Connective Tissue: keeping us together

Connective tissue is incredibly important to all of us. Not only does it form our solid inner structure, it pads us to protect us, it cushions our joints and forms our blood. The classification of blood as a connective tissue seems a bit counter-intuitive, however, all types of blood cells originate in the connective tissue of our bone marrow, some white blood cells move freely between blood and other connective tissues and the chemical composition of blood plasma (plasma is what you get when you remove all the cells from blood) is very similar to that of the fluid that occupies the space between our tissues and skin (known as the interstitial space). 

Connective tissue is one of the four main body tissues. The others are nervous, muscular and epithelial (epithelial tissue lines surfaces, including the epidermal layer of our skin). Connective tissue is then broken down into different types:

Ordinary/Specialised

Loose/Dense

Regular/Irregular

I won’t go right into the details of each of these here, except to explain Ordinary and Specialised as they are the ones I am most focussed on. Ordinary connective tissue is your everyday garden variety connective tissue. It is comprised of extracellular fibres, extracellular fluid known as ground substance (I will explain more about this later), and cells, all in relative proportions.

Within the ordinary connective tissue classification there occurs some very different forms of specialised connective tissue. Examples include bone, cartilage and lymphoid tissue (lymph nodes, spleen, tonsils, bone marrow, etc.). I will probably write an article on the Lymphatic system and its tissues down the track, as it is also a pet subject of mine.

The term ‘connective tissue’ is often used to refer to just the ordinary type, and this is the connective tissue I have most experience with. Ordinary connective tissue includes: the superficial and deep fascial sheaths, nerve and muscle sheaths, the supporting framework of internal organs, aponeuroses (layers of broad flat tendons, we have aponeuroses over our skull, in our abdomen and also our lower back), ligaments, joint capsules, periosteum (a layer of tissue around our bones) and tendons. Unfortunately our knowledge of these has been gathered somewhat slower than our other more exciting body parts, as Anatomists had a habit of cutting connective tissue away to get to muscles, organs and blood vessels. During the time I worked as a Remedial Massage Therapist and Teacher there seemed to be a push forward with knowledge and research of connective tissue. One particular pioneer in soft tissue treatment was Biochemist Ida Rolf, who developed a treatment method now commonly referred to as ‘Rolfing’ but which was actually named ‘Structural Integration’. Many students of this treatment method have gone on to develop their own theories and treatment methods, notably Tom Meyers who has authored several books and developed the theory of Anatomy Trains. For more info on Tom click through to his website here. As an aside, one of the stranger moments of my career was when a patient rang the practice I was working at and asked if someone could ‘Rolf’ his groin. No one at the practice knew about Rolfing so it created a great deal of confusion and, I must admit, giggling.

The white sections in this image from Grey's Anatomy are all connective tissue - fascia. The fascia that envelops our 'six pack',  properly known as Rectus abdominus is called the Linea alba (white line)

What is fascia?

Fascia is a specialised type of connective tissue. It surrounds supports and protects all the visceral and bodily structures. Fascia provides insulation, padding and the pathway for nerves, blood and lymphatic vessels; it stores water and fat, and allows the skin and underlying structures to move independently of one another.

Fascia can be viewed as a large, complex, body-wide net, or web. (T. Myers), Grey’s anatomy refers this as the ‘extracellular matrix’ (ECM). The fascial web or ECM is composed of three types of fibre: collagen, elastin and reticulin, and ground substance.

• Collagen: is the most common and tensile/least elastic of the three fibres and is found in fascia, bones, tendons and ligaments.
• Elastin: as the name suggests is more elastic and is found mostly in the lining of arteries.
• Reticulin: is the most elastic of the three fibres and is found in the supporting structures surrounding the glands and lymph nodes.
• Ground substance: a viscous gel-like substance which acts like a mechanical barrier to foreign matter and is a medium for the diffusion of nutrients and waste products. It can change its state to meet local needs e.g. in a still area of the body it will become more gel-like to receive and store metabolites and toxins. Small amounts of ground substance are found throughout every tissue, but the synovial fluid in joints and the aqueous humour of the eye are examples of areas where it can be observed in large quantities.

Collagen fibrils from inside a knee sourced from here

Due to the fact that the fibres in fascia run in all directions it is able to move in all directions to allow for changes in muscle bulk and for stretching. Fascia shrinks when it is inflamed. It is also slow to heal because of poor blood supply and is a focus of pain because of its rich nerve supply.

