18/02/2026
Hello FDM Friends! This month we will continue the 35th anniversary story into Dr. T's first encounter with fascial bands.
Back at the beginning in 1991. Clinically, he observed the bands were running in well defined pathways. Like the Los Angeles Freeways he grew up driving! Although the pathways seemed random, they were specific and consistent. Dr. T began mapping them out on sheets of paper with clinical data. It didn't take long to determine that patients with chronic non-specific left upper arm pain also had a ruptured or herniated disc at L4-5 in the past, or that patients with migraine headaches with nausea had a band that started in the abdomen.
New band pathways were found almost daily. But what was really going on with those bands? "They feel like big knots that, as you push them, they get smaller and smaller and smaller." After Dr. T heard that he began asking his other patients what it felt like was happening. Of course, what they were saying was what Dr. T was feeling during treatment.
Dr. T made more simple models out of scraps of paper. Bands of knotted fascia with something special...a twist! From this one concept of twist the whole door of understanding began to inch open. Injured fascial bands became twisted which pulled on distant locations of the band's attachment and caused pain in that location as well. The disc fascia pulled on the disc causing herniation of the disc and pain in the left upper arm. When the twist was untwisted the disc pain and the arm pain resolved.
Each day he followed the roadmaps that he was discovering. But there were still some failures. Some patients presented and looked similar to other previous patients, but they weren't responding the same way. The twisted bands didn't untwist. Why is this so? Dr. T thought to himself. He thought he never would find the answer. Then one day with one of his difficult patients he realized there were 2 twisted bands. So he used both hands and untwisted them together as the same time. One of the bands was twisted around the other band! Neither could be corrected without correcting the other one, and they could only be corrected at the same time. But once corrected, there was improvement.
The concept of twisted bands was a theory. But could it really occur? Would anatomy match Dr. T's clinical experience he wondered? What are these bands anatomically? Do they really stretch such long distances? How come nobody else ever noticed this? Wouldn't somebody have discovered that were these long bands running throughout the body? All those anatomy studies and nobody ever noticed before? Is that possible?
Dr. T had many questions. He was beginning to understand that it was possible fascial bands could have been overlooked. The reason being unless you're looking for something you don't see it. Remember the neurosurgeon? He didn't think the fascia was important. So he never paid attention to it. The same, Dr. T supposed, with the anatomist. Who cares about a tissue nobody even talks about?
The next step would be to get a cadaver to look at to test Dr. T's theories!
See you next month!
