#24 Unraveling the Mysteries of Fascia Your Body's Hidden Web

Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body. Okay, everyone, welcome to today's show. I'm very excited to talk about fascia, and with me, we have Bonnie Kratzer. And I'm very excited you're here, Bonnie, because nobody knows what fascia is, or at least most people don't know.

Right. Well, thank you so much for having me, Dr. Sanda. I'm so thrilled to be ch. Chatting with you today. And, yes, introducing people to fascia and what fascia is and what it means to understand it within your body is a game changer. So I'm excited to jump in and talk about all that today.

Yes, absolutely. And you know how we met. For everybody to know this is that I was having a shoulder problem. And Laura, one of our mutual friends, like, oh, my God, Bonnie is amazing. You know, she's helped me. I take her fascia. I'm like, I had no idea. You can even exercise fascia number one. And then you really help me, you know, with the movement to do to. To be able to release my shoulder.

Right.

You're. You're super knowledgeable about that, and I do want to talk a little bit about who you are for people that don't know you. You have an extensive background in dance, bodywork, yoga, Pilates, and biomechanical flexibility and strength. You developed your own movement method and platform called the floss. Is it the floss.com?

Well, it's the floss. You got it.

Yeah, yeah. To educate people on the often overlooked source of health, our fascia network. Von's fascia flossing classes, which you must try, by the way, and private sessions to resculpt the body's foundational structure through a personalized combination of physical manipulation, guided resistance movement, which I personally loved, and engaged muscle elongation techniques. The floss is all about remapping your network of fascia, something that, yes, you can do. By using an engaged elongation technique, we can cause an internal exfoliation of your structural connective tissue. At the floss, people find space and comfort in their bodies that they didn't even know they could have. You have classes that are curated to alleviate scar tissue. For example, densified fascia stagnation in the tissues that can cause physical pain. For an immediate sense of improved mobility, tension relief, and posture, which is so important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So tell us what fascia is, because I think a lot of people listening don't even have any idea what that is?

Right. So this is so important, fascia. A lot of us have heard this buzzword, right? We hear about fascia blasting or rolling out our fascia. And really fascia, simply put, is it's the tissue that connects all other tissues. It's our connective tissue network. It forms a matrix like structure that is using compression, tension, and suspension to hold us up and keep all of our parts together. And if you want to picture it, best thing to do is to go online and look up on YouTube Dr. Gimberto's video called Scrolling under the Skin. So you can actually get a real visual, but more of a. You know, the best visual we can do is like a spider web, Like a gorgeous spindly spider web. But the fascia takes on many forms. So it can be spider web like, but it also can be sheath like. So like a beautiful piece of silk fabric wrapping our bodies just under the skin, or wrapping our organs, et cetera. So fascia is hard to describe because it takes on the form or of whatever it's wrapping or forming, and it is truly our structural foundation because fascia is our railroad tracks or our scaffolding. The fascia is forming. The connective tissue is forming as you're forming an embryo to create the spaces and to create the actual formation of everything down to your organs. The cell wall, the bones. It's so ubiquitous, as Joanne Avison says, she's one of my teachers. And continuous. It really is a part of every single part of us. But besides being the great connector, it's also the separator. So it creates compartments in the body. Like, you don't want your respiratory mixing with your digestion or your middle digestion mixing with your elimination systems. So it creates separation. And that becomes really important when we think about things like cancer. When cancerous cells become disorganized, they'll cross over fascial boundaries and. And that kind of just gives you more of a. A visual of what the fascia is meant to do in terms of keeping things separate from one another. Or for instance, you wouldn't want your lung fascia puncture the fascia that wraps the lung, because then you would have a collapsing lung, which is not good. So.

Yeah. So a fascia elastic, thick, or is it basically tight like an eggshell membrane?

