Ganglions and Bakers’ cysts

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The word ganglion basically means a collection of bundled tissue and it occurs in nerve tissue and the tissues surrounding your joints such as tendon and synovium (the smooth  lining of your joints). In  neurology a ganglion can be a naturally occuring essential structure in nerve tissue that acts like a nerve junction or it is an unexplained thickening of nerve tissue that may or may not result from trauma and serves no useful purpose.

The other type of ganglion (simple) is a benign tumour that occurs in tendons and synovium. Not all reference sources define ganglion the same way, for instance some authorities claim that  simple ganglion are idiopathic (has no known cause) where others state that participating in high impact activities  make one much more susceptible to simple ganglion.

Most simple ganglion occur as bumpy nodules in the back of our wrists (about 80%) and you can get them on the top of your feet too (Mortenson’s neuroma). Playing handball, boxing, martial arts and heavy manual work can help form wrist ganglion and running, jumping and other forms of high impact exercise can help create foot ganglion.

Your genes probably play a part in the likelihood of getting ganglion and if you don’t want to wait for them to disappear of their own accord you can have them drained through a syringe (aspiration) or surgically excised. Aspiration is usually only a temporary solution as surgery can be if ALL of the cyst is not removed.

Simple ganglion are fairly common and usually do not produce distressing symptoms, if there is discomfort from them it is usually mild. Some people are put off by their appearance, wrist ganglion can reach the diameter of a 10 cent piece and were once known as “bible cysts” because an early remedy was to physically strike the back of the wrist with a thick book like a bible.

Sometimes this worked but other times they came back and needless to say the odd wrist probably got broken in the process too. Simple ganglion usually form between 20 and 40 years of age, they are semi- firm to the touch and can go away by themselves without explanation.

Occassionally Bakers’ cysts are referred to as ganglion too, Bakers’ cysts (BC) are found behind or beside the knee. Knee trauma is a possible precursor for BC and infection can do it too though usually it happens without apparent warning. In BC fluid builds up in the knee usually pouching out at the back, it is much more obvious when your leg is straightened or fully bent and is sometimes uncomfortable.

Like simple ganglion they often go away by themselves and usually do not cause people problems unless they track down to your calf muscle. Any process that can produce swelling in your knee can potentially cause a Bakers’ cyst. Simple ganglion and Bakers’ cysts can be an auto-immune response too. Sometimes ganglion can be mistaken for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) nodules but is thankfully not debiliating like RA is.

The old saying that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” certainly can apply here, while some medical authorities state that there is nothing that can be done to prevent them others say that strong and flexible leg muscles can prevent Bakers’ cysts and treating your hands gently will help prevent wrist ganglion forming. There is a theory in Chinese medicine that people who hang onto their anger form more tumours and cysts than people who manage their anger well.

Circulation and your spine

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Your spine is composed of 24 bones (vertebrae) with cartilegenous discs acting as cushions between them, ligaments hold the vertebrae together and muscles (multifidis) running the spine’s entire length gives the spine movement and strength. Your spine  holds you up and provides protection for your precious spinal cord that is encased within.

So how is the circulation of blood and fluids in the spine different to circulation elsewhere in your body and why is it so important to help maintain it?

Firstly your spinal discs are not naturally graced with a very efficient system of circulation, it is non-directional which means that body fluids can get into and out of the disc but it is actually your posture and the way that you physically move your back that pumps the blood around within your discs to keep them healthy.

When we age and lose body height it is mainly due to our discs shrivelling which effectively shortens the spine, the atrophied (worn) discs lose their shock absorbing qualities and the spine stiffens, these factors go a long way to explaining why elderly people stand and move the way they do.

Disc injury is a very common cause of back pain too, the walls of the disc are fibrous but the centre is spongy. When the disc becomes damaged because of disease or trauma it may bulge out one side or even completely rupture which can be extremely debilitating and painful. Needless to say being over weight does not help you one little bit when this happens and apart from localised pain the bulging disc can press against your sciatic nerve and cause pain and weakness from your hip to your toe.

