Brief: Fascia Facts vs Fictions (w/David Lesondak)
The online pseudoscience clearing house, Human Garage, treats fascia as a cure-all to nearly every disease imaginable. Yet as today's guest, David Lesondak, Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the bestselling Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters, tells Derek, they begin with a little bit of truth before going full Quantum nonsense.
David breaks down fascia this week: what it is, how it functions in the body, and why fascia pseudoscience is so dangerous.
Show Notes
David Lesondak's website
The Tissue That Connects Our Muscles May Be a Key to Better Health
Harvard scientists closer to solving centuries-old heart mystery
Human Garage: Manifesting Through Fascia
Human Garage: Anti-Gravity - Full Spinal Decompression
Human Garage: Autoimmune Diseases
Human Garage: Erectile Dysfunction
Human Garage: Anal Sphincter Release
Human Garage: Ileocecal Valve
Human Garage: Trauma Stored in Fascia
Human Garage: Trauma Release Maneuver
Human Garage: Fascia Work Cures Hives
Human Garage: Fascia Facial Release for Acne
Human Garage: Heart is a Vortex
Human Garage: Movement Instead of Medicine
Human Garage: Faith Healing
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Hey everyone, welcome to Conspiratuality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
And in this brief today, we'll be covering fascist pseudoscience.
I'm Derek Barris.
You can stay up to date with us on all of our social media handles, predominantly Instagram and threads, and you can listen to all of our episodes ad-free and get access to our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or you can just access our Monday bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts.
So, we're going to talk fascia, as I said, and we're going to explore some very strange claims about it through the lens of an organization called Human Garage.
Now, this is a multidisciplinary clinic, according to them, that specializes in fascia along with a host of other content such as movement, nutrition, astrology, urine therapy.
It's really a new age crab bag.
And this company was founded by a man named Gary Linehan.
Who has quite a checkered past, and we're going to be devoting an entire Main Feed Thursday episode to Human Garage in February.
But for now, let me say that I've found no medical or science credentials from any of the people in the organization, and yet they have quite a following.
That includes 1.5 million TikTok followers and 885,000 on Instagram.
Now, while they started in Venice, California, the organization is now run from Costa Rica, which apparently has something to do with Lineham's past legal troubles.
Like I said, we'll get to that next month.
So for our purposes today, we're going to talk fascia, which Human Garage treats as a cure-all.
And to wade through this, I'm joined by David Lesandak, who is the Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh's Medical Center's Center for Integrative Medicine.
Derek, it is so great to be here.
I got a big smile on my face.
books on fascia, including the bestselling fascia, What It Is and Why It Matters.
David also hosts the podcast, Body Talk with David Lysandak.
So David, thank you for joining me today.
Derek, it is so great to be here.
I got a big smile on my face.
I can't wait to talk to you.
Yeah, this is really good.
We were introduced through our mutual friend, Jill Miller, who is also a guest on the pod.
I've known her for many years and I'm very happy to talk about this subject, not only because of what I've seen from Human Garage, but I've also been fascinated by fascia.
I first heard about it from an old massage therapist friend of mine.
She read Anatomy Trains back in the day.
I was enthralled.
One day, I went in with a left shoulder that was basically locked.
And she spent some time working behind my right knee and my shoulder was fine.
I don't know what happened that day.
Who knows?
But I've been fascinated by the topic for a while and it is very hard to source good information as we're going to get into, but starting on a 101 level, what is fascia and why does it matter for our bodies?
We have 206 moving parts that we'll call bones.
And what moves them are 630 some odd muscles that attach it to different ends that are sometimes referred to as origin and insertion.
And each one of those muscles is wrapped in a tunic, in a sleeve of connective tissue that we call collectively fascia.
And If you think about it, that's 206 moving parts with a connectivity of over 1,200 possible places.
So the fascia is what connects the muscles to the bones and helps them move.
If you look at a skeleton model anywhere in a classroom, there's screws and wires and little dingles and dongles.
Holding it together in your body.
It's your fascia that's doing that.
