Graston® Technique: Modern Therapy with a Chinese Antecedent

by Helen Mason

Graston® Therapy works on the body's connective tissue.

No pain, no gain is an exercise maxim popular among many athletes. Although many medical practitioners question the validity of that motto related to exercise, they support it when referring to the Graston® Technique, a therapy originally developed by David Graston and today credited with helping athletes like Michael Phelps maintain their competitive edge.

 

The Graston® Technique uses stainless steel instruments to assist clinicians in helping people maintain the mobility of their body's soft connective tissue, the white membrane that wraps and connects the muscles, bones, nerves, and blood vessels. It was originally developed by David Graston, an American water skier who suffered a debilitating injury to his right knee.

Disappointed by his slow recovery following surgery, Graston used his machining background to create stainless steel instruments he used to treat his soft tissue injury. After achieving success with the technique, he shared it with Ball Memorial Hospital and Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where the Graston® Technique was further developed. An outpatient clinic was opened in Indianapolis in 1994.

 

Graston® tools fit the various contours of the body.

The Graston® tools serve multiple purposes. Practitioners run one of six instruments along the affected part of the body. If fascial restrictions, scar tissue adhesions, chronic inflammation, and/or fibrosis are present, the practitioner detects a distinct feeling of grittiness or bumpiness. The instruments are then used to break up the adhesions, promoting healing.

The instruments prevent practitioners from getting the hand, wrist, and muscle injuries so common to those who try to break up fascial restrictions manually.

Be warned. For patients, the technique is painful. I came across it following a car accident in 1998 during which I suffered a fractured skull and level 3 whiplash. Although I thought these injuries had been treated, over the following seven years, I experienced more and more intense pain in my back and neck, finally accompanied by the inability to concentrate. After trying without success to find a non-drug method of alleviating these symptoms, I visited a chiropractor who used Graston®.

Gua Sha and Graston® break up scar tissue.

She quickly diagnosed the cause of my problem. The injuries from my accident had resulted in fibrosis of my back and neck muscles. They were in constant spasm, which was shutting down blood circulation and nerve impulses to the brain.

My first Graston® treatment resulted in an amazing reduction in symptoms. Over a period of time, regular treatments have promoted full recovery of my back and neck muscles.

At first, the days after each treatment were very painful as the affected areas turned red and then purplish or yellow with bruising, depending on how much work had been done. At one point, a dermatologist saw these injuries during a check-up and clearly thought I had been beaten. For me, the pain was nothing compared to the benefits of the treatments which helped me regain most of my physical abilities.

Michael Phelps credits the Graston® Technique for helping him win

Today, the Graston® Technique is used both by people like me and professional athletes such as basketball, hockey, football, soccer, and rugby players, as well as golfers. It's been successfully used to treat fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel, plantar fasciitis, tennis and golfer's elbow, rotator cuff tendinitis, shin splints, and post fracture pain.

The technique is similar to Gua Sha, a traditional Chinese method that has been practised for over 2000 years. Instead of stainless steel instruments, Gua Sha practitioners use a shell, piece of jade, buffalo horn, or other material to do their scraping. Like the Graston® Technique, Gua Sha causes redness, bruising, and micro traumas to the fascial tissue. The micro traumas trigger the brain to heal the area.

Credit Notice: Practitioner treating female from http://www.mynoblechoice.com/solutions/techniques/. Other photos courtesy of creativecommons.org.

Helen Mason's most recent books include What is Digital Entrepreneurship?, Be an Active Citizen in Your Community, and Be an Active Citizen at Your School, all Crabtree Publishing, 2016.

 

Now You See Me...

by L. E. Carmichael

If you were a superhero, what power would you pick? Reading minds? Super speed? How about invisibility? That last one is a good choice. Scientists around the world are already working on ways to make everyday objects - like humans! - invisible.

It all starts with understanding light and vision. When light waves collide with the atoms in an object, the waves bounce off, or scatter. The direction of the scatter depends on the angle of the bounce. Human eyeballs detect these scattering light waves, and our brains reconstruct the shape of the original object. So, to make something invisible, all scientists have to do is make light reflect off an object the same way it would reflect if nothing was there at all.

Easy, right? Um, no.

In fact, progress on the invisibility problem didn't really begin until around 2000, when the field of metamaterials started to develop. Engineers build metamaterials out of "artificial atoms" that interact with light in very abnormal ways. These atoms allow engineers to control the way light scatters off the metamaterial with much greater precision than would be possible using naturally-exisiting materials.

