ScarTalk

Scars are more important than we think

Aging bodies face silent struggles - unexplained fatigue, slow healing, stiffness, and chronic pain. In today’s world, these are seen as inevitable, just part of growing older. Medical research into aging tends to be fragmented, with funding directed toward specific conditions like Alzheimer’s - those with clearly defined symptoms and strong charitable backing. In contrast, complex, systemic issues like musculoskeletal decline receive far less attention, often dismissed as natural or too broad to treat.

Beneath the surface lies a vast, fluid-connected network - the interstitial system - poorly understood, rarely targeted, yet central to how we feel, move, heal, and age. Dynamic Interstitial Fluid Flows (IFF) are essential to maintaining tissue health. When IFF slows or becomes disrupted, tissue oxygenation, nutrient delivery, and cellular communication all decline - allowing pain, stiffness, and degeneration to take hold. [1-4]

Scarring from surgery, injury, or inflammation disrupts the interstitial matrix - the connective environment through which cells communicate, repair, and regenerate. While the molecular mechanisms of scar formation are well studied, medical research remains focused on surface-level wounds, not the long-range dysfunction that scars can trigger within deep tissues. [5-7]

An Aging Crisis

Over 60% of people in England will undergo surgery in their lifetime. Many are left with long-term stiffness, pain, or mobility loss - symptoms are often treated with medication, or correctional surgery which further disrupts tissue mechanics and interstitial hydration. This has become a persistent and expensive ongoing healthcare burden. [8-11]

The Wellness Gap

Manual therapies and wellness devices aim to support recovery, but the results are often temporary. Why? Because they rarely engage the deeper fluid dynamics of the interstitial system - a system invisible on scans, difficult to quantify, and typically ignored in diagnostics. [12-14]

Ancient Insights, Modern Blind Spots

Eastern movement systems like Qi Gong and Chinese channel theory appear to engage interstitial tissues through sensation and intention, offering therapeutic effects based on inner feedback. But in Western frameworks, these traditions often focus on aspects of routine and mystique, rather exploring the potential for body-based sensory science. [15-17]

Scar Therapy: Surface Success, Deeper Potential

Visible scars from surgery or injury — are one of the few areas where long-term tissue healing receives consistent attention. Treatments such as silicone gels, pressure therapy, laser treatments, and massage are widely used to reduce the appearance of scars. These methods aim to soften tissue, reduce redness, and restore some flexibility to the skin. [18-21]

While often effective at the surface, these approaches have limited impact on deeper tissue adhesions or interstitial dysfunction that may persist beneath the scar. Most scar therapies do not directly address the fluid dynamics that influence deeper tissue recovery — particularly the role of interstitial fluid flow (IFF) in guiding collagen remodelling and tissue regeneration. [22-24]

Emerging research suggests that improving local IFF could significantly support the remodelling of fibrotic or scarred tissue by restoring oxygenation, nutrient exchange, and cellular signalling. However, to achieve meaningful local changes in IFF, the entire interstitial system must be stimulated to create favourable gradients - essentially encouraging the body to move and circulate its internal fluids more effectively. [25-28]

Cadaver Studies

Various studies have contributed new insights into body health and physiology, grounded in therapeutic experience and post-mortem observations. The findings confirm that the interstitial matrix is a continuous, body-wide network. They also identified connective tissue structures - often described as fascial chains - that extend throughout the body, sometimes spanning from head to foot. These observations suggest that scar tissue and mechanical tension may propagate far beyond the original site of injury, helping to explain why localised or surface-level treatments often seem to yield limited results. [29-36]

Restore The IFF: Restore Health

As we age, heal, and hurt, Interstital Fluid Flows (IFF) remain overlooked, underfunded, misunderstood, and missing from mainstream treatment strategies. Yet research is increasingly clear: to support deep, lasting healing and true wellness, therapies must engage the interstitial system at a whole-body level. This calls for a shift - in both therapeutic mindset and method. Practitioners need tools that go beyond surface treatments, capable of making systemic, measurable changes to tissue health and hydration. What’s needed now is a gentle, non-invasive way to restore the body’s internal fluid dynamics - allowing even long-standing tissue damage to start healing naturally.