You can think of your bones as your hard skeleton and your fascia is your soft skeleton.
But far from being an inert material, it is biodynamic in that it can grow and shape as you grow and shape.
So depending on how I use my body, abuse my body, accidents, injuries and things, The fascia helps form and support the rest of our musculoskeletal system as we live and move through the world.
And it can be manipulated for good or for ill, although I stay away from those people who manipulate it for ill.
But, you know, just like any other biological process, It can be shaped by a skilled therapist to get you the outcome you need like you had with your shoulder.
That took you almost two minutes.
And in your introduction to your book, you mentioned that there was an official authorized definition that was about a sentence long, but that could never actually sort of give a comprehensive overview.
And I kind of have a feeling that not only the newness of it to us, but that's part of the reason why some people are able to create a lot of mysticism around it that probably doesn't represent what it actually is.
Is that fair?
I think that's very fair.
I'm always trying to split the difference between accuracy and concision and there's a lot of different metaphors that I could be using but I know that I have an idea of who your audience is so I was trying to be a little more sophisticated in my answer.
But that is part of the problem too is we're talking about a tissue that is also a system And that's a both and kind of concept that can be difficult in what is by and large in either or world and in either or medical system.
So we have a circulatory system, but it's not one specific tissue per se.
We have a nervous system, but there are different kinds of nervous tissue and there's different kinds of fascial tissue, but it all forms this one system.
Yes, we do have, I think, a quite sophisticated audience, especially when it comes to the yoga and wellness worlds.
I'm constantly amazed at how much feedback we get, whether for good or criticism or correcting some of the things that we say.
So I think they will appreciate it.
It's good to have an audience that keeps you honest.
But the important thing to add here is that The cells that are responsible for maintaining your fascial tissue respond to physical supply and demand.
So when I say biodynamic, that's what I mean.
So how you use your body for good or for ill in terms of repetitive motion.
A lot of the conditions that I treat involve at some point repetitive motion injuries.
I'm going through something with my right shoulder now, but maybe we'll talk another time about that.
But I want to move on to some of the claims made by Human Garage.
We've both had the instance where when we first saw them, we thought it might have been human garbage.
That is what my eyes read, yes.
And mine did, too.
And I have to say, given what we're about to get into, I think that's fair.
So I'm going to share with you some examples of things that have been claimed.
I will include all the links in the show notes in case people think that I'm not being honest here.
But I think accuracy, as you said, is important.
So first up, They claim that the Earth has a magnetic north and south pole and so then, according to them, do humans.
So they claim that doing full spinal decompression or interlocking your hands behind your neck and moving side to side will allow you to unblock your magnetic field and make more money.
Is this science?
Is this science?
Well, let's perform a thought experiment, why don't we, and decide if this is science or not.
So the Earth does have a magnetic field, and the poles have changed.
Approximately 183 times over the last 83 million years as far as we can determine.
So that's an interesting fact I just want to throw out there.
So the magnetic field per se is always shifting to some degree.
So first of all, where you live on the planet could affect how that magnetic field impacts your magnetic field.
And there is an electromagnetic aspect to the body.
That's not a disputed fact.
But if we could interlock our hands and side bend and make more money, wouldn't we have a world full of millionaires where a quart of milk costs $1,000?
That is definitely going to be possible if we move towards Argentina.
Yeah.
That's my thought experiment.
So, so if every listener of this podcast today will do this for the next month and then report into Derek how their income has improved, it's a harmless experiment.
There's no harm to try.
Okay.
Well, we see all that sort of A Course in Miracles bullshit on our podcast all the time.
Yeah.
Wishcraft.
Wishcraft.
Yes.
And that's part of it is that there are always shades of truth in this.
Exactly.
That's what makes them compelling.
Yes.
Another claim.
Autoimmune diseases are caused by fascial issues in your small and large intestines, so pulling on your bladder will heal autoimmune problems.
Okay, again, partial truth in that statement.
Oversimplification.
And this is a problem I see in a lot of these spaces, Derek, is people take one fact, blow it out of the proportion, and often confuse mechanism and metaphor.