If you are lucky your prolapsed disc can  go completely unnoticed, in a study on disc prolapse several years ago 70% of the people in the sample group reported no back pain at all even though scans showed a clear bulging in atleast one of their discs, most likely because the bulge was not up against a nerve. If you are unlucky even a small disc bulge can cause you alot of grief.

The types of  movement that takes place in a spine when a person does yoga or Tai Qi or Qi Gong do a fine job at moving the fluid safely around inside of our discs. As you can no doubt imagine a disc that may already be weakened might not react as well to sudden violent twisting movement particularly if you are lifting something in an awkward posture.

Disc prolapse can cause other problems too such as creating pressure on the membrane that encases the spinal cord through which cerebro spinal fluid (CSF) moves. CSF is produced in the brain, your brain literally floats in it and it  extends all the way down your spinal cord, it’s composition is plasma like, pink and sweet to taste. It protects and helps nourish your brain and spinal cord. CSF circulation is helped along by good posture as is the fluid inside your discs.

If you drink plenty of water, adopt good posture always, do the right exercise, educate yourself about how your body works and get treatment when you need it you will help your spine last as long as you do.

Circulation II

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Just as water stagnates when it stops flowing, your blood which is mostly made out of water starts to decompose when it stops flowing. When the circulation in your tissues (flesh and muscle) significantly slows  you have problems because the tissues have a diminished function and are not as good at repairing themselves.

Heart attacks and strokes are about as scary (and common) as circulatory problems get. If you know someone well who has suffered a stroke or a heart attack you may have noticed that even if the incident was relatively minor it really shakes people up and affects their confidence, it can really make people question their own sense of self identity and worth and make them suddenly feel very old.

One can adopt a fatalistic attitude about if your time is up there is nothing you can do about it so you may as well die doing something that you love, the only flaw in this logic is if a heart attack or a stroke does not kill you it may leave you feeling like you wish it had because there is a good chance that you will never be the same again afterwards.

Taking a bigger interest in your health is no guarantee that you won’t meet such a fate, you might be unlucky enough to have poor circulatory DNA but all that any of us can do is to minimise the risks, you wouldn’t knowingly drive on bald tyres now would you?

Heart attack and stroke rate amongst the top four killers of Australians each year, (cancer and medical malpractise make up the other two) but at the other end of circulatory disease spectrum are less life threatening but still concerning problems like how you look for instance.

A persons’ skin usually shows the effect of years of sun baking, smoking and eating fatty food but even if you don’t do any of these things if your circulation isn’t good because you don’t exercise regularly (for instance) you may not have a very good colour or lustre about your skin. The whole cosmetic industry is about how your skin looks and all the cosmetic products under the sun are a poor substitute for good circulation in the blood vessels just under your skin.

Your eye sight is very much subject to your circulatory health too, glaucoma, the number one cause of blindness in this country is most often caused by by capillary damage in your retina. Having diabetes is the number one reason why people get glaucoma, and it is not the only circulatory problem that diabetics get, capillary damage can give you diabetic ulcers on your extremities and can even cause impotence in men.

Even though diabetes is an endocrine disorder it can have big circulatory consequences, with diabetes growing faster than all other diseases more and more people will be forced into taking greater care in their circulation as well as their diet.

Your circulation really is a big deal and effects your whole body, it is yet another reason why we must exercise, eat and hydrate well and pay close attention to our posture.

The importance of circulation.

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The circulation of blood and lymph around your body is of paramount importance for your health, you don’t just get inconveniently cold hands and feet through poor circulation it is more involved than that.

The circulatory system is described in anatomy (structure) and physiology (function) textbooks as being a transportation system. Your bright red blood (arterial) transports oxygen, sugars and proteins to your cells and your dark red blood (venous) takes away the carbon dioxide and other cellular wastes. If you are more at home with engines it is a bit like how your fuel and exhaust system operates, any interruption to the smooth flow of fuel and waste gases causes performance problems.