Good question. All of us have elastin in our fascia. So baseline material of fascia is mostly collagen, usually about 90% collagen, a little bit elastin, a little bit of hyaluronic acid. And Then some baseline minerals. But based, they're doing these interesting studies based on where your ancestors are from, you'll have a slightly different composition. So if you are from far north, you might have more elastin in your tissues, or I can't remember the data but. Or vice versa, you might have more filaments that are a bit more collagen like. And collagen is fun to think about collagen in terms of the fascia, because one, it's a triple helix. So if you think about that DNA double strand helix that's wrapping around each other, collagen has a triple helix. So it makes it super strong. And so fascia can be stronger than steel per weight. But then there's this hydration component to the fascia which makes the collagen. We can think of it like liquid crystal. So we're all semi crystalline, which is cool and crystal. If you think of crystal in a lighter, when you rub crystal together, what does it do? Yes, makes friction. Right. Or electricity.

That's right, yeah. Energy. Exactly.

Energy, Heat. Exactly, exactly. So fascia is actually a great conductor of electricity. And so that's really interesting. Been studying and we can get into this later about how fascia relates to Qi or Eastern medicine practices, because I believe that the fascia is transporting our life force. And one more thing I was going to say about that is it slipped my mind, but I'm sure it'll come back. But yes, yes, fascia is piezoelectric, that's another word for creating your own electricity. So the more we move our fascia electricity we're generating and the more what? I think the more Qi, the more life force we're moving.

Oh, I love that. So basically, do not stay stagnant. Right. Don't sit on the couch. We need to move in order to generate our own electricity within us or the life force.

Absolutely. Fascia loves to be moved around. And one thing to know about fascia is it's our great protector or our great self stabilizer, or a great organizer. So if you're someone who has to sit at the computer all day, all the time, the fascia will start forming in a way that supports you to be most efficient in that position. So that's why when we get up, we feel all stiff. Because actually the fascia is that fast. It's actually helping us stabilize in that specific position. So we do want to, when we're working at the computer, I know I have to for hours on end, get up every half an hour and just give yourself a Wiggle, keep shifting your position.

That's great advice.

I want to come back to this.

Hydration because most of us are dehydrated, right?

Yeah.

And you mentioned it's important to get hydration in the fascia. If the fascia gets dehydrated, what happens?

Yeah, well, it becomes brittle, it becomes cold, it becomes dry, and it less supportive to circulation. If the fascia becomes dense, dry, matted, it's decreasing the ability for what's called differential movements or all of our parts. Like if I lift my arm up, my lung tissue actually has to go down even as my arm's coming up. So if you think about it getting dry and sticky and brittle, those gliding and sliding movements within the body are harder for that to happen. And of course, you know, when that, when it's dry, then we increase the temperature so it's increasing inflammation. You can see stagnation due to dry fascia. For a little personal story is when I first met my teacher, Bob Cooley, I had very dense tissue because I was a professional ballerina. So I thought my rock hard, solid quads were, you know, cool. But actually it was a good thing. A bunch of scar tissue in my quads. And so as I started working out, my fashion starting started to internally exfoliate my tissues, My hydration quality went up. And so my body was changing in structure, in terms of posture, but I wasn't gaining weight like per se, but I was gaining hydration capacity. So actually the scale was going up because each individual fascial fiber was able to house more fluid. So if you think of these kind of spindly fibers, or it's called a microvacule, if, if fluid can be held within the fiber, then you're hydrated. But if the fascia is denser or brittle, it's not holding as much hydration. So, so I used to feel like pounding water non stop. And then as I started doing this work, I could drink a more reasonable amount of water without directly peeing it out because my fascia, my tissue was able to hold that hydration. So that's something. And that's key, right, for skin health, for all functionality in the body.

Absolutely. But so essentially you're saying that if we have like hard rock abs, for example, that's not a good thing. Right. They should be like fluid.

Okay. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good thing that we can differentiate because there's a gradation of health of fascia. Right. Let's say some incredible athlete over here, maybe Simone Biles, like she was probably born with really incredible tissue that's hydrated and functional. Um, and also she works for it, of course. But let's say that. Let's just imagine that she has really fantastic tissue, which I imagine she does. And then over here is like scar tissue. Dense, hard, plasticky, matted, not moving well, the opposite of what we want. Scar tissue zone, right. That's kind of what happens. And then in the middle, we have dense fascia over here, and then kind of like good tissue over here. And so the. The most fantastic tissue has a gush to it. Like if you see an athlete shake their thigh, it goes. So the. All the different types of tissue are meshing well. The muscle tissue, the. The fat, the fascial tissue, there's kind of this cohesiveness. And I would say when I had that really densified tissue there, there's less cohesion. Or in other words, like, the fascia was really hard and then the muscle was trying to work against the fascia anyways, so.