A useful metaphor is viewing the body like a tent, our bones as tent poles which cannot support the structure of the body without guy ropes (the fascia), to keep just the right amount of tension to allow the tent (or body) to remain upright with proper equilibrium!

The superficial and deep fascial sheaths:

Superficial fascia 

Superficial fascia is subcutaneous and blends with the bottom layer of the dermis. It is comprised of loose connective tissue and adipose tissue and is the layer that primarily determines the shape of our body. Superficial fascia is also found surrounding organs, glands, neurovascular bundles and stores fat and water. It also acts as a passageway for lymph, nerve and blood vessels and as a protective padding to cushion and insulate.

Deep fascia

Deep fascia is a dense fibrous connective tissue which interpenetrates and surrounds muscles, bones, nerves and blood vessels. It also functions as a connection and 

communication system in the form of aponeuroses, ligaments, tendons, retinacula, joint capsules and septa. The deep fascia envelops the bones (periosteum and endosteum); cartilage (perichondrium), and blood vessels (tunica externa) and becomes specialised in muscles (epimysium, perimysium and endomysium) and nerves (epineurium, perineurium and endoneurium). Its high concentration of collagen fibres gives the deep fascia great strength and integrity.

Scar tissue

Scar tissue is the most common form of connective tissue used by the body to help repair or replace damaged areas. Scar tissue is generally less flexible than the tissue it replaces. When scar tissue forms, often more tissue than necessary is created, and adhesions (fibrous bands) form. After the acute phase of an injury connective tissue massage can be beneficial. Indeed, this was something I did a lot in my practice. From around twelve weeks on a scar can be treated with Myofascial release - a gentle stretching technique designed to align the fibres and mobilise the fascia. It worked incredibly well with patients who had had a mastectomy and found the scar was pulling into their armpit or across where the breast had been.

Adhesions

When an area of the body is immobile (through injury, underuse or decreased use) lubrication between the collagen fibres is not maintained, the ground substance changes and adjacent collagen fibres move closer together, this is the beginning of microadhesions. Microadhesions are responsible for restricted joint movement, not only a loss in range of motion, but also a reduction in the quality of the movement of the joint. Immobility leads to stiffness, and stiffness leads to more stiffness! (So keep moving!)

Thixotropy

Connective tissue fascia is Thixotropic! It can be transformed from a more solid state (gel) to a more liquid state (sol) with the application of a gentle shearing force.

“Thixotropy Definition: The property of a material which enables it to stiffen or thicken on a relatively short time upon standing but upon agitation or manipulation to change to a very soft consistency or a high viscosity fluid; a reversible process. The materials are gel-like at rest but fluid when agitated and have high static shear strength and low dynamic shear strength, at the same time.”  (Dictionary of Composite Materials Technology,
Stuart M. Lee)

Examples of thixotropic materials are silly putty and a solution of cornstarch and water. (Seriously, try it! Just don’t whack it too hard or you might hurt your hand!)

This becomes important when you are having your fascia massaged. A lot of therapists work on the theory that getting in ‘hard and deep’ is the only way to correct areas of tension. However, if you apply a large amount of direct force at a thixotropic substance it will resist and behave like a solid. So in actual fact, if you are trying to improve mobility in an area that has tightened, applying gentle shearing force, or vibration, will allow you to manipulate and stretch the fascia, potentially reducing adhesions, and restoring a greater range of movement for that area. It also allows you to move past the fascia and contact the muscle underneath for further treatment.

Conditions which affect connective tissue

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is a genetic condition that affects connective tissue. Usually it is an issue with Collagen producing genes, which can manifest as hypermobility of joints, thinly walled veins and arteries, super stretchy skin, and a whole other range of symptoms. There are many conditions that affect connective tissue, Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis are both immune system diseases where the body starts viewing connective tissue as ‘non-self’ and starts attacking it. There are other genetic conditions such as Marfan’s Syndrome, which famously the Pharaoh Tutankhamen had. Because connective tissue is so very important in how the body operates these conditions can be devastating and sometimes fatal. I consider myself lucky in that regard, I just have extra stretchy Ordinary connective tissue, and no obvious vascular/heart problems (although I bruise ridiculously easily).

I hope this brief overview has given you a greater appreciation for our amazing connective tissue, and perhaps you will give more thought to your connective tissue, the guy ropes and bones and sheaths. We simply couldn’t exist without it.