And I think we'll probably see this going down the list further.
But there is a fibrous aspect of fascia and there's a fluid aspect to fascia.
That's referred to as the extracellular matrix and in recent science the interstitium.
So, there is a lot of compelling evidence and ideas around this idea that the interstitium, the fluid network in the fascia that runs through the body, is a place where autoimmune problems can occur.
There's even some really compelling evidence about that's how cancer cells may travel.
But to say that you can change an autoimmune function by grabbing something and pulling on it, the body is way more complex than that.
And certainly, there are cases and I've treated people who've come to me with musculoskeletal problems who have autoimmune conditions that maybe change for the better while we're treating their musculoskeletal issues.
But it would be irresponsible for me to say that I treat autoimmune conditions even though sometimes those things do and can improve.
But also those people are probably also doing other things, getting other kinds of therapies to make that happen as well.
So this is if just pulling on your bladder fixed autoimmune problems, we wouldn't have them, would we?
Everybody would know how to do this.
Yeah, and that's something I run into often in terms of people not understanding how clinical trials work or what, you know, isolating different therapies, where if you're doing five therapies at once, then you can't really say the one you want to sell other people is the one that actually healed you.
Correct.
They also claim that a pelvic tilt causes erectile dysfunction, and you can cure this by...
By doing an anal sphincter release.
There is a video.
I will link to it.
I watched that video yesterday.
Thank you so much, Derek.
You're welcome.
Talk to me about erectile problems and fascia and maybe if there's a connection to sticking a hand up an anus.
A whole hand, eh?
Okay, so we are progressing here.
Well, I am not aware of anything in the literature or even anything anecdotal.
In my world of therapy of over almost 25 years now, that has posited whether it's an anterior meaning that pelvis is tilting forward or posterior tilting back or sometimes you can have one tilting one way, one tilting the other way.
I've never seen anybody even speculate that that is what causes or can be a cause of erectile dysfunction.
Now, getting a prostate massage.
Which is different than sticking a finger up your rectum.
Getting a prostate massage from a qualified professional, in some cases, can increase blood flow to the genitals that can give some relief to problems with ED.
But this is something that you need to be trained for.
And this is something that is not something that is, let's just, and stick it in and boom, you're fixed.
The body doesn't work like that.
There are no hacks for the body.
Oh, don't tell, don't tell Joe Rogan that.
I like Joe.
He's not all bad, but no, there, I mean, the body's a process.
It doesn't, things don't happen like that.
We don't spontaneously rearrange through the quantum field.
Oh, have you listened to Deepak Chopra?
Many times, yes.
There are many videos that talk about releasing the ileocycle valve.
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
I've had myofascial work done in that area and it is really intense.
I will attest to that.
But what is actually happening when someone works on that area?
Okay, so your internal plumbing, basically your digestive system from one organ to another, esophagus to stomach, stomach To duodenum, to liver, blah, blah, blah.
All have little valves between them to ferry the substances from one organ to the next for processing.
So the ileocecal valve is the valve between the small intestine and the large intestine.
And it doesn't have to be intense when you work it.
Muscle bone fascia is very different than organ fascia.
It's much more delicate.
But in the Baral system of visceral manipulation, which was created by Jean-Pierre Baral, a French osteopath, there is a way that one can palpate the digestive system.
To be able to tell where the valves are more open and where the valves are more closed.
They call it a pulsation.
So what you're doing in an ileocecal valve release is you're just trying to make sure that that valve is open and that the information The biological information and substances from the large intestine and the small intestine are flowing into each other properly.
I've worked with people with bowel obstructions and things like this.
It's a very useful thing to be able to do.
I don't even teach people how to do it to themselves, but I often find people are kind of overzealous about their application of it.
It doesn't need to be really intense.
So that's fairly legit.
That's fairly legit.
Yeah.
And like I said, I'm not going to dispute everything.
I really do feel like there are some things, but once we get to like curing paralyzed people through 10 minutes of holding them, it gets really strange.
And that does happen.
We're not going to really talk about that.
