nerve length

[daniboy]

Hi All,

maybe I am 3dimensionally retarded but I wonder....when you pull the skin up, like in the rolling techniques of german "connective tissue massage" and all the subdermals (fat) comes up sometimes more than an inch, does that mean that i am stretching the nerves an inch. i am having difficulty picturing how this works, am i threading so much nerve through the skin ligament.

is this a clear question?

dani

[Diane]

Hi Dani,
You are by no means moving the cutaneous nerves an inch relative to the sleeves or skin ligaments, because the nerves are suspended inside their ligaments by even tinier ligaments... rather you are lengthening the entire complex (the entire neural tree) by an inch. There is a lot of potential movement in that tree.

For sure the nerve is sliding a little bit inside its container (creating an ectodermal/mesodermal differentiation) - its "sides" (and all the nervi nervorum) are being mechanically stimulated, besides all the exteroception just from the contact.

If you think of a telescope made of lots of sections, each of which can permit a small amount of motion, does that help? No one section can move much at all, maybe a micrometer, but because your telescope is large (maybe a couple meters) and has hundreds of thousands of sections, it adds up to a huge amount of total movement.

[daniboy]

:D:D:D:D

these toothy grinners illustrate perfectly how pleasing your answer is to me. thanks again, diane.

dani

[daniboy]

Oh, and what would you, or anyone else say about the relationship between nerve length (plus the sleeves) and weight loss (or gain)??

I would assume that rapid weight loss would either entail slacker nerves or else the nervous system rapidly shrinks itself down...

dani

[Diane]

That is such an interesting question. I've wondered about it myself.
Nerves can definitely "lengthen", as in surgery to increase limb length for people with dwarfism, etc. Some peoples' legs are lengthened a great deal, making them a good foot taller. And they are already adults, not just juveniles growing taller...

About shrinkage of people; since most of the fat in a body is stored in the subcutis, the skin itself can get quite loose and baggy on those who have lost a bunch of weight. Also there are a lot of cutaneous fascicles that must have had to lengthen to get out to the surface of the skin, while the weight was on. It would be so interesting to learn what happens to those - if they droop or if they tighten back up again, along with the skin ligaments.

Every time I see someone on TV undergoing skin removal, post weight loss, I cringe and think to myself, there goes a bunch of their skin sensation along with the skin. I wonder how long it takes their SI area to replasticize.