NB. This blog post stems from part of the course notes I composed while teaching the Diploma of Remedial Massage in 2009. I decided to share them firstly as part of a promise to my friends and fellow connective tissue ‘zebras’ at EDSAUS - a site for Ehlers Danlos Support in Australia, secondly my original plan for this Blog was to include posts on anatomy, and this seemed like a useful topic. If you have any questions about this post, please leave a comment :)

The Start of a New Journey

Usually going to the letterbox is not the highlight of my day, today it was. If you have been following this blog from the beginning you may be aware that a short while ago I decided to apply for university. I had spoken to someone in the Distance Ed unit at Macquarie Uni not long after I sent in my application, and she told me I should find out before the end of November. I was starting to get a little nervous, it was almost the end of November and I had heard nothing more. I heard the posties bike stop, and then chug off and I meandered out to see what had come. There were two large envelopes stuffed into the top of the letterbox, the first one I pulled out was my Australasian Lymphology Association magazine, but the second one was from Macquarie University. I ripped through the envelope like a child opens a present, and there it was, an acceptance letter!

I don't mind admitting that I yelled out 'YES!' at the top of my lungs, and there may have been some fist pumping or other wild gesticulations (flailing). I rang my husband to tell him and then my parents. Everyone was pleased and congratulatory. I also posted some very excited exclamations to Twitter and Facebook and all my friends were so positive, it was very lovely to share my happiness in real time!  So there it is, I have some paperwork to fill out and return and then it begins. I will no doubt blog about my experiences, to create a journal I can look back on, and also to share with you what it is like to study science via distance, that way we can all learn something!

Hypermobile bits and pieces

Today I posted a number of pictures of my hypermobile hands on facebook and twitter. They aren't the only part of me that is hypermobile, but they are the easiest to get good photos of.

I mentioned in my first post on this blog that I have a genetic condition which affects the production of collagen in my body. I don't know which particular gene/s are affected, this would take a lot of tests and a huge amount of money. 

As a result of this condition I can do all sorts of weird 'party tricks', and it is one reason I was such a good bellydancer as a teenager. Hypermobility can be a blessing, and also a curse. Being hypermobile is not that uncommon, and many talented dancers and gymnasts find being very flexible can come in quite handy. There are, however, a number of genetic conditions which feature hypermobility as a symptom, these include Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Sticklers Syndrome. Having one of these conditions means being at risk of more serious complications such as heart troubles, deafness, sight problems, easy bleeding/bruising, healing poorly from cuts, strange scar formation, dislocation of joints, subluxation of joints (not a full dislocation but the joint is out of its correct position), increased risk of injury, pain and muscle dysfunction. 

I am lucky, my aorta is fine, my hearing is good, and I don't have serious dislocations. Unfortunately my joints do move out of position at the flap of a butterflies wings, I heal poorly from cuts and have odd stretched out looking scars, pain and muscle dysfunction.

Most of these complaints can be managed, with splints/braces/strapping, exercises targeted to improve muscle function, pain medication, pacing of activity and avoiding things that put my joints into compromising positions, particularly repetitively. 

According to one geneticist I had a video conference with I do not fit into one particular category, but seem to have a mixture of signs and symptoms of a few collagen disorders.

I believe from my own research that I fall more closely into the category that includes Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Hypermobility Type. I am a member of the EDS australian forum where we bendy bods share information, support each other and have a good vent when things get too difficult.

If you know someone who is hypermobile, particularly a child that appears to be having trouble, read up on hypermobility syndrome and EDS. It is often not diagnosed properly, but diagnosis could save that person a lot of awkwardness and improve their quality of life.

Here are some crazy pictures of my bendy hands:

Bundanoon Fossils

This will be a short series of blogs about Triassic fossils collected by my father and I this weekend and in August. I am in the process of cataloguing each specimen and will post pics as I finish each set. The first one is a short group collected this afternoon in Bundanoon. The area wasn't particularly prolific but with some hard slog yielded a few nice pieces.

Lovely example of a horsetail stem

No idea what this might be, maybe a leaf or stem segment

A stem or leaf piece

Lovely shot of my black nail polish, which managed to last (more or less) through three days of digging!

Unexpected fossil hunt

Today I found myself at the Skillion in Terrigal. It's basically a huge lump of Triassic sandstone that is eroding away near the coast. I had heard that people had been finding plant remains there so I thought I'd have a quick look. I was completely unprepared and just had Bella the Labradoodle, my phone and a handbag!