It does.
And you know, I always want to see, can we go back?
Can we go one week later and see what they're doing a week after that happened?
Because it may have lasted for only 10 minutes.
We don't know.
Yeah, yeah.
So, next claim.
This one really gets me.
We see it a lot in these spaces.
So, basically they say that your fascia is your subconscious mind that stores every traumatic experience, and so doing these maneuvers that they teach will help you to release that.
I hear this trauma claim often.
It's your issues are in your tissues.
To be clear, like we just said, some of the massage and movement that they're showing probably does feel really good after a session and definitely better than when you started, especially if you have some pain.
Absolutely.
What are your thoughts on this idea that fascia holds trauma?
This is a deep discussion, so keep me on moving forward here, Derek.
Does fascia store trauma per se?
I have to say I was really intrigued by this idea early in my career.
The idea that the brain is kind of the chip in the motherboard and the fascia is the software.
That records our experiences because collagen, which is the primary component of fascia, is a colloid on a molecular level.
It's a liquid crystal.
So then some people say therefore it can store or transmit information.
That's an intriguing notion.
I don't see any evidence to indicate how that would work.
And that's where we get to metaphor versus mechanism.
So again, let's try a thought experiment.
If I lost my leg.
So, if all of our issues are stored in our tissues and I lose my leg, which is traumatic in an unknown self, would I lose the memories that were stored in my leg if that's how it would work?
And I see no evidence to indicate that people who lose limbs or digits have any results in memory loss.
In fact, some people who have traumatic limb injuries get over it and go on to be resilient and have very full lives and no trauma.
After a reasonable amount of time, there's a great book called resilience that looks at that very thing.
But there is an undeniable aspect.
To the way we respond to trauma and how it can be held.
And I'm going to use that word very, very loosely.
There's a Peter Levine was a psychologist, somatic therapist type who wrote a book called Waking the Tiger, wrote a lot of other books.
But he talked about the charge in the nervous system of the uncompleted action.
So if you look at an antelope in the wild, sometimes they will fall to the ground and play dead when they're being chased by a tiger, because the tiger wants to kill that fresh prey, it wants that experience.
And if the antelope plays dead, the tiger might pass it by and go after one of the ones that's still running away.
And then after a certain period of time happens, the antelope will get up, shake violently, And then go back to being an antelope with seemingly no trauma stored in their body.
Humans are a little more complicated than that.
Sometimes we fight back when we should run, we run when we should fight back.
Worst of all, we freeze and don't know what to do.
And that's often the hardest thing.
Now, I've worked with a number of people who've had Physical and sexual trauma.
And yes, there are physical responses and they're not where you would necessarily predict they would be for the reasons that you would predict them to happen.
But there is something about that.
Now, is it because it's stored in there like a living biological journal?
Or is it something that this was an area of me that was abused, that I have been subconsciously protecting, my nervous system has been like, don't go there, and this person that I trust is making an intervention that feels good, and that creates a change in some kind of psycho-physical-emotional homeostasis?
And that's just, I wouldn't even call that a working theory.
It's speculation.
There is something real about this.
But I think, again, it is a gross oversimplification to say that all my trauma is stored in my fascia.
It's great if you're in the trauma relief business.
Because then everybody's going to want their fascia untraumatized.
But not every piece of stuck fascia is trauma.
And not every trauma needs fascial unsticking.
But often they do go hand in hand.
So, one of the claims that they show is to stick your fingers between your bottom ribs and press in pretty hard, that's a direct quote, to release stuck trauma.
So, when someone is actually pressing into that area, what are they doing?
Well, if they press too hard, they could break the tip of their sternum off.
I don't release some drama and create some new trauma. What I think they're suggesting that you
do is that you come in under the front ribs near the the xiphoid process there at the bottom
and that can be an area where things get held in the diaphragm and there's a direct
fascial anatomical connection between the diaphragm and the heart between the diaphragm
and the psoas which is the front of the low back and connects the lower body to the inner leg
and are some of the deepest the psoas is some of the deepest flexors in the body.
