LS 61 - The MELT Method, A Breakthrough Self-Treatment System to Eliminate Chronic Pain, Erase the Signs of Aging, and Feel Fantastic in Just 10 Minutes with Sue Hitzmann

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Welcome to the Longevity Show. Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field. Along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a longer.

And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Sue Hitzman. She is creator of the Melt M E L T method, founder of the Fascia Research Society, and author of the New York Times best selling book the Melt Method. A breakthrough self treatment system to eliminate chronic pain, erase the signs of aging and feel fantastic in just 10 minutes a day. I I can't wait to learn more about this. Sue, welcome. How are you?

I'm really great. Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

Good to have you on. Where are you located?

I'm in New York City in the most stuck stressed city on the planet. It's Manhattan. I live on the Upper west side of New York City.

What is fascia and what is the milk method?

Fascia, or scientifically, I guess that's a scientific term. But connective tissue, it's a three dimensional fluid based architectural matrix under your skin. Unbeknownst to most people, we have this flexible scaffolding under our skin that literally infuses through every structure of our body from our skin clear down to our bones. It's primarily made up of collagen, hyaluronic acid and water. And it attracts these cells and the proteins in connective tissue attract water into this tissue. And it is connective tissue that could be considered the stability system of your entire body. So connective tissue as a system is actually its primary job is to support, protect and stabil all aspects of your body. So it's the primary tissue that gives your joint shock absorption, keeps your bones aligned, it gives your muscles integrated balance and continuity. And it also provides the environment that every cell, nerve and blood vessel lives in. It's basically trying to keep you efficiently stable and balanced. And so when it's hydrated, it can do its job efficiently. But with science. Yes. So what science is starting to recognize is daily living in our repetitive habits and postures cause cellular dehydration in the connective tissue, which everybody has experienced. Like when you sit for long periods of time and you get up and your joints feel stiff for a little while, but you start moving around and, you know, it kind of goes away, so we never do anything about it.

I have to tell you, I love that. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said sitting is the new secondhand smoke.

It so is. It literally is what's killing us. It's lowering our blood flow, our circulation, it increases cardiovascular disease, and it definitely is the primary thing that's calling what I call stuck stress to live in our bodies. So what the melt method is, is truly a simple self treatment technique that simulates the same manual therapy techniques that I've been doing for decades in a private practice here in New York. And the primary job and intention of melt is to help rehydrate the connective tissue for sole purpose, which is to improve the efficiency of our own nervous system, because connective tissue is again, the environment that our nervous system functions in. So when connective tissue is dehydrated, it truly does exhaust our nervous system and it makes our bodies work harder and harder just to maintain upright posture. Then of course, it's even harder to move when the tissue is in this state. So melt is just a simple technique using soft balls and rollers to educate people on how to rehydrate this tissue, get the fluid flow moving in the tissue, and to help re establish neurological balance in the regulators of the nervous system.

Okay, so when you talked about hydration, I thought you were going to say to everybody, drink more water or maybe take a supplement that helps you. Maybe the right word is assimilate water or hydration, but you're talking about movement that creates hydration. Would massage do this as well?

