Dear Friends,
Thanks a lot for your patience and understanding –for the
last 5-6 weeks I have not managed to update this blog with any decent frequency
due to the heavy schedule on the road.
I am finally back from the long trip and after few days of
sleep recovery ready to deliver some content, which I hope will be of value to
a parent of a special needs child. Both conferences: Fascia Congress in
Amsterdam and Cerebral Palsy conference in Utrecht (another city in Holland, 20
min away from Amsterdam) provided tons of materials to contemplate and to
process.
Our papers
were included in the proceedings books of both conferences.
Fascia
Congress:
A Global Status
Quo On Cerebral Palsy
As you can see from the titles, these are not exactly ‘ABR’
presentations but the deeper level theoretical works, mathematical models
laying down the framework for the fundamentals of long-term fascia re-modeling,
which is at the core of the ABR technique as specific set of tools designed to
induce that fascia re-modeling in the deep layers, which is especially
important for kids with Cerebral Palsy.
As a diligent conference attendee I have most of the
important presentations recorded on audio with slides photographed. Together
with the notes taken on the spot that provides for a comprehensive coverage and
accuracy of quotes, however, at the same time that means a lot of
post-conference work in order to sort all these piles of info and translate
them into the coherent presentations that will be of value to you.
I must say that taking photographs of the slides turned out
to be a somewhat challenging endeavour.
My beloved Nikon D300 camera (the one we use during ABR evaluations) produces a
loud ‘click’, which I am personally a big fan of – actually that’s the reason
why we favor Nikons over Canons at ABR :-). It turned
out that my fondness of the ‘Nikon click’ wasn’t shared by the rest of
conference attendees – in the big hall of a lecture room the click echoes
amazingly loud competing for attention with a speaker and drawing the irritated
“Shhh-ss” from the crowd. Even though I was initially prepared to brush it off
for the sake of better quality pictures to share with you, at the end I had to
succumb to the public pressure and settle for the pocket camera, which turned
out ok as well, although not as clear as I’d like to have.
Actually, in hindsight, I must concede that ABR delegation
looked as quite an odd bunch: me with 2 photo cameras – because the pocket one
runs out of battery fast, taking notes at the same time with a pile of colored
pens; Sarah Lee (ABR Asia) with 2 digital audio recorders (just to make sure we
do not miss anything) and occasional video recording of most important
presentations; and Marc Driscoll (our biomedical engineer/research guy – if you
haven’t met him yet) taking notes on research methodology.. We occupied 4-5 seats
being really busy. In the afternoons we’d split up and attend the concurrent
sessions, recording them as well – all with a goal of making the most out of
the conference opportunity.
No effort is too much if the goal is to provide the cutting
edge information to the busy ABR families, right? :-)Who cares about looking
like an oddball among the straight-laced professionals as long as we make sure
that we can deliver the information to you in full without missing the pieces
that might turn out being very important?
I expect to start publishing things within a few days but meanwhile – here is another entertaining and thought-provoking video for you about Amazing Properties of Viscoelastic Structures
It was encouraging to hear your
positive response to the video on ‘Inflatable tensegrity’ and I will definitely
get back to that subject with better details in the future.
This new video is about“Corn
starch experiment” and at first glance one might wonder how does that relate to
ABR?!
Well, the link is straightforward –
this video shows amazing properties of viscoelastic materials that respond
dramatically different depending on what type of impact is delivered at them.
I think that it is very important
for you to realize and especially visualize that anisotropic substances carry
the potential for multiple responses depending on how one addresses them,
challenging that ‘robotic’ view of the world that we all learn at school.
Most of the substances that one
studied at school were a lot more straightforward – a piece of metal, or wood
or classic liquid responded uniformly to a variety of mechanical impacts
varying in magnitude of their response but not changing their properties.
At school you learned about one neat and orderly physical world – solids always
respond as solids; liquids as liquids and so on.
And until today a lot of therapies
(surgeries etc.) address the human body in that primitive way appealing to the
images of this orderly world that you all carry all the way back from school
days.
Fortunately the reality of living
objects is a lot less regimental and omni-potent. The tissues of the human body
and fascia in particular are viscoelastic and anisotropic, hence the same
tissue will respond differently to the surgeon’s/ anatomists knife;
neurologist’s hammer; forceful stretch; hard local pressure etc. (… and to the
distributed quasi-static ABR application as well…).
Amazing isn’t it? Who’d think after
the opening frames of having the presenters’ hands in that corn starch slosh
that the same substance under the same temperature, pressure etc. will respond
as a solid once the fast impact is applied?
Sure, in ABR we appeal to the
opposite property of human body tissues – we want to bypass this “hardened”
response of the superficial layers and we want to have our impact to be
oscillatory not penetrating (ex. ‘sound waves’ vs. ‘wind waves’ ) etc. There
are plenty of specific details to ABR technique and the type of impact we want
to create in order to stimulate fascia re-modeling and strengthening.
However, the message of this video
is simple – details matter. Viscoelastic structures are capable of really
unexpected responses provided that there is a specific enough type of impact.
Small change in mechanical properties of application might lead to a bid
difference in tissue response….
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at
wonders of Mother Nature. Stay tuned for more :-)
….
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