Scientists have used these materials to develop several different types of invisibility cloaks, each with advantages and disadvantages. For example, objects embedded inside a spherical cloak are invisible from all sides, but only for a certain value of invisible - they can block some wavelengths of light, but not all, meaning the object blurs rather than totally disappears. Carpet cloaks, so named because they are flat, are easier to make and work on larger objects... but those objects are only invisible from one angle. If the viewer is looking at the cloak from the side instead of dead on, the object becomes visible.

Plasmonic cloaking is a new technique that combines advantages of both spherical and carpet cloaks. Rather than trying to stop light from scattering of the object, plasmonic cloaks create a matching, opposite scatter, and the two combined cancel each other out. Mantle cloaks use a variation of the same strategy, and both types offer the advantages of both spherical and carpet cloaks. However, they also share a unique downside - size. They don't work on any object that's more than a couple of wavelengths of light across.

That's not a problem, if, for example, you're the CIA and you want to hide a tiny bug or spy camera. If you're trying to hide a human, though, you've got big problems. For example, a human-sized carpet cloak would actually have be about the same size as your bedroom. Another problem is that current cloaks block light in both directions, meaning no one could see you, but you couldn't see them, either - which would make sneaking around Hogwarts at night very difficult!

Worst of all, you'd have to stay completely still. According to invisibility scientist Majid Gharghi, going from a stationary object to a moving person would be like going from simple Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity. He told me it will likely be decades before engineers can build something that complex. Which is kind of a bummer... but on the other hand, gives you plenty of time to come up with your superhero name!

So. What superpower would YOU choose?

The Endangered Caribou

By Marie Powell

CC Jacob W. Frank

The caribou (Rangifer tarandus) is a remarkable animal. Part of the deer family, caribou are unique because both males and females have antlers. Also known as reindeer, caribou have roamed North America for some 1.8 million years. Barren-ground caribou evolved from these early ancestors. The Woodland and Peary caribou have been with us since before the Pleistocene epoch, or Great Ice Age.

The thing I like best about writing middle-grade non-fiction books is that you're always learning something new. The research I'm doing this week has led me north to the Yukon and Nunavut, where I've been learning about the caribou. For instance, some populations of caribou have been reduced by 95 percent in the past 15-20 years. That seems incredible.

I've also been reading Bill Waiser's A World We have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, and his vivid description of the buffalo herds on the prairies a century ago. These buffalo created a whole ecosystem just by foraging on the land, Waiser says. The wanton slaughter of some 4-5 million buffalo in the 1870s led to famine and severe environmental change across the prairies. Looking out my window at the busy streets of Regina, I try to imagine how different life would be today if that hadn't happened. So, when I read about the decimation of the caribou herds, I can't help but wonder what effect this will have on our future.

CCAlfred Cook  

Caribou fall into two groups: populations that remain in one area and spread out there after calving (sedentary), and herds that move or migrate to a common calving area each year (migratory). They range across the tundra and boreal forest areas, from the Arctic and south into most Canadian provinces. As well as predators and hunting, changing weather patterns affect the foraging of migrating herds, which in turn affects the health of the females and calves. So does loss of habitat due to human development in northern regions. All of this threatens the caribou's survival.

Scientists are working together with the Inuit to see how changing weather patterns affect the ecosystem of the north. For example, studies of the sea ice show how important that ecosystem is to all life in the north. One resource that brings out these findings is the Inuit Siku (Sea Ice) Atlas at http://sikuatlas.ca/sea_ice.html, as Claire Eamer shares in her Sci/Why post from 2013.

CCAllen Shimada 

Researchers have also turned to traditional Inuit knowledge to try to save the caribou. A 2012 report calls for minimizing development activities in caribou ranges, among other suggestions. Governments have responded with what the CBC calls a "patchwork" of conservation activities. Some provinces -- like Saskatchewan -- moved to limit development, and more recently others (including Alberta) have begun to act along those lines as well.

Will our efforts be in time to save these majestic animals?