So in this big scheme of things, it's just a matter of, you know, keeping things fluid. That's really it, right?

Keeping things fluid and having the correct ratio of muscle tissue to fascia. Because fascia can work like a tourniquet if it is dense, because it is wrapping each muscle group, each individual muscle, and then down to each muscle fiber is enveloped in another layer of fascia. So if you think of those Russian egg dolls, it's fractal. Or if you cut a grapefruit open and you see the first layer of fascia would be the. The peel, and then you see the pith, and then each slice of the grapefruit has another encasing that would be just like our muscle. And then even down to the little tiny filaments in the grapefruit, that's another encasing of fascia, and that's how our muscles are. And so if the fascia becomes dense, it tourniquets the muscle and decreases its ability to volumize or to strength train. Right. The muscle has to be able to expand in order for us to get stronger. And if the fascia is binding that tissue, then you're going to have a hard time. Even if you did a million reps of bicep curls, but you had scar tissue here for. For whatever reason. Often we don't have scar tissue in our bicep, but it would be like, I'm trying to strengthen my bicep, but I can't.

So, yes, makes sense. Now, oftentimes when I do Surgery in the mouth. I, you know, open up the gum and I see connective tissue is fascia. Connective tissue.

Yes, exactly. Right. So, you know, fascia is kind of a new frontier, and it really hasn't been codified. What we decide determine what is connective tissue and what is fascia, but both. They're really the same thing.

Yes. Yes. They don't connect.

Yeah, they all connect. Fascia in Latin means to bind. And so there's some anatomists who will designate, but for our sake, we'll just keep it as it's all connective tissue. It's all fascia.

Right. So let's talk about flossing. And not the kind of flossing that a periodontist would typically talk about, but we're going to talk about fascia flossing. What is that?

Yeah, well, like you would do in your mouth with, you know, our. Our periodontic flossing techniques is we're cleaning up between the teeth. Right. And so I kind of coined the term because I had this feeling like, oh, we are cleaning up our tissues, or we're. We're helping bring them back to their more homeostatic state. State. So this is how fascia flossing works. We use an engagement or contraction. Some people know this as an eccentric contraction as we go into an elongation phase. So animals do this all the time. You know how they grab on the ground and they're like. Or we actually do it when we yawn in the morning. We're adding engagement as we're going into elongation, and that's termed as pendiculation. Pendiculation. All that means to engage as you move your tissues around. And the animals know to do this because instinctually, they know it helps their tissues be healthier and to move.

Without fail.

Yes. And you can pandiculate any area of your body, which is fun. So it's just adding resistance as we elongate in space. And so if I was going to do a pendiculation movement. Oh. So what we're doing is we're taking that concept and we're applying it to every major muscle group in the body. So we want to pandiculate the quads, the hamstrings, the calves, the traps, blah, blah, blah. So if I was going to do that to my bicep, I would contract my bicep, maintain the contraction, and then start to elongate it as the contraction still maintains. So what's happening there? And I'm sorry, folks, for not who don't have A visual, but I'll just give you a visual here. So our tissues are meant to. The muscle and the fascial tissue or myofascia are meant to slide on each other. When muscle tissues contracting, muscle and fascia tissue are contracting, they're meant to slide and glide. As we elongate, they slide out like this. If the muscle tissue and the fascia are more condensed or matted, disorganized, you have an adhesion, you have a knot, that organization is going to be less. So what we do is we add that pendiculation action. Action. We add engagement. We're engaging the tissues. And then as we start to elongate with that elongate or. Sorry, that engagement maintained, as we go into elongation phase with that engagement maintained, the tissues start to reorganize, which is so cool because you're applying tensile force as you elongate through that tissue, the fibers, the filaments, can start to realign and reorganize. And we. My former teacher, Bob Cooley did a study with Dr. Gimberto in Bordeaux, France, and watched it with an endoscope, watched these fibers reorganizing. But what also happened, which is cool, and this is kind of even more of the flossing concept, is that as that engagement plus elongation phase is happening, some of those fibers that are brittle, dry, old, whatever, start to break up and go into your elimination system to be rinsed out of the body. Poop, pee, sweat or cry, and it's out. Say we were working on your shoulder, right? We're flossing your shoulder. We were trying to move stagnation, but also clean up any scar tissue that was hanging out in your shoulder. And that's probably what happened. Then a sense of spaciousness comes, is. Is realized a sense of comfort because the tissues are more organized. So that's what flossing is. And that's why I say it's kind of like an internal exfoliation, is because we're really cleaning up the tissues or helping them reorganize. Now, listen, before we turn this into, like, oh, I gotta go after my body and I gotta floss it and I gotta internally exfoliate my tissue. By the way, internal exfoliation isn't exactly what's happening, but, like, it's an easy thing to understand, right? It's just kind of a fun way to explain what's happening. But before we go after our body, we really have to be like, wow, how incredible that my body adapted to what I needed it to do. Right. Because shoulder or in my quads, my body was adapting, my fascia was adapting, being like, oh, we need to support and sustain this area for whatever reason it was. And people are always like, well, why do I have dense fascia in my hamstrings? I'm like, well, you tell me. You know what?

