Why Every Cat in the World Stretches in the Morning from a Wilmington Chiropractor
Why Every Cat in the World Stretches in the Morning from a Wilmington Chiropractor
Why Every Cat in the World Stretches in the Morning
Cats do it. Dogs do it. Heck, even we do it.
It’s stretching. But why do we stretch? And why does it feel so good?
It has to do with The Fuzz.
And no, I’m not using an outdated piece of slang from the 60’s to refer to the police.
To understand the fuzz, you have to understand fascia. And to understand fascia, first, you need to know how to pronounce it.
Fascia is pronounced “fash-uh”. It’s a fibrous connective tissue that holds your body together.
It’s hard to overstate just how important fascia is to your existence. Fascia is all over you. It covers every muscle. It covers small little groups of muscle fibers. It’s what makes your skin able to move around on top of your muscles. It is the ligaments that attach your muscles to your bones. It’s the discs between the vertebrae in your back. It’s the layer of tissue that lets muscles slide by each other. It provides structure to your soft tissues.
What does this have to do with The Fuzz you’re asking?
Fascia exists between your skin and muscles to allow your body to have a good range of motion. But it also exists to restrain your motion so that your body can be held together. Healthy fascia allows for a normal range of motion. Unhealthy fascia restricts normal range of motion.
Anytime your body sits in one place for a period of time, little strands of microfibers, which can be thought of as fuzz, start to build up in the fascial layer. This is what you feel when you get up from a chair and have stiff legs, or get out of bed and stretch your arms and your back.
It’s also why every cat in the world stretches in the morning.
Curious what it looks like? Here it is under 25x magnification.
Stretching gets rid of this fuzz. Or as Gil Hedley, in the video below says, it “melts” the fuzz. But perhaps the best way to think about it is that it’s like opening super tiny pieces of Velcro to allow the tissue layers to move around. It feels goooood.
The problem comes in when we sit too long or don’t move our bodies in a wide range of ways. If the fuzz isn’t cleared out through stretching, it can start to build up. Over time, the fuzz will start to restrict your body movements. This introduces problems into your range of motion and is something that I, as a chiropractor, see every day.
Luckily, the prevention and the cure are the same thing: working on having a complete range of motion in your movements. The better your range of motion, the more healthy your fascia is, and the better you’ll feel!
For larger places of build up, myofacial release therapy can also be a wonderful way to get rid of Fuzz build up.
Now, the next time you feel tightness and need to stretch you’ll know what you’re really doing: fighting the Fuzz!
Monday
9:00am - 1:00pm
3:00pm - 6:00pm
Tuesday
9:00am - 1:00pm
Wednesday
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3:00pm - 6:00pm
Thursday
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3:00pm - 6:00pm
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King Chiropractic Hand & Foot
6934 Market St
Wilmington, NC 28411
(910) 777-7228