So there is a well-documented tendency with people who have been in a lot of trauma to be in a more deeply flexed physiological posture most of the time.
So the idea again is here's this quick fix to release stuck trauma but again humans I find are complicated if again if it was like if everybody who has this kind of trauma got stuck in this place I think we would have mapped that out much better than we have.
I think about Louise, hey, if you feel this here, it's probably because of that problem there.
That's a nice little chart from back in the day, but I find that humans are way more complicated and trickier than that.
They don't, I once treated somebody, real quick anecdote here, they had a lot of trouble with one hip versus the other hip.
And as we work to normalize that hip and the leg and the associated connective tissue around it, this was four or five treatments into it, they discovered they had a habit where when they were at work and they were dealing with a difficult person on the other end of the phone, difficult customer, difficult client, I don't remember.
The way they channeled their tension was to hook their foot under their chair and pull because that was a way of them physically channeling that frustration and trying to stay calm but they that it becomes such a habit they didn't know they were doing it until suddenly that condition began to ease so that that's just it your response to any kind of emotion that you can't actualize on can have a physical component to it that you might not even Fascial movements apparently cure hives.
How?
This is related to the autoimmune stuff in the human garage world, but have you ever heard this?
No, no.
This is brand new information to me.
They also say that facial fascial release cures acne.
Okay, you know I looked at that video and again I noticed they talked about that it was hormonal driven acne and it looked like the person, it looked like a span of time happened between the before and after and we were looking at an adolescent whose hormonal balance probably changed during that period and the acne cleared up.
But again, this is no, I'm no.
Just no.
A lot of no's, a lot of no's.
This one's fun.
You did say quantum before and this one sets up this fantastic video where the heart is not actually a pump.
It's a vortex made of fascia.
I'm sure that's in your book.
I haven't gotten to that part yet though.
Yes.
Again, this is these folks are a good example of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing because they have a little knowledge and then they just with it.
So we have this idea that the heart is a Pumping thing.
Let's dial it back a little bit.
First of all, the heart is a muscle.
The heart has a fascial component and you can decellularize the heart.
You can inject the heart with, and we're talking about a specimen, not a live person, obviously.
You can decellularize the heart and just leave the fascial scaffolding of the heart intact.
It's a pretty cool process.
So that, yes, that happens.
Now, we looked at the heart as a pump for years and there is a compelling competing theory and there's a great link to about a 40-minute documentary from the Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles that there's this competing theory that the heart is more of a helix in that it's not it's not just this this pump that expands and contracts but it's actually a band that wraps in and on itself creating a spiral pattern okay and and i rather like this model it's a very elegant model and as the spiral wraps around itself
It pumps the blood out and as it unwraps around itself, it sucks the blood back in.
This is a very different kind of model than just a pump that's going in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out.
And what's really fascinating embryologically is so that Worms don't have a heart, okay?
So just so you know.
Worms, it's the muscular contractions that actually force the fluids in the worm to circulate while the worm is moving.
So it is theorized that that heart, many millions of years later, became the fish heart, which is a pump.
And then evolved into the amphibian heart, which began to evolve chambers and then became more of a primate type heart, which is what we have.
And embryologically speaking, the embryo goes through all four of those stages in the development of the heart from the worm heart, if you will, all the way up to the primate heart.
So I find this really compelling.
Now it is a very different degree of difference to say the heart Is a spiral structure, and the heart is a vortex.
Because that just opened, I mean, oh my God, what's in that vortex, man?
Well, exactly, exactly.
Because what you just identified, if the model was not complete, or we've discovered that it functions differently, that's science.
That's a greater understanding of the body.
And if we go back to the Pup model, that goes back to Galen examining Gladiators who were bleeding out and going, Oh, look at this pump thing shooting blood.
You know, I mean, our observations have changed, but we get very, we get very enamored of our ideas, particularly ones that have lasted centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries.
But, uh, if you don't have the link, I'll send it to you.
It's, uh, to put in the show notes, it's, it's compelling stuff, but no, it's not, it's not a vortex.