Yes, massage and just general movement. I mean, you know, again, we've all experienced like sitting for long periods of time, or maybe you wake up in the morning and your feet feel stiff on the floor, floor, but once you start to move around, it kind of goes away and you stop feeling so stiff. And that's actually the problem of this cellular dehydration is if you never do anything about it. Cellular dehydration has a tendency to accumulate like sediment in a river. And yes, it is part and parcel about what we not only drink in hydration, but what we eat also does help to keep the fluid flow of tissue hydrated. However, the problem with most of us is that you don't drink water consistently enough, in small volumes, consistently enough to actually keep the tissue hydrated. And the problem with connective tissue, very simply, if I could give you a metaphor, is if you think of connective tissue like a sponge, if you've ever woken up in the morning and you feel as stiff as the dried out sponge left overnight out on your kitchen sink. That's kind of the same type of issue that happens in your connective tissue. It becomes too stiff. Stiff. And just like a dried out sponge does not absorb water as fast as a moist one. That's the problem with cellular dehydration is if you never do anything about it and you never stimulate these cells in a proper, efficient way, that sediment starts to accumulate. And as fascia becomes too stiff, you can drink all the water you want and all you do is pee more. You go to the bathroom more often because they're called glycoaminoglycans and proteoglycans. They are basically proteins with a carbohydrate r them. And they are literally what attract water into the matrix to mix and work with collagen to create the helix of collagen to create the binding. Now, I know this sounds scientific and technical, but the problem with cell dehydration is as fascia becomes stiff, the proteins decrease. And it's not only what makes your skin sag and wrinkle, it makes your joints stiff. You lose space. Like nobody ever complains about getting taller. As we get older, we just lose the space in the joints from day to. And a lot of that is caused by this cellular dehydration. And the components of fascia that are so important to remember is that if fascia becomes too stiff, what it loses is something called elastic recoil. So that's not about how much flexibility or stretch the tissue has. What connective tissue and collagen allows the tissue to do is to move and adapt. And then ideally, it always returns to its ideal shape. And when fascia is cellularly de dehydrated, you lose it. You literally lose the ability for it to morph and adapt efficiently. And that's really the problem that's occurring in most people's bodies. And that's what melt is here to stop is that cell dehydration from day to day so that you can juice back up the tissue each day so that it doesn't break it down entirely.

Okay, so I want to make sure we got some actionable tips out of that. So first of all, are you saying that the idea of pounding water, which I kind of do in the morning first thing, because I wake up and I just feel like I need water immediately. And I think I have a very good habit of drinking a lot of water in the morning. But are you saying that you need to drink it slow and consistently versus you know, have a liter of water in the morning.

One thing that you're right about, Jason, is that if you think about it, you've been not only starving yourself, but you've been dehydrating yourself for eight hours. If you're like me and you actually sleep eight hours a night, I don't.

And I was gonna ask you about that, because I have an interesting theory about that, by the way, that I want to run by you. Yes, go ahead and finish the answer, because I don't want to get off on a confusing tangent, but I want to ask you next.

Go ahead. Yes. So the thing about water is, you're absolutely right. When you first wake up in the morning, the best thing you can do is drink about 8 to 10 fluid ounces of water right when you wake up in the morning. But the problem with most people, that's it. That's it. You don't need to drink a gallon or a liter of water, but you do want to drink a good solid glass of water when you first get up out of bed, because it does start the process of reabsorption. However, the problem that most people do is that they'll go ahead and they'll drink their coffee and they'll eat their food and they'll pop all their pills and drink a whole bunch of water there. But then they'll go three, four hours, and they won't really drink much water at all. And that is the breakdown of the cellular hydration. What we're finding in research is that the problem with the water molecule is it has to break down just like any kind of nutrient, water molecules are also complex, so you got to break those down also. So if you're drinking a huge amount, like you're drinking a half of a liter in one shot, your body can only break down and process just so much, and then the rest of it just gets pushed through your kidneys, and then it overworks your kidneys, and now you're just going to the bathroom a lot. However, we would be more cellularly hydrated. Instead of drinking like a liter of water in the morning, a liter of water in the afternoon, and then one later in the day, we would be better served on a cellular level to just drink one liter of water all day and sip it every 15 minutes, just taking a couple of sips, you would actually stay more cellularly hydrated throughout the day doing it that way. And of course, for those of us who exercise, drinking some water before you engage in your activity, sipping water throughout it and restoring hydration afterwards is absolutely essential.

And this is why I use the H2O IV and it just drips all the time. I'm joking, but seems like it'd be a good idea. Okay, so consistent moderate amounts of water are better than a lot of water. So don't wait till you're thirsty. You know, just drink water always throughout the day, right?