Here are some more links to information about the Arctic and the caribou:

Bergerud, A. T. “Caribou.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/caribou/

Braun, David Maxwell. "Inuit Knowledge Critical to Arctic Science." National Geographic Society , August 18, 2011 http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/18/inuit-knowledge-critical-to-arctic-science/

Eamer, Claire. "Over, under, and on Arctic sea ice." Sci/Why 2013. http://sci-why.blogspot.ca/2013/03/over-under-and-on-arctic-sea-ice.html

Lunn, Susan. "Caribou still under threat despite changing political climate, report says." CBC News, Dec. 14, 2015. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/caribou-still-under-threat-despite-changing-political-climate-report-says-1.3359751

Northern Involvement: Changing Animal Populations - Science Canada - July 22, 2016 http://www.science.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=CC02ABC9-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99f_VVHuR2I&feature=youtu.be 

Rudolph, T. D., Drapeau, P., St-Laurent, M-H. and Imbeau, L. 2012. "Status of Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in the James Bay Region of Northern Quebec." (Scientific report) http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/Final-Rapport-Status-of-Woodland-Caribou-James-Bay_Eeyou-Istchee.pdf

"Traditional Inuit knowledge combines with science to shape weather insights." Science Daily, April 7 2010. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100407190000.htm

Weatherhead et al. "Changes in weather persistence: Insight from Inuit knowledge." Global Environmental Change, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.02.002 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378010000087

Marie Powell lives on Treaty 4 land in Regina, Saskatchewan. She is the author of close to 40 children's and young adult books, including the historical fantasy Hawk (2015). She enjoys writing about science, history, and any subjects that help promote literacy.

Iceman CSI: Tales from a 5300-year-old man

Forensic reconstruction imagines this is
what the 5300-year-old Ötzi looked like.
(Thilo Parg, CC BY-SA 3.0)

by Adrienne Montgomerie

An arrow sang through the air and plunged deep into a man’s shoulder 5300 years ago in Italy. That man fell as he gasped his last breath, his left arm flung awkwardly across his chest, pinned beneath him.

A mummy is not what you expect to find when you’re strolling through the Alp mountains with your husband. But that’s what happened to the group of mountaineers who found this mummified man in 1991.

What happened to this man? Why did he lay there, undiscovered, for so long? What can his body tell us about humans and life so long ago?

Because he died in a place that is always cold, his body did not disappear into the earth or get eaten by animals. All his parts are there, exactly where they were. He is not covered in rags like a mummy in a movie, but we say his body was mummified because it did not rot. This ancient man they named Ötzi, contains a lot of clues.
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Learning without destroying

Early scientists would cut apart specimens to learn about them, but that destroyed the body. Today, scientists know that the more they can preserve, the more will be available for other scientists to learn from, and for new technologies that get developed in the future.

The body is too fragile let everyone examine it closely, so 3D printing was used to create a copy so people can get a closer look at him.

The 3D print formed the base that the sculpture is made from. (Materialise)

Preserving the iceman Ötzi, so that others can study him, means keeping his body in a room that is –6 °C and nearly 100% humidity — just like on a glacier. The room is dim too, to protect the artifacts from damaging light. An alarm goes off it the room changes.

Ötzi is kept at –6 °C and nearly 100% humidity. (South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)

Dinosaur bones are replicated for display, too. That’s right, the bones you see in the museum are not the actual bones that were dug up. The originals are stored in conditions that keep them from falling apart, so that scientists (like archeologists) can study them.
.

What can scientists find out from the iceman?

Well, first, they can find out how long humans might have lived, so long ago. Because we have a lot of data about how bones age, scientists can estimate that Ötzi was 45 years old when he was killed.

Because of what we know about how vocal chords work, scientists can guess what Ötzi’s voice sounded like.

Because of the contents of his stomach, they can find out what kind of diet people had that long ago. His last meal was ibex, deer, and grain. His stomach also gives clues about where he travelled, because of the h. pylori bacteria they found in his gut came from Asia, very far away from Italy.

By analysing his DNA, they can find out that he was lactose intolerant, was likely to get heart disease, and had Lyme disease.

His shoes look a bit like Uggs.
(Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Because of the bits of clothes that were still on him, researchers can make guesses about the style of clothes he wore and the animals that they were able to kill (to use to make clothes).

Because of X-ray and CAT scans, we know there is an arrow-head lodged in his shoulder. But forensics showed he had many more injuries — the kinds that people get from a fight — and blood from four other people on his clothes and tools. Now experts think he actually died from a hit to his head.
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Mysteries still

There’s still a lot you can’t know by examining a body. Wouldn’t you like to know where Ötzi lived and why he was in the mountains? Who he was fighting and why? How big was his family, and did his brothers and sisters play pranks on each other?
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Learn more

There are a couple documentaries about Ötzi (Iceman Reborn, and others by NOVA), and several websites explaining different aspects scientists have discovered about him (follow the links in this article). You can even find out how a body becomes a mummy naturally. 

You can see the Ötzi copies in person at the DNA Learning Centres in New York city and Cold Spring Harbor, USA. To see him in person, you have to look through a small window into a climate-controlled room at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.