I knew it was going to be good as soon as I started my way down to the rock platform. Around the path was scattered grey mudstone/shales that had fragments of fossils within them. Up against the cliff a small section had fallen and amongst the mess I found some lovely pieces of Dicroidium, a Mesozoic seed fern, and a seed/cupule. The cupule is my favourite piece of the day. It shimmers when you move it in the light and is exquisitely preserved.

I crammed a few muddy pieces into my handbag (yep, mud and all!).

Once home I raced to clean and photograph the specimens as most of them are incredibly fragile, having been weathered by sea and rain.

Here they are! I would love to get some feedback, if any of you happen to be Dicroidium specialists I would be indebted to your opinion on the species.

Cupule

A quick trip north

This weekend we decided to head up to Forster-Tuncurry. Both Matt and I love returning there as we both holidayed in the area as kids.

Geologically this part of coastal New South Wales sits in the New England Fold Belt (NEFB) which extends all the way up to the Central Coast of Queensland i.e. a really, really, long way. It is part of the Murray-Darling Basin. Within this Basin the Southern NEFB is divided into two sections which are separated by the Peel River fault system, the Tamworth Belt and the Tablelands Complex. The Tamworth Belt (which includes Foster-Tuncurry) contains sedimentary rocks, thought to be Cambrian to early Permian. I had read online that some fossils have been found around the cliffs near Forster, so I had a poke about the rock platform at Black Head. Sadly, no fossils, not even any rock that looked likely to contain fossils. But that was OK because frolicking off the beach was a small whale! It did a bit of tail slapping and blowing water out its blow hole then started to swim out around the headland.

We piled back into the car and whizzed around to the other side of the headland to try and get a view of the whale swimming over. We did eventually, although it was a fair way out, and saw it swimming slowly out to the horizon. There is always something special about seeing whales.

Black Head - there was a whale in this pic, unfortunately it was underwater at the time...

The car park where we had ended up was surrounded by bush, and as I walked over to check out a road cutting I saw out of the corner of my eye a Red-browed Finch. In fact there was a whole flock of them feeding on the grass seeds at the edge of the road. As a car drove past they would scatter, then re-collect. Turned out it was a mixed flock, utilising a tiny bit of water that was oozing down to the beach. Matt got a great view of an Eastern Whip Bird, which was part of a pair that we could hear cracking and responding. There was also a Lewins Honeyeater that I watched having a bath.

Red-browed Finch

Lewin's Honeyeater playing hide-and-seek

Bella doing some birdwatching from the car

As the light began to fade we headed back into Forster for Pizza by Wallis Lake, then home.

It was very enjoyable and I plan to do some reading up on the fossil finds to see if I can pin point where they were collected for next time!

A visit to the National Dinosaur Museum

Just realised that I hadn't put up a post about my recent visit to the National Dinosaur Museum. This is a privately owned and run museum on the outskirts of Canberra, Australia. I had visited before, a long time ago, and all I could remember was a heap of animatronic dinosaurs. Happily there are many other things there than just big roaring replicas. Before writing this post I looked up the address on Google and read some of the reviews that people had left. They were quite negative and many people had rated it 0/3 which I personally think is a bit rough. The museum is not large, and despite being called 'national' it comes across more like someones labor of love than what most of us would consider a 'national museum'. That aside, I still had a very enjoyable morning going around the exhibits, got lots of great photos, had a chance to eyeball some nice bone replicas and check out the fossils on display. The one thing I will pick on is the spelling in some of the exhibit text. I am a self confessed grammar and spelling pedant, but lets face it, it isn't that difficult to spellcheck or proof read something before it becomes part of a display, this really detracts from the museum. If you are going to play at being a serious museum, then at least make it look professional and not like a school project. Ok, rant over.

The museum takes you on a journey, around the edges of a large room, through time. It depicts ideas on how the earth was created and then moves into the beginnings of life. Each geological era and period has a section, describing what the earth was like at that time, what sort of life existed, both plant and animal, including mass extinctions. As it moves into the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, and the expansion of archeosaurs, then pelacosaurs and dinosaurs, the exhibits have some larger replicas and specimens on display. A large sauropod vertebra and several humerus bones, not to mention a lovely replica of an ichthyosaur fossil and a rather beautiful (if you like that sort of thing) Velociraptor skull. There are also some fully articulated casts on display. A Stegosaur, a Plateosaurus, an Allosaur, a Ceratopsian and a few others. I also really loved the family tree posters around the museum, particularly the 'mammal-like reptiles' one. Not sure who produced them but wouldn't mind getting my mits on the whole series. The last part of the display deals with the evolution of hominids, and there is a cabinet containing a series of hominid skulls.