Absolutely. And for my clients who do have a hard time with that, I always encourage them to either take a glass and put a straw in it, because you'll be more apt to sip through a straw. And I have my own tricks to stimulate the taste buds is to add about a tablespoon of ginger juice or extracts like cayenne and ginger, because that spice. And if you put a little lemon in it, it opens the taste buds, and you'll almost feel like you're more thirsty more often. And I know that's kind of a trick, but that's how I've gotten clients to sip more water more frequently, is that they actually think that they're feeling more thirsty, but it's just that their taste buds are open, and so they tend to keep reaching for the drink to feel like they've satisf their taste buds and what it's doing to the brain to say, hey, I'm thirsty. Sip more water. But actually, it's just a way to get them to drink more often. So that's another little trick.

So there are a lot of people who talk about the importance of sleep.

Yes.

And I am not great at sleeping, unfortunately. I don't know if I've hacked sleep or I'm just maybe lucky, but I don't feel like I need a ton of sleep. You know, when I wake up, I just want to get up and do things. You know, my mind turns on, and I find it difficult to turn it off, which is bad. Interestingly, though, when I have a night where I feel like I'm lucky enough to sleep eight or nine hours, I don't feel good in the morning, I wake up and I feel terrible. I mean, I'm certainly, you know, dehydrated, obviously, which you just explained, and my bones feel creaky. And if I sleep six, six and a half hours or five hours, I wake up and I feel better, oddly.

That's just it, Jason, is that, you know, we all have something called the circadian rhythm, and there's a cycle that your organs go through. And I'll tell you a couple of things, is, you know, first of all, let's go back to the connective tissue. And why does it.

And this hasn't always been this way, by the way. It's lately that I'm this way. But what I wanted you to get at though, when you talk about circadian rhythm is maybe that is a myth that we should be sleeping eight hours a third of our lives. Should we be sleeping it away? I mean, to me, I don't like that idea, but.

Well, it's a really great question, but here's. Let me set this story up for you and see if this resonates. Okay? So again, daily living causes connective tissue dehydration. And what you first start feeling are what we call pre pain symptoms. You get up, you feel a little stiff, but you move around and it goes away. So you never do anything about it. But if you never do anything about it, you remember what I said, it kind of accumulates like sediment in a river. If you think of connective tissue like a fluid based system, it should be uncommon state of flow. But if the sediment starts to accumulate now, you start having more symptoms like joints start to ache more often, your back feels more stiff more often. And that causes a more catastrophic problem. Because living mostly in your joints are these things called proprioceptors and mechanoreceptors. And these are the nerve endings that your brain uses to identify where your joints are at in relationship to your pelvis and the earth so that you move with efficiency. Well, if connective tissue dehydration is stiffening the tissue, your own nervous system is now falling faulty in identifying where those joints are at now your movements become a little bit more funky looking, your joints hurt a little bit more. But a more catastrophic problem happens is that it starts to exhaust your nervous system just to make your joints move in just a seated posture, let alone move when you actually want to do something like play a sport or walk around or go for a run. And the thing is, for as exhausted as you start to feel in the middle of the day, you start having symptoms that seem completely unrelated to connective tissue. Like your digestion starts to slow down, you're more constipated, you tend to be more agitated, or you're depressed more often. And then again, you're feeling exhausted and tired and grumpy all through the day. But at night, when people try to fall asleep, they can't. And then they fall asleep, but then they're getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And that causes a bigger problem because at night that is truly where cellular repair in the Tissue is most dominant. So if you' not getting a restful night's sleep, whether you tend to be one of those bodies that sleeps for six hours or seven or eight, whatever that natural flow is for you, that works for you. If you're not getting the cycle of sleep, remember that sleep is light sleep, deep sleep, REM phase, deep sleep, REM phase, deep sleep. And it's kind of a cycle. Well, for a lot of people, they're never going into deep sleep. And that's actually where cellular repair is initiated. So that you slip into that deep sleep phase, you get those brain waves changing, and then all of the neurotransmitters start to process and proliferate and function more efficiently. It decreases some of the waste in your body. It takes waste out, and all of these processes that are occurring at night start to slow down. So not only are you waking up the next morning with a backlog of stuck stress, that's actually increasing your tendency for chronic pain, but it also is what's accelerating the aging process. So as you get older, it's kind of like it doesn't matter how many hours you sleep, you wake up kind of tired and exhausted. And that's telling you that cellular repair didn't happen as efficiently as it could. And that, again, is where melt comes into play. With my clients, who tend to not fall asleep, not stay asleep, have pain. We encourage them to melt up to about an hour before they are ready to go to bed, so that they actually boost their body's repair mechanisms prior to sleeping. So by the time they get to sleep, the repair process are already in play, and they tend to sleep more soundly and they wake up feeling more refreshed. And truly, that is the key ingredient of eliminating chronic pain, is a good night sleep. So if you're waking up in the middle of the night two or three times, that's kind of your cue that, hey, your nervous system is functioning inefficiently. Your body's working really hard even while you're sleeping to slough off all of the accumulated stress and toxins in your body. And it's got to wake you up in the middle of the night to eliminate it so that it can keep processing.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, so that's definitely bad. But what about sleeping six hours? Is that enough?