Just in Time for Halloween - Monster Science!

Post by Helaine Becker

Science isn't scary. Or is it?

I'm pleased to announce that my latest book, Monster Science (Kids Can Press) is out, and the reviews are in!

Here are two:

"From Frankenstein’s creation to Nessie, Becker uses the creatures of our scariest stories as a springboard for an introduction to the scientific understandings that might make such creatures possible—or impossible. In addition to man-made monsters and legendary sea creatures, she covers vampires, zombies, werewolves, and wild, humanlike creatures like Bigfoot. Chapter by chapter, she provides references from literature, film, and popular culture, including a bit of science, a bit of history, and a plentiful helping of humor. She includes numerous monster facts, suggests weapons of defense, and concludes each section with a test-yourself quiz. Science topics covered range widely: electricity, genetic engineering, “demonic diseases,” the nature of our blood and the circulatory system, the possibility of immortality, animal classification, evolution, cannibalism, optical illusions, heredity, hoaxes, and the very real profession of cryptozoology, or the search for hitherto unidentified creatures. Explanations are clear though sometimes oversimplified; they’ll provide readers with an acquaintance with the topic and its vocabulary but probably not real understanding. Lively design and zany cartoon illustrations add to the appeal. There is an index but, sadly, no sources or suggestions for further explorations by readers who will be wanting to know more.Book bait of the best sort, this is a winning combination of fancy and fact." - Kirkus

"A highlight of this work is its exploration of the often symbiotic relationship between culture and science; figures such as Shelley, John Polidori (The Vampyre), and filmmaker George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) merged cultural fascination with scientific development to create truly inspiring works and further public interest in science...VERDICT: The connection between pop culture and science is intriguing; this title will appeal to science educators as a supplemental resource for classroom activities. - School Library Journal

Want a sneak peek? Find out your Vampire IQ with this science-sharp quiz from Chapter 2!

Bird Banding

My friends Robyn and Mark are bird-watchers. Oh, they do a lot of other things, too, that you can read about on their blog at this link. But it's their bird hobby that I'm envying today. On the first Saturday of October, Robyn and Mark were helping researchers by banding birds. It was a wonderful day for citizen scientists helping experts with hands-on gathering of data!

This bird is a hermit thrush, observing Robyn as carefully as she observes it!

As Robyn says:

This morning Mark and I volunteered with the Rocky Point Bird Observatory banding migrating song birds. We helped with retrieving the birds from the nets (37 today) and entering their info into a database. Very interesting work and it confirmed how much I DON'T know about birds

The nets used to catch birds are almost invisible, and suspended between.posts like a fence. Here's a Chestnut-backed chickadee caught safely in a net. A moment later, a researcher carefully untangled the bird and held it while Robyn and Mark helped to band the bird and write notes about it. The bird banding is also being done at night, when the researchers catch owls.

Here's the whiteboard with notes about the numbers of birds caught, and their types.The total count of birds banded by Rocky Point Bird Observatory after day 74.of their study? 2,486!

You can read more about Rocky Point Bird Observatory at this link to their Facebook page, or go to their own website at this link. 

The Sci/Why Blog has had another post written about volunteering for a bird banding event, and you can read it at this link.
If you want to volunteer with bird studies in your own area, start by looking up provincial resources and try the nearest university biology program to find out who needs you. Don't worry about handling the birds -- even if all you do is write down the information as fast as the expert can say it, you're doing useful work that lets the expert handle the birds. Maybe there's a birdwatching club at the local recreation centre, or a birding store at a mall. The public library will have books on birds and birdwatching as well!

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Wild Helpers in the Brussels Sprouts Patch: Caterpillar Predators

by Jan Thornhill

Brussels sprouts look ridiculous! (Wikipedia)

The first time I saw Brussels sprouts clinging to their stems on the back of a truck in Holland in 1977, I was shocked. Up until then, I’d always thought they were baby cabbages. I still can't believe no one told me how they grew.

Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower
and kohlrabi are all the same species.

We’ve had a large organic vegetable garden for over 25 years. For most of those years we’ve tried to grow various brassicas—broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and, yes, Brussels sprouts.

A pretty pest—the cabbage white butterfly (Wikipedia)

Every year, though, we’ve been inundated with cabbage butterflies and their progeny—cabbage-loving green caterpillars. The common Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae) is native to Europe, Asia and North Africa. There were none here until it was accidentally introduced to Quebec in 1860. Because there are plenty of wild Brassica species in North America, it spread like crazy. Now it's everywhere.