Yeah, what are you doing? Yes.

What happened in your life story that caused you to have dense hamstring or dense tissue in our hamstrings? But guess what? Almost all of us do. I'll give you a couple of reasons. Sitting down, walking on concrete, not squatting like we used to do as farmers or hunter gatherers, et cetera. And just like lack of movement. But so I can give you those kind of cultural significances. But like, were you a cyclist or were you like a runner when you were a kid? And that like gave you dense tissue in the back of your legs? Or why do I have scar tissue in my ankle? Oh, I rolled my ankle six times when I was playing volleyball.

You know, for me it was dentistry because I'm in the same position, holding this elbow up high. So that repetitive motion really created a problem in the back.

Yeah, exactly. And oftentimes when you ask yourself, oh, why is my tissue dense over here? You can, you know the answer. Yeah, yeah. So, but how amazing that your body adapted to try to support you and then the pain comes and that's just a signal like, oh, hey, let's, let's support ourselves somehow. And I found that flossing is a great way to support. It's really the best way I've, I've been able to support all my injuries from my dance career.

Great. So. So if somebody's listening to this and you know they're having aches and pains or they feel stiff, like, how does somebody start fascia flossing?

Good question. Well, fun way to go. There's some free videos on my YouTube channel. You can just look up my name, Bonnie Kratzer. Or the floss or fascia flossing works well in a YouTube search and joining my email list, you'll get a free five day class series. And then I teach on Zoom twice a week so people can fascia floss with me. And that is a self practice. And then of course there's the supported practice like you and I have done one on ones where I'm doing more hands on fascial manipulation where you resist as I move you in space. Whereas when you're self practicing, you resist and move yourself in space. Both are fantastic. Both have Great benefits. Really important to self floss on your own to maintain what's going on. And sometimes we need a little bit more a booster to get us going. So a private is useful, but I have a whole online database too. If you want to become a member of the floss, there's over a hundred videos and you can find videos from different timestamps from two minutes to an hour. You can work on your shoulders. There's one for stress, there's one for digestion, headaches, ankles, everything you can think of. I've tried to film it, so. And if you have a record them. So, yeah, that's great.

Two minutes. You mentioned you have a video for two minutes. Can you really like. Is it for a particular area or. Or is it like a full body kind of floss in two minutes?

Oh, good question. I think the two minute one is for your hamstrings. And I find because the hamstrings are so dense with accumulated fascia, that if you can target the hamstrings, you really feel like a different person. And I always say five flosses are better than zero, so. And five flosses take you 30 seconds to do five hamstring flosses on each side and really can just completely change your day. So five are better than zero. That's right.

Because the hamstrings are also connected to the lower back. Right. So. So it's not just for your hamstrings. It's probably if you're feeling pain in other areas of your body.