For some people? It is like, I'm a seven hour sleeper. The other thing that you have to think about, Jason, is like, a lot of people go to sleep some nights at 10:30, sometimes it's 11, sometimes it's 1. So the thing is, if you could all kind of remember to go to sleep around the same half hour time, so between 10 and 10:30, and then try to wake up between 7 and 7:30 or whatever the time and duration that you seem to sleep best, I have to tell you, I do have clients who say six hours is my number. Some people it's nine hours. But usually for an on average human being, you're talking six to nine hours of sleep for any human is probably a decent amount of time. It's the people who say I sleep two or three hours, I get up, I go pee, and then it takes me another hour to go back to bed. That's when you're kind of accelerating the aging process and you're walking down the road of pain problems.

Okay, so what do we do to implement the melt method? Tell us how to do it.

Well, melt, you know, we've got a lot of products and programs that we have. We've got about 1300 instructors worldwide. The book's been translated into eight languages. So we're all over the place. But people can also actively partake in doing it through the book and the DVD and the soft roller and the balls. And what the melt method book does is it educates people on how to devise what we call a melt map. So depending upon your problem, you know, like, if it's just how you said, it's like, yeah, I kind of feel like sometimes I'm a little achy or I have a little bit of pain, but it's not stopping me from enjoying my lifestyle or doing things that I like. You know, you could get away with melting a minimum of 10 minutes a day, three times a week, and you'd probably eliminate those kind of pain things that you're talking about initially. However, if you have a disorder or a disease, you've got chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Ms. parkinson's, something that's actually been diagnosed, diagnosed as a systemic or neurological issue or disease or dysfunction. You really want to look at the book, because the way that you have to understand how melt works is melt is trying to boost your body's natural ability to rest and repair. We are all equipped with repair capabilities, right? You cut yourself, you don't ideally bleed out, your body clots and you repair. It's part of the human design. However, when connective tissue stays in a dehydrated state, you're actually slowing down cell repair and the natural process of cell proliferation. So what melt is really there to do is to boost your body's natural ability to repair cells from day to day. So at a minimum, you're either lying on the roller doing a rebalance sequence or using the balls on your hands or your feet. Again, those are 10 minute treatments. And then for people who, you know, have more time or have a specific issue, like maybe you had a hip replacement or a knee replacement, you're going to be doing like we have these sequences. Lower body compression, applying gentle compression techniques called gliding, shearing and rinsing or tensional, two directional lengthening techniques where you're trying to tug on tissue to instigate the recoil. And something people should know is like the thing about connective tissue that we know now is connective tissue is architecture. It's literally a stability system that is managing tension, compression and stress of your body's movements. And again, if it becomes too stiff through either compressing or pulling on it for long periods of time, like we would when we sit, you're compressing the back of your body and you're also pitching your head forward and causing tension on your spine. What we know about connective tissue is if you compress or pull on it for long periods of time, that is the primary thing that causes cellular dehydration. However, the same thing that dehydrates it can actually restore the fluid flow. And that again is melt does, is we create gentle localized tension or compression, pulling or compression techniques on the tissue in very specific ways for short periods of time. To kind of, if you think of it again like a sponge, it's like you're trying to attract and work fluid into the sponge just like you would with your hand and then compress it and squeeze it out. So when you let it go, you can then get the fill effect through this technique called rinsing. And that's the basic principle and process that you learn about melt is the why, the how and the what