They also have a gift store that is packed with Dinosaur related items. I was very tempted by a Deinonychus claw fridge magnet, and they had 50% off skulls, but I found it a bit hard to justify the price of these even discounted (yes, I am a cheapskate). There were a few fossils for sale, but I prefer collecting my own to buying others specimens, so I passed these by also.

Naturally I took lots of pictures:

Skull of the Sauropod Camarosaurus

Skull of the Ceratopsian Anchiceratops

Deinonychus foot

Hominid Skulls

Representation of the Aussie Dino Leaellynasaurus

It's a shame this poster came out blurry, it's a ripper

Sauropod Dystylosaurus Vertebra

Palaeo-art of T-Rex

Skull of Velociraptor mongoliensis

Allosaur skull

A Stegosaur Thagomizer

The Ichthyosaur Stenopterygius

Appears I have a bit of thing for skulls, well I guess this is the business end of most Dinosaurs! So as you can see, not just Dinosaurs, plenty of other prehistoric critters. Considering this is all privately run I think it's pretty good, and worth a visit for all Dino-enthusiasts.

Ostracodes- or, That funny little thing that looked like a bean

In the area I found the plant fossils on the Central Coast I also discovered a bean. Well, I thought it was a bean... then I realised it had what looked like legs, which struck me as odd, because as far as I knew, beans don't have legs. I consulted my trusty 'Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record' and Google, and discovered it was an Ostracode!

So what exactly is an Ostracod? Ostracodes are a type of crustacean arthropod, that is an armoured, (mostly) water dwelling, shell covered, animal. They are also known as 'seed shrimp' (obviously I'm not the first person to mistake one for a bean). They have two small shells that hinge along the back, think pipi, and the animal is contained within the two shells. They first appear in the Early Cambrian, about ~600Ma, and different types become more prolific at different times, some survived to the present day. Which makes them pretty remarkable in my books. They can be quite useful in reconstructing the environment of the stratigraphy in which they are found. There are even Ostracodes that bioluminesce.

I also did some reading at the Australian Museum, in a large tome titled 'Fossil Invertebrates' which outlined six main different types of Ostracode. I was hoping that the descriptions might help identify the little bean I found, but it could come from a number of orders. Here are some pictures of the little critter. In the picture that includes my stubby fingers you can see the appendages poking out from between to two shells, with a better contrasted close up second from the bottom!

Budgewoi Birding

We have more or less settled into the new house, so Bella and I decided to go birding this morning. In total we counted 19 different species and I saw two lots of birds in flight over the lake that I wasn't quick enough to identify. Fairly sure one was a Tern, the other probably a Masked Lapwing.
The birds were feeling very friendly today and I managed to get some photos. Here are the best of the bunch!

First spot of the day was a pair of Spotted Doves, which are introduced but look rather lovely.

Up one of the gum trees was a young Australian Magpie, who was incredibly curious, especially after I whistled something to him in what was meant to be Magpie warbling but sounded more like a dysfunctional slide whistle.

The awful noise also attracted some curious Little Corellas;

After we'd been thoroughly inspected by the magpie-corella-brigade we moved off down towards Budgewoi Lake.

There were several groups of Chestnut Teal along the lake edge. (Or as comedian Bill Bailey calls them "the ducks of evil", probably due to the red eye!)

Also spotted from near a small jetty was a fishing cormorant (sp. unidentified), an Australian Pelican, some beautiful Black Swans (lots of these):

An Eastern Great Egret and an Intermediate Egret (yes, I am sure it was the two different ones) pics in order...

Another long-legged wader was out fishing,

a White-faced Heron, who did quite well for little fish while we were watching.

On the other side of the path is a reserve, filled with Casurina, Paper-barks, Eucalypts and Palms. Water birds are replaced by parrots, Noisy Miners and Grey Butcherbirds. I also spotted this neat little nest:

The spectacularly colourful Eastern Rosella stopped to pose for the camera:

While a Galah waddled through the dandelions:

Oddly, the birds seemed to get more active the warmer it got! Perhaps they were using the shelter of the reserve to keep cool? I am currently on the look out for the Channel Billed Cuckoo, which makes a loud grating squawky noise and has a long curved beak. 

I have a number of blog posts in the works, so keep your eyes peeled for more Birds, Dinosaurs and Anatomy!