Absolutely. The hamstring fascia links right up into the lumbar spine, into the SI joint, and then of course, determines the tilt of the pelvis. And if our pelvis is tilted too much in either direction, you can have a little compression in your low back. Any tilt in the pelvis will then also determine the posture of the rest of your spine. So really setting ourselves up from the pelvis up will can alleviate any kind of back stuff. I really. My trouble was my neck from my dance career. And changing my hamstrings was actually the thing that alleviated my neck pain and reached the vertebra in my cervical. Yeah, I'd completely lost the curve in my cervical spine. I was like 100% diagonally straight. And changing my hamstring tissue is what changed my neck. Yeah, yeah.

That's amazing. I'm sure there's people listening with neck pain and they never realize that by working on your hamstrings you can alleviate neck pain.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So how often do you recommend Somebody to do flossing. Is it daily? Is it once a week?

That's a good question. It's all very personal. I can't quite answer it for each individual, but I think starting out out a couple times a week, three times a week, you want to kind of get ahead of the tissue if that's feeling really good. You could do a couple longer practices each week and then do like five to 15 minutes each day. I always do. I usually am at dance class or I go on a run. So I'll do a little flossing before or after. And then I do a couple longer practices of self flossing each week.

Guard 8. Yes. Because we want to maintain also. And five to 15 minutes, everybody can find during their day. It's not like an hour workout, you know, or heavy or intense.

Yeah.

If somebody cannot move, let's say they're bedridden, is that something they can do in order to help their fascia?

Yeah, they might need someone to help move them in space. But often times people who are bedridden can get a lot of benefit out of this because an eccentric contraction actually uses a lot less energy than a concentric contraction, like so a traditional bicep curl versus going in the opposite direction. That's an eccentric contraction. So if there's someone to help them with the movement part, it can be a very therapeutic modality, certainly. And there's probably. There's a couple self things you could do if you were in bed, for sure. I definitely have a few chair flosses in the video portal for folks that aren't on their feet or getting on the floor as much.

Great. Let's talk about the significance of Eastern medicine, Meridian roadmap and how it relates to fascia.

Oh, it's so fun. I just have such a gratitude and a wonder and astonishment with how amazing Eastern medicine is. That the wisdom of Eastern medicine. It kind of blows my mind how much they figure it out without the technologies we have today. And there's some acupuncturists. There's one man in particular, Dan Keown, who's in London. He's a PhD acupuncturist, but also a Western medicine doctor. And he wrote a book called Spark in the Machine. I recommend that to anyone who's curious about this kind of thing. But he explains how he thinks the fascia is actually creating the channels in which the Qi flows. And so that based on our embryology, our fascia is designed and organized in a specific way, and so it actually lines up and is relative to the Chinese medicine meridians or the Eastern medicine meridians. And I find this very interesting because as I'm. I was deeply working my fascia when I first learned this. You can feel the Qi moving through the fascia if you're kind of really zoned in. And some of you out there have had acupuncture where you get a needle and it zips up the leg. The Qi, the energy zips up the leg. Well, I'm pretty convinced that it's the fascia transducting that electricity.

Yeah, I've had acupuncture many times, and I know exactly what you mean. Especially where there's stagnation in the fascia and the needle goes through, that definitely can trigger a signal.

Yeah. Dr. Helene Langevin did a great study on this, too. Especially when they twist the needles, it's actually twisting the fascia and it changes the electrical messaging between the points, between the needles and through the fascial network. We know that the fascia works on the nervous system, but the nervous system is also wrapped in fascia, so.

Yes, very true.

So, yeah. So when we're flossing, if. Or let's. Let's say it this way. If I'm working on someone's shoulder and they. And I'm working the small intestine channel, because I'm using the Eastern medicine roadmap to guide me as I'm moving people through space. So I have patterned movements that are relative to the meridians. So if I'm working their upper shoulder, and I'm like, oh, this is small intestine channel. There's some scar tissue here. This is interesting. I wonder why there's some density here. And my intuition lights up and I might ask them, like, how's your gut health? And almost always, if there's scar tissue in the small intestine channel, they're like, well, I have a little bit of this. I have da, da, da. Like, things are going on with the gut. So, you know, we can. It's not for diagnosing, but it's for clues and, like, interesting little, little treasures on your.