of the technique. And why is it so different from foam rolling? And you know, what is that as opposed to what melt is? Because people see the roller and they just assume it's foam rolling and we're going to iron ourselves like a shirt. When we find a lumpy area, we're going to land on it and dig it out like we'll win an award for inflicting pain on the body. But melt, really, we don't roll very much on the roller. And when we do, it's very specific and very much in line with how a hands on, educated body worker would treat someone. And the beauty of melt for people who actually actively Partake in finding a therapist is that you can never replace bodywork, in my opinion. But what a body worker can't do is come home and work on you every single day. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money and you have to find a great person to have that kind of luxury. But what melt is, is sort of that it can be that supplement where if you went to see a body worker and then you melted, you would actually prolong the benefits that the bodyworker did so that when you go back to see them, they can actually progress you and move you through the pipeline of helping you to manage the problems of your body. And it's also a great thing to do before you get a massage because if you work with like heavy compression massage therapists, you'll find if you melt and then you either do foam rolling or you work with a heavy compression therapist like a Rolfer, you'll find it'll actually hurt you less and you'll get more out of those principles, which is to restore blood flow to muscle and get your muscles to be more stable.

Okay, so it's interesting that you use the word bodyworker instead of massage therapist. Why?

Bodywork, to me is a higher level. Massage therapy is just one form of bodywork. You know, acupuncture, Rolfing, structural integration, energy work, cranial sacral therapy, visceral manipulation, lymphatic drainage, all of those are all housed under body work. So I don't care what type of body work you do, but if you have somebody who is a hands on body worker, they're putting their hands on you and they're working through you. Even I would even push Reiki into that level. Even though they're working on energy fields and their hands are off of you, if you have a therapist who is taking their energy and their work and applying it to you, that's what body work is, is actually hands on therapeutic intervention through multiple types of forms of.

When it comes to, say, massage therapists, for example, should it be deep tissue? Should it. You mentioned that it shouldn't be painful. Should massage be more gentle, like a Swedish massage? You know, I mean, tell us about that. You know, for people to instruct their therapist.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Well, that's actually a really great question. You know, there's not a lot of research that says that, you know, digging tissue out and working really hard is actually creating much benefit. However, and this might sound cr. But think of massage kind of like sex, some people like a little harder and a little deeper and Some people like it a little softer and a little more subtle and you know, like the foreplay and the gentle, you know, strokes and things like that. So it really is different strokes for different folks. If you like heavier pressure, that's great. However, if a good massage therapist is working on you or say a Rolfer, they're not just looking at you and going, hmm, let me put my elbow right here and dig that out. They're palpating, they're identifying tissue, they're working light and then slowly working deeper. And that's how we should with hands off body work is what I call it. If you're using balls or rollers or objects on your own body and you're self administering pressure, it's an odd thing that people do. But you have to remember connective tissue is a supportive infrastructure under your skin. If you press too deep, too fast, your tendency is to muscularly contract. And fascia, when you press it too deep, too fast, it actually broadens and creates an active contractile force so that you don't injure or damage structures, blood vessels, nerves and everything that this tissue is supporting, especially in the superficial layers. So you're better off if you go to see a good therapist, a good massage therapist, they usually work a little longer strokes at the beginning and they kind of work over your whole body and then they start to go into different areas.

