Compared to Massage in Reducing Symptoms of Fibromyalgia" since I agree with the gaggle of rheumatologists who don't think it's beneficial to group the symptoms folks have that constitute that 'diagnosis' into a named disease. Once folks think they have it, it's damned hard to give up the notion that their doomed for life to suffer from this rather iffy 'diagnosis'. I missed that one and a couple of others; "Comparison of ankle joint dorsiflexion after classical massage or specific myofascial receptor massage technique on the calf muscle" and "The Effects of Oscillating Energy Manual therapy on symptoms associated with carpal tunnel syndrome" so can't speak about those.

Sorry to say the 'Research and Methods' presentation stunk. Really bad. Unfortunately she had some public speaking artifacts that made her really dull and belabored PP presentation even worse cuz every other word was 'sort of' and 'um' and 'uhhhhh'. Oyvay! Watch a video of yourself, girl, and clean up your speaking act. Also get an editor who can help you know the level of sophistication in your audience, cuz the points she made would have bored a first grader. That one was actually a bummer, probably the worst speech I've ever had the excruciating experience of witnessing.

This day started with stellar presentations but the afternoon bombed. I really do think the committee that screens these presentations needs to do a better job keeping the topics relevant to the clinical work we actually do. I went into the "Anatomy of Fascia" presentations after leaving the overcrowded "Clinical Methods" Jr Ballroom. A lovely woman from spain whose english was so bad you couldn't really understand anything she was saying presented research that explored injecting the interfascial space in upper traps with analgesics. Not even worth the time and effort to stay awake. Seems these folks who can't even speak English well enough to be presenting in English are more motivated to be included in an event like this than they are to really evaluate whether they're actually capable of doing a good job. The combo of PP presentations and unsurmountable language barriers just threw me into hypnotic trances all thru these presentations.
Ming Zhang also had pronounciation problems. On top of that he, apparently, didn't put on his hearing aid, so when folks questioned his findings in his plastination presentation best he could offer was a "What, WHo, Me?" It was awful. He had the audacity to suggest that there's no fascia at all in the anterior neck, just the platisma muscle. When a ENT surgeon told him that he was wrong and probably his finding was due to some artifact related to looking at tissues after they'd been turned to plastic, he just couldn't comprehend what was being said to him. Convenient, eh? He took up the time of 2 whole presentations. What a waste. and he's rewriting the Chinese Gray's Anatomy, apparently, including these rather iffy findings. I dosed off during some of his presentation too.

A young researcher presented "Anatomical and histological study of fetus fascias" the take away for me from that being that fascia enlarges in size in the legs of infants as a result of use but not in arms. I'd have to read his paper again to detail this out well. I'm not sure what the implications of that might be.

Day 2, a mixed bag.

Oh.....and I bit off the head of a pompous pontificating perpetually grandstanding guy who posed as a sincere questioner and grabbed the mike first after each lecture both days. A supercilious rheumatologist who was sure he was the department head advising each researcher as to how they could improve their research studies. I'd had enough of that guy after the fourth filibuster wherein he refused to give up the mike even when politely asked. I told him not to grandstand this time as he walked past me to grab the mike YET AGAIN!!!!. He started to discount the validity of my criticism by opening his remark with "I've just been accused of grandstanding..." I assume that was supposed to deflate me and put me in my place, but he didn't know I have an invisible "question authority' button on my non existent lapel, so I chirped over to him, "yep, and you're still doin it. Where's that shepherd's hook?" I said loudly to the moderator, cuz there was one, it was the talking stick for this event. "We really need it to get this guy to stop."

He pouted his way back to his front seat, drooping like a hurt little boy. What a stupid tantrum for a passive aggressive bully to throw. Several folks around me scowled at me and told me I was rude. They, of course, were right. I was, but he started it and I got the last word. He didn't have the chudspah to grab the mike and pontificate while posturing as a sincere questioner again all day so I was happy with the result and didn't give a hoot about his pretense at hurt feelings. What a jerk. I thought sure Leon would ream me another one, in his gentle non confrontational style, for my bad behaviors, but apparently not. Seems that guy's been at that same game since the Boston Congress. He might even be the reason that Tom Findley announced at the beginning of the first day to please not use the question time to grandstand. Hey, if you think about it, I was just an anonymous voice reinforcing the consequences for the foul, 'cause that guy was perpetually perpetrating pedantic pontification in the name of genuine inquiry. We'll see if he's right back at it again on day 3. I hope not, for both our sakes.