Absolutely. Because in the end, everything is connected from the top of our head to the bottom of our feet. I use the energy meridians as well in dentistry, when we look at, you know, if there's stagnation in the tooth itself or a chronic infection that's related to, let's say, the small intestine as well. So sometimes I also think that entire meridian can be affected if we see stagnation.

Absolutely. And it can go both ways. Right. Like, if you're having gallbladder trouble, it might be initially from your gallbladder as organ, but was it stagnation built up in the gallbladder channel that then decreased the functionality of the gallbladder itself? Yes, very interesting, for sure.

Yeah. And I agree with you. It's amazing that thousands of years ago, somebody actually. So they mapped out the acupuncture meridians.

Amazing. Like, what a gift, right? Wow.

Yes, definitely. And not just to go on to how it's connected to oral health fascia, of course. It is also, you know, in the head and neck area, of course. And a lot of my patients who are cleansers or grinders, like, I had somebody yesterday, actually, she is basically having a really hard time. Her muscles here were like rocks on the side of the face. Her neck was like a rock, and her teeth are starting to be sore from the clenching.

Right.

So how can someone like that find relief with such a work?

That's such a great question. Like you just said, we want to think holistically when it comes to that level of tension. Working the tissue, of course, in your upper shoulders and in your neck is going to give you relief in the chest and the scalenes. Getting inter oral work, of course, getting some folks who do craniosacral interaural fascial massage, as you know, could be really fantastic. But really getting the quality of the tissue overall in the whole body to be. To soften up a little bit, to relieve that tension and to become more pliable in the last stick is going to give great relief. And again, going all the way down into the legs, even not just thinking upper back, for instance, the stomach channel in Chinese medicine actually starts just under your pupil and zigzags around your face and into your jaw. So stomach seven is right at the hinge of the mandible. And then it comes down here next to your voice box, through your chest, through your nipples, down the sides of your belly button, and into your lateral quads, so your outside quads. So I'll throw in a little personal story here, which is when I started getting worked on, 200 quad flosses were ordered on my body, so I got quad resistance stretches. And what happened? It was so crazy. My face is narrow in general, but it was more narrow. And every day I could literally see my face incrementally going out and out and out. It was very slight, very subtle, but it does. My face changed because that chain of fascia from the quads relative to the jaw Remember, this is the meridian. The meridian is related to the fascial chains. It was compressing my face, and so my quads actually changed how much fascial tension was being applied to my jaw. And that was the thing that helped me stop grinding my teeth. And, you know, I still struggle with jaw tension here and there. I'm like, okay, well, let's work on quads. And stomach channel, which is associated going right through the quad, is also, in Chinese medicine, associated with overall muscle health. So if I'm feeling like I'm tense overall, I'm going to floss my quads because that's just signaling all of my muscle tissue to relax.

Yeah, fascinating. I had no idea there was a relationship between your quads and clenching and grinding. But, yeah, I'm going to try this myself, actually. But how long would it take to floss the quads? Because that's a pretty big area.

That's a big area. You'd have to be consistent if you really want to change in your jaw. So I would do 25 a day to start with. There's some simple ones you can do on your back, and then you can make your way up to more advanced exercises. But I would do 25 a day on each leg. Try it for a month. You know, give yourself a day break, like once a week if you need a break. Of course, do that. And. But you're also going to have to work your hamstrings because the hamstrings have to contract if the quads can elongate. So hamstrings and quads every day for a little while. Also, the hamstrings are going to help with the tension up here and see how it goes, see what happens. But consistency is key when you're trying to get ahead of your tissue, like I mentioned earlier.

Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, there's no magic pill and there's no magic movement. You have to be consistent and do it over a period of time. Of course. Because oftentimes I get asked, well, is there a quick fix? And I don't know, is there a quick fix with fascia?

Yeah, well, I don't think so. But the good news is, like, when we worked on your shoulder for the first time, there was a significant amount of change. Right. We didn't build Rome in a day, but we had a good. This. For me personally, this has definitely been the most efficient way to support my body. And I love getting everything done. I love massage, I love rolling, I love acupuncture. I'll go to acupuncture every single week for the rest of my life. But if I really need a significant change, I'm going to have one of my students floss me out.

