16/11/2020
Interesting new science...
BRAND NEW ORGAN DISCOVERED:
FASCIA, THE FLUID MATRIX & THE ‘INTERSTITIUM’
Just when we were getting used to the idea of the probiome as an organ in its own right, the scientific community has discovered a whole new organ. It’s heavier than the brain yet can’t be seen with the naked eye. It’s also central to cancer and the immune system and something akin to the gut-brain for every single cell in the body. Meet the primordial ocean within you: the matrix of the ‘interstitium’.
Bathing and connecting every single cell in the body is a primordial ocean of highly structured colloid fluids generally referred to as the Extra-Cellular Matrix or ‘interstitium’. The truly amazing thing is that the electrolyte balance of the ocean within us differs significantly from the oceans of today as it was enclosed by our Eve-like single-celled micro-ancestors during the Palaeozoic era. The extra-cellular matrix is thus our own little drop of the primordial ocean out of which life first emerged 3.5 billion years ago.
This is very fitting since ‘matrix’ is simply Latin for ‘womb’.
Far from simply being ‘water’ this primordial oceanic organ is in so many ways the basic regulatory system of the body: what every cell does, it does according to instructions from the matrix. The latest research shows that they guide many truly primordial processes such as cell migration, gene expression and even the cell differential that transforms stem cells into every other cell in the body.
One of the reasons this anatomical ‘discovery’ was missed until now is due to the nature of standard microscopic techniques which creates ‘dead’ samples. When scientists prepare tissue samples, they treat the samples with a barrage of chemicals, cut them into incredibly thin slices and then stain them with dyes them to make them easier to see. Unsurprisingly however, this process drains away the primordial waters in these delicate structures and causes the newfound fluid-filled spaces to collapse… appearing empty.
The combination of endoscopy techniques with laser imaging technology finally allowed us to see these magnificently delicate little structures.
Previous researchers had noted a ‘network of dark fibers’ which was presumably the same fluid conducting micro-fascial structures. Yet previously, researchers had thought these tissue layers were simply a dense ‘wall’ of collagen-rich fascia. The new research shows that, rather than a ‘wall’ this tissue is more like an “open, fluid-filled highway,” said co-senior study author Dr. Neil Theise. The tissue contains interconnected, fluid-filled spaces that are supported by a lattice of thick fascial bundles of collagen.
So emerging out of this collagen and elastin soup, is the collagen network of your myofascial web; twining and intertwining, segmenting and bagging all of your biological rockpools. Connective tissue is also what connects the body’s waters you see, creating sluices and ditches, canals and dams, as it parts the sacred liquids of the Red Sea within. For like the seas that comprise the ocean, the Waters of your body may all flow together, but they are also all different, and all unique. The myofascial web doesn’t just part these waters however, it also binds our primordial fluids to it, keeping the water structured and all our tissues hydrated and irrigated.
The researchers now think that the fluid-filled spaces of the interstitium may also act as shock absorbers to metabolically protect tissues during daily functions.
If we don’t keep flowing and keep moving, then our bound and tight fascia gets compressed, dehydrated and gluey, causing metabolic puddles and phlegmatic swamps of interstitial fluid to form in some areas, together with parched cracked earth in ‘down-stream’ tissues. Your waters must keep flowing sweet friend, they must cascade and pool, only to churn through the rapids of the wrist before plunging through the Niagara Falls of your heart once more. The insterstitium is fed by the capillary bed and drained by your lymphatic vessels you see, as the cells require in-roads and by-ways for both nutrients and waste.
In so many ways, the science of the extra-cellular matrix is simply the return of the humoural medicine of our ancestors and their focus upon the mix of fluids within us.
Yet the implications of this veritable sea-change in cellular biology extend far beyond medicine alone. Western biology has been underpinned by a very strong ‘individualist’ ideology since Virchow championed the cellular theory. With a growing focus on the cell as the locus of disease and on the microbe as its cause, scientists re-located their gaze from the way in which the Hippocratics saw external environments interacting with our inner humoural seas, to the isolated and private space in which cells exist and interact. Virchow’s cellular theory encouraged us to think in terms of the divisions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, highlighting the difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’. Virchow was actually just as interested, if not more so, in politics as he was in medicine you see, with his science being used deliberately as a vehicle to advance his political ideas. In the end it strongly emphasizes the boundaries between both cells and selves.
Many historians have also noticed the way in which the germ-theory of Koch (the 19th century German microbiologist) dominated the western scientific imagination during the colonial era amidst contemporary themes of ‘self’ ‘other’ and ‘invasion’.
This is incredibly relevant to the political woes of the post-CoVid modern world for “according to the ‘parasite stress’ hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Simply put, this suggests that when we feel attacked by microbial cells that are ‘not-self’ then we allow authoritarian governments to shore up our political membranes, tightening borders and reducing personal freedoms. This is because the body-politic is seen in terms of the basic medical metaphors laid down by Virchow and Koch.
But the new science of the extra-cellular matrix and the all-pervasive ‘interstitium’ once more brings us back to an emphasis on the environment, rather than the cell – the whole that we are each a part of, rather than the self. For what is the ocean that we pollute and over-fish if not Gaia’s extra-cellular matrix? Such science could be the beginning of the end for the paradigm of the primacy of the cell, and instead re-orient both medicine and culture towards the Great Primodial Ocean of the extra-SELF-ular Matrix that is the web of life.
Research:
https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1016/0307-4412%2891%2990055-D
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23062-6
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-your-interstitium-a-newfound-organ/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0062275
https://www.amazon.com/Membranes-Metaphors-Invasion-Nineteenth-Century-Literature/dp/0801865271
Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics (Medicine and Culture)