So central to how we operate is circulation that all the things that make us ill or kill us do so partly or fully via the circulatory system and it is not just cell food and waste that gets ferried through our inner “canals” it is our hormones too. We all make jokes about our hormones (and those of other people) but they are really no laughing matter because without them we couldn’t grow, reproduce, have sex or many other important and interesting things.

Pretty well everything works better if you have good circulation, at the “big” end of your circulatory system  the heart pumps your blood through your blood vessels and the rising and falling pressure in your chest when you are breathing is what pumps (at a much slower rate) the lymph around your body. Lymph is partly identical to blood but is straw coloured and clear (not unlike urine) and blood is red and is thicker, both are very important to our survival as is the “tubing” that channels it, our lymphatic and blood vessels.

At the “small” end of the circulatory system are our capillaries, many so fine and narrow that microscopic red blood cells can only float up them in single file. If our largest arteries and veins (eg aorta and vena cava) are the super highways of the body the capillary beds are the lanes, driveways and internal roads of our homes, factories and shops, all the little things that make the big things work.

All of the advice and explanations that are offered in these pages relates to and affects the circulation. If you have a reasonably good imagination and reasoning powers it is easy to get an idea how things like smoking, dehydration, poor diet, flabby muscles, droopy posture and lazy lungs might not help you have good circulation.

This article relates to most of the other blogs written in bodywork, even those offering Chinese medicine perspectives on human emotion because our emotions and thoughts can effect our circulation too. If you are often angry and have a bad heart it is like you have one foot in a coffin and the other one on a banana skin, it is a dangerous luxury to have both.

If you think that you may have a circulatory disease don’t self diagnose see a doctor and think of all those tiny rivers inside of us as a beautiful wilderness that is worth protecting.

Men and Massage

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Most if not all of the massage therapists I know have a predominantly female clientelle, the same applies to the acupuncturists, osteopaths, naturopaths and chiropractors I know.

Women not only seem to be bigger users of Alternate Medicine they also are more likely to be a member of a gym. Add to this these often quoted Australian average life expectancy statistics: men who never marry live till 58, men who are married live to 78, women who marry live till 81 and women who never marry last on average to 85. Men are more likely to suicide than women and are more likely to die due to accidental and violent causes than women.

Women seem to be better at looking after themselves than men. In the 20 years I have worked in alternate health I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard a female client tell me they wished they could talk their husband/ father/ son/ boyfriend/ brother or male friend into having a massage because they give every sign that they really need one.

So why is it us blokes are less willing than women to take better care of ourselves and do things like get a massage?, Is it possible that men have a higher threshold for denial that something is wrong with their body than women?

Are men more likely to use a muscle relaxant like alcohol to salve their pain? Does it have anything to do with the length of men’s working hours leaving less time for things like getting a massage or exercising regularly?  All of the above may be partly true.

Probably one of the most amusing reasons that some of my female clients tell me that they cannot convince their men to get some massage is that they do not like the idea of another man touching their body. Some men feel that female massage therapists are not physically strong enough to give a good massage, creating the dilemma that it is gay to get a massage from a man and a waste of time to get one from a woman. While it is true that more male than female practitioners of massage do deep tissue work I have had numerous massages over the years from masseuses who gave satisfying deep massages.

It is not in the best interests of either remedial massage therapists nor sex workers to ambiguously advertise themselves, you are highly unlikely to “accidently” find yourself in brothel if you are looking for a therapeutic massage. There is a big difference between bodywork and sex work.

If  you are a person who is not particularly proud of how you look without a shirt on get some massage where you can leave your clothes on, Chinese, Thai and Japanese massage is usually performed that way, if this is a concern for you just ring and ask.

Men need and benefit from massaage (and all those other therapies listed above) just as much as women do. The next time a woman in your life suggests that you need some massage consider it because she may be right and may then tell you at a later date “I told you so!” when you really do fall in a heap.

If you don’t want to pay for a massage then Self Massage.