Oh, great. Any other support for oral health in relationship to fascia? Any other tips that you can give us?

Yeah, actually, I had a question for you. So amazing that you use the meridians to help you kind of figure out what's going on. Like, for instance, I know that if we have bleeding gums, it can be a stomach meridian or a large intestine issue, meaning there's too much heat somewhere in the body and stomach channel or large intestine. If the gums are pale and receding, it could be a spleen issue. I'm not an acupuncturist, so my knowledge can't go into diagnosing in the mouth, but absolutely getting that intraoral work. Working the palate can change the configuration of the jaw and help the teeth settle and of course, will impact the fascia that is connecting with the gums. But I was wondering, is there. I feel like I have a filament of memory here about each tooth being a different associated with different meridian. Is that true?

Okay, that is Chernobyl. So, for example, wisdom teeth in the area of wisdom teeth, that can relate to heart health and energy exchange. Oh, wow. When we're talking more about the front teeth, they're more connected to the bladder and the urinary tract.

Right? Right. Yeah.

So people that have an abscess in the front teeth, usually I can ask them, how's your bladder? How's your urinary health? And typically, we do find a connection.

There you go. See? Smart Chinese medicine. Oh, yeah. And so teeth are associated with kidney, bladder, or kidney essence. So in Chinese medicine, they see the teeth as an extension of the bone. Would you agree with that, as a doctor?

I agree absolutely, 100%. Teeth are bone, and I talk about this. And definitely bone is alive. People think, you know, bone is dead. You know, teeth are not alive. They absolutely are. And they can restate just like fascia. You can reshape teeth, you can reshape bone. So any structure in the body, I believe, can be reshaped.

Absolutely. I also think that once I started changing my fascia and just felt like my overall health and comfortability in my body just took a big leap forward, I wanted to just do all the things that made me feel good. Like it became easier to floss my teeth, for instance, which I hated to do before. Feel good, want to take care of yourself. So I would say that's kind of like the overall message about the thinking holistically in terms of the fascia, because it is the one thing that connects everything else. You get this wow, this amazing change in how you're feeling, and then you just want to keep feeling good. So you do the things that make you feel good, like.

Exactly. One last thing I wanted to chat with you about. I have a lot of patients with headache. You know, especially the kind of tension headache. Can that be related to, like, fascia stagnation?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Especially if it's particularly a tension headache and it's probably rooted in coming from the shoulders. If you can recreate a headache by pushing on a certain area, then you probably know it is connective tissue related. Like, say, like, if I go to the chiropractor and they're pushing on my shoulder, I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel it lighting up across the side of my head. Or this is gallbladder channel and TCM around your temporalis here. So that is a good way to kind of figure out, is it that kind of headache? And then again, I would, I would think, holistically get down into your legs in your life. What. What's going on that's making you feel that tense in your body? Then we go after the shoulders, we go after the neck and the chest. And the chest can actually give you some immediate relief. Just an overall tonation of the nervous system and of the tissues. Just like calm your system down. Working the chest can be a nice way to relieve neck and headache stuff. But yeah, that definitely. That's a little hill to climb, something to sort out and. And figure out what's going on for sure. But I have full compassion for people with tension headaches. I know what that's like. It's rough.

Yes, absolutely. Well, everyone, I hope we have convinced you to floss. That's very important. And not just floss your teeth, but, you know, help to floss your body. Go to floss the floss.com and really, I highly encourage you to try one of Bonnie's classes. It's really phenomenal. And I mean, I. Whenever I floss, I feel amazing and my posture is better. My shoulders are farther back and I just feel lighter and more open.

Amazing. Oh, Dr. Sanda, thank you so much for having me today. What a pleasure.

Oh, Bonnie, it's been a pleasure and I hope to see you soon.

Yeah, see you soon. Take care.

Bye. Please make sure you check out the. The show notes for any links mentioned in the show. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer, message me on Instagram @Dr. Sandha. This is Dr. Sandha. And remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health. So take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.