A hungry cabbage caterpillar (Wikipedia)

 Its caterpillars are fast-growing voracious feeders and can easily turn a gorgeous, giant cabbage into multiple, disgusting layers of green lace glued together with caterpillar droppings. Yuck! Damage can be controlled organically by applying products containing the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), but I’ve always been too cheap to buy it so we’ve always hand-picked eggs and caterpillars. 

This year we decided in the spring to be lazy and only grow Brussels sprouts and nothing else from the cabbage family. Surely two of us could keep on top of the caterpillars on only four plants! And we did—though we also had help.

Helper #1: Chipping Sparrow

Audubon's Chipping Sparrow from his elephant portfolio

One morning I saw a Chipping Sparrow emerge from between the big leaves of one of the plants. It had a juicy green caterpillar in its beak! The sparrow and its mate returned over and over again for several days, each time flying off with a caterpillar. We could sit back and relax! We didn’t notice when they stopped coming, which probably coincided with their young becoming independent. Suddenly we were inundated with caterpillars again.    

Helper #2: Nursery Web Spider

Pisaurina mira, the Nursery Web Spider, can
have a broad stripe down its back. (Jan Thornhill)

While picking off yet another crop of caterpillars, I came face to face with a giant spider—giant enough that I jumped backwards when I saw it. It was a Nursery Web Spider (Pisaurina mira) and it had a large caterpillar in its jaws. It was sucking the life from it. 

Nursery Web Spider sucking the juices from a cabbage caterpillar. (Jan Thornhill)

Helper #3: Paper Wasp

Polistes fuscatus, our common native paper wasp removing fecal matter
from a caterpillar that was too heavy to carry. (Jan Thornhill)

This one was the best one. While hand-picking caterpillars, I suddenly spied a large paper wasp, the native Polistes fuscatus. I normally don't like these guys because their sting can feel like a combination of being electrocuted and burned with a soldering iron. This one, however, had no interest in me. It was trying to take off with a large caterpillar held between its mandibles. But it was too heavy and the wasp only made it as far as one of the outer leaves. It landed with the caterpillar and then started fussing over it. 

At first I thought it was simply eating the caterpillar on the spot, but after a few minutes I figured out what it was doing: it was cleverly removing the heavy fecal matter from the caterpillar. When it was done, it easily flew away with the lighter carcass, leaving behind a line of green poo. 

I'm happy with any help I can get controlling the Cabbage White Butterfly, but do I want it to disappear? No, I don't. And in Great Britain, where they once had flocks of millions, they're looking at its disappearance as a real possibility. Between 1976 and 2008, its numbers have declined by a third—which is pretty astonishing. The crash in its population is likely due to the drop in the number of home vegetable gardens combined with commercial crops being sprayed with pesticides. If the Cabbage White Butterfly disappeared from here, sparrows, wasps and spiders would all lose part of their diets. 

The garden nasturtium is both tasty and a good
decoy plant for the Cabbage White Butterfly 

One more little snippet—apparently cabbage caterpillars will eat garden nasturtiums, which are a lovely salad addition (both flowers and leaves), so they can be used as a decoy crop. The caterpillars, however, much prefer cabbage leaves—if a caterpillar gets even a tiny taste of a cabbage leaf first, it will starve itself to death rather than eat nasturtiums!

Update: August 21, 2018

I found a tiny clay urn glued to our outdoor table yesterday. I knew it was some kind of wasp nest. I also knew that the tiny pot was going to be destroyed one way or another, so instead of leaving it to be crushed by a coffee cup or plate of sliced tomatoes, I sliced it off the table with a knife so I could see what was going on inside.


Oooh! 

The urn was built by a Potter Wasp nest – someone in the genus Eumenes. 

Potter Wasp, Eumenes sp. (Wikipedia)

Potter Wasps normally won't bother you. What they will do is construct tiny, marble-sized urns out of drops of mud. 

Potter wasps sometimes include an urn "neck."

They fill these little pots with paralyzed caterpillars, then lay an egg on the inside clay surface. If all goes well, the egg will hatch and the wasp larva will feed on the caterpillars until it's mature enough to chew its way out of the pot and start its adult life.  

I don't think the egg in the one I found one "took." Or maybe something happened to the builder before she could lay an egg. Too bad, since there were five different desiccated caterpillars inside, one of which, judging by its pale green colour, was surely a cabbage caterpillar. 

A feast gone to waste.

References: 

Article about U.K. Cabbage White Butterflies: Cabbage Whites Under Threat