Fascia thickening, back pain and acupuncture

Fascia is a band or sheet of connective tissue consisting of collagen lying under the skin that attaches, stabilizes, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs. Fascia is classified by layer, as superficial fascia, deep fascia, and visceral or parietal fascia, or by its function and anatomical location.

A recent study by Helen Langevin a researcher at the University of Vermont has suggested that people with chronic and recurrent low back pain had 25 percent greater fascial thickness than a low back pain-free group. She concluded that increased thickness and disorganization of connective tissue layers may be an important and so-far neglected factor in human LBP pathophysiology. Another study in Skeletal Radiology, 2005,2 found that pathological Achilles tendons showed increased thickness and 89 percent were painful.

Antonio Stecco, MD, recently completed an unpublished study3 using ultrasonography on chronic (longer than 3 months' duration) neck pain patients, evaluating fascial thickness in the distal third of the SCM and scalenus medius. The deep fascia in both muscles were thicker due to the increased amount of loose connective tissue between the layers of the deep fascia (usually three layers) and the loose connective tissue between the deep fascia and the muscle. Study has shown that there was a correlation between the intensity of the pain and the thickness of the fascia compared to the control patients. Besides the thickening of fascia beneath the deep fascia and muscle, there may be thickening between the superficial and deep fascia, and the intramuscular fascia surrounding perimysium and endomysium.

Acupuncture can help reduce chronic pain.

References
Warren Hammer Dynamic Chiropractic (2012) Vol. 30 Issue 11