And that's what gets me.
I know we're laughing a lot and, you know, when I do see a lot of this sort of pseudoscience, I do, that is my instinct, is sarcasm sometimes or to just like laugh.
But it's really important that, because then it spills over into the fact that, like you said, They have some knowledge.
They are getting some things right.
They're starting from places that are understandable and comprehensible.
But then you get to Gary, who starts to recommend not using medicine, but instead using movement.
In some cases, that might actually be helpful, but they take it to the extreme level.
So when they say, don't use medicine for anything, for all autoimmune diseases are fascial, don't use medicine, we're going to move and you're going to heal.
I mean, when you hear that, what do you think as a professional?
I think that, again, a little bit of truth and a lot of hype.
I think it's incredibly irresponsible.
You're not a doctor.
You don't know what medications this person may be on.
You don't know what medications this person may need.
Sometimes medication...
I had a medical event happen to me some 20 years ago and the fallout from that was my stomach acid went nuts.
Whatever it is about me, physiologically speaking, that's where things tend to go is my digestive system.
And so whatever I ate, it was like I could feel like a sprinkler turning on in my stomach, okay?
That was where Prevacid was really good For me to take in the short term to kind of get that under control.
Okay, so not all medicine is bad.
Do I want to be unprepared for the rest of my life?
No, I don't think that's a good idea either.
Movement gets your lymphatic system going.
The lymphatic system and the fluid aspect of the fascia, the interstitium, whatever you want to call it, that's a real deal thing.
If you don't get up and move and just move your legs and swing your arms throughout the day, Your lymphatic system isn't going to work as optimally as it could.
So, you know, people say movement is medicine.
It is, but it's not going to cure everything.
So in your eyes, as a professional who spends all of your waking hours looking into this, what are the biggest dangers when you come across Human Garage and they're making all of these claims?
There's two things here.
There's the danger to the people coming across the claims, and then there's the danger to me and my colleagues.
So I'll start with the listening public first.
The danger there is that you're going To get excited and buy into something that may disappoint you and may in the long run make you feel worse.
It may or may not physically harm you, but on some level it may make you feel worse because here's something else that didn't work.
Okay, and I see a lot of people who have tried all these different things and it's like, okay, you're like, I don't know, you're the end of the line for me, you know, so I'm used to that.
The danger that I see on a professional level is that these kinds of people who are, I don't even want to say half right, let's say a quarter right.
Make the rest of my colleagues and my friends who do serious hardcore research, my friends in Germany, my friends at the NIH, who are really looking into this in a serious way, look like fools.
And we've spent a lot of the growth in the understanding of fascia as a tissue in a system and its implications in
health have grown by leaps and bounds in the past 15 years. I was really lucky to kind
of be in the middle of it while it was blossoming and I would hate to see all that hard
work get undermined or disregarded because of some irresponsible individuals making claims
that are less than factual.
David, thank you so much for breaking all of this down.
Your link to your website will be the first link in the show notes, and there are many pages there.
If people want The best way to get the most bang for their buck on a one-on-one level and really start to look more at fascia and what it can do.
What page should they click on?
What book should they read?
There is not yet, to my knowledge, a good general book on fascia for the general public.
There was a really good article in the New York Times just in September of 2023.
There was a great article in Prevention Magazine that really got it right in February of 2023.
My book, to my own fashion, What It Is and Why It Matters, has over 200 illustrations and I wrote it to kind of split the difference between a dense, weighty medical tome and a proper textbook and give it as a way in for people who are fascinated about their bodies to learn more about it.
But there isn't, say, like a book like Breath by James Nestor.
That really does that.
Now, Joe Miller's latest book, Body by Breath, has a really good chapter on fascia in it.
I think that's another really great place to begin.
But that's, you know, that's up to you.
I'd like to see that book in the world sometime in the near future.
And the fact that places like The Times and Prevention are starting to write serious articles about this that get it right, to me, leaves me hopeful that there will be a book like that coming out in the near future.
Great.
Well, maybe that is your next book that you need to write then.