They warm it up before they just attack.

That's it. Yeah, they kind of stimulate the tissue without going too deep, too fast. That would be a great therapist.

So I want to ask you about yoga because that's where, you know, they talk a lot about fascia in restorative yoga classes. I assume you're a fan of this or maybe not.

I would say yes and no. Here's the thing is, I think people think that if they do yoga, they're always going to do good for themselves. However, I have worked on literally thousands of yoga instructors and yoga enthusiasts who strain muscles and tendons. Because the thing about connective tissue when it's cellularly dehydrated is that if we go to do these long held positions, and the thing about yoga is these are very big movements and it's a whole body pulling. And so if fascia is segmentally again, like sediment in a river, dehydrated in local regions, you tend to pull and stretch the tendinous structures closest to joints. And that's a problem. And that is why so many yogis become very hyper mob that they're not actually integrating cohesive pulling throughout the whole fascial tissue because they haven't hydrated it first. So what we've encouraged people and a lot of our melt instructors are actually yoga practitioners. If you melted for 10 minutes before you went into your yoga class, either, you know, doing maybe lower body compression or the upper body compression sequence, take it less than 10 minutes to do, and then you walked into the classroom on a grand global level. The whole fascial system being this three dimensional matrix, would actually have more integrity and more elastic recoil throughout the entire fluid system. So then when you did, like your down dog or your warrior poses, the fascia is more apt to elongate and cause tensional pull more cohesively through every area of your body, so that when you let it go, you actually get that movement and fluid exchange. The problem is, in some of the yoga practices that hold stretches for long periods of time, whether you know it or not, you're actually pulling on the tendonous structures the most. So when you walk out of the room, your joints tend to be less stable. You don't improve stability. You might have improved what you think is flexibility. But I would bet to say that you've actually drawn yourself toward hypermobility and just understand you can be moderately flexible and have tremendous changes in the tissue. That's really important.

So hypermobility is bad. Most people think if someone can do the splits and they can do all these crazy stretches, that's a good thing. That's not necessarily good.

That's absolutely true. That most people who are hypermobile are actually loose in their joint structure, and that creates a shortening or a restriction in the fascia in the belly regions. And so your joints become more and more hypermobile. And, and in some ways your body is just not ready to move because you've actually decreased stability.

Okay, interesting, interesting point. Is there anything else you want people to know, A question I haven't asked you, and then give out your website if you would?

Well, I would just say, you know, I think what's the most important thing for people to know is that connective tissue dehydration is happening to every single person every single day, regardless of diet, exercise, or aging. It doesn't matter what age you are, how fit you are. Cellular dehydration is actually a natural cellular process that's occurring to every single person every single day. The problem is, if you never do anything about it, it does accumulate and it tends to cause problems not only in our posture and our alignment, but in our performance, our function. And over the long haul of your life, your general wellness because again, connective tissue is where cellular stability ideally is functioning and that's where cell proliferation, transportation and nutrient development is occurring. So we definitely want to know more about this tissue and care for it just like we exercise to keep muscles strong and things like that. Connective tissue is definitely an important component of the body to learn more about. And if you do want to learn more about Melt or you know, again, I would just check out the website. It's not meltmethod.com m e l t m e t h o d.com and I would go and check out the website and check out the blogs or click on Learn Melt and see if there's an instructor near you. Again, there's instructors all around the world, so see if there's an instructor near you so that you can actually experience it in a group environment and learn more about how to live better in your body and keep your body pain free.

Fantastic. Well, sue, thank you so much for joining joining us.

Thank you so much, Jason. I so appreciate being on the show and I hope that this helps people.

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