Below are field notes on the interstitium by a good friend of mine- Alex Frantzis a Qigong and Bagua trained, highly psychic osteopath. This was written in 2017. I will chase him for part two for his findings today. We had much discourse in 2017 when i was “pranic living” or “autonomous living”. No doubt I was somewhat of a muse for his discoveries of sun light nourishment as during our long conversations he observed HOW I was sustained for a year on predominantly sunlight, hugs and laughter. The essay below points to this, however the focus in on interstitium.
Hi Chloe
I have continued thinking about various theories I have partially shared on here, and had additional clinical observations relating to them which have blended into a new model of physiology.
Briefly it is as follows:
The interstitium is interwoven with the skin (Dermis specifically), is a medium for both fluid and light in and out of the skin, and is where many toxins store in the body. This has a lot of applications to dermatology and chronic illness.
First off, this is the paper that describes and explains what the interstitium is: Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues | Scientific Reports
It has a lot of overlaps with the “Fascia” of osteopathy and the Triple Burner of Chinese Medicine.
I think its very worth reading that whole paper, but if you won’t some of the key points are:
- *It’s a prelymphatic system.
- *It is a fluid lattice that weaves and wraps the body ( I have recently been able to perceive this lattice) and serves as a shock absorber, hence say protecting the internal organs.
- *It is bound by collagen and inflated by water (most likely 4th phase gel water), so it is normally never visible on mounted pathology slides.
- *It is the pathway that cancerous cells travel in to metastasize.
- *One of the most feared and deadly cancers is melanoma (and a large part of why the practice of dermatology exists), and I believe the reason it is so dangerous is because the skin layer is invested in a lot of interstitium channels that are very easy for the cancer to reach and disseminate through.
Herrings Law I.
One classic theory in natural medicine I very much agree with is called Herrings Law of Cure (which is what classical homeopathy revolves around) and has nearly identical principles in chinese medicine.
It essentially argues that illness enters the body from superficial to deep, and exits the body from deep to superficial. The more of a superficial level disease exits on, the better, and the deeper a disease remains or exits on, the more pathological. Deep to superficial can refer to many things, particularly higher energy bodies (Spirit>Mind>Body or Tao>Essence>Karma>Psychic>Mental>Emotional>Etheric>Physicial) or Tissue Depth (Bones>Organs>Muscles>Fascia>Mucus Membranes>Skin). Herrings law of cure was based on mapping out a lot of healing/illness processes and then noting they followed consistent patterns that allowed the law to be made through empiric observation.
My belief is that a fundamental quality of “Health” is creating this superficial momentum of illness, and in many ways could be analogized to the nature of “Karma always resolving itself”, although Karma is but one manifestion of this phenomena.
Western Medical Science however has a somewhat schizophrenic perspective on this where the superficial manifestations are easily recognized and hyper-focused upon, while the deeper manifestations of illness are unrecognized and ignored, or just accepted as inevitable and once again ignored. Put differently, many medical therapies “treat” by pushing superficial symptoms down to a deeper level and predispose the patient to chronic diseases. This is most classically found when topical preparations are given to suppress skin eruptions leading to the disease moving to a deeper level.
Pharmaceuticals Lodging in the Insterstitium II.
I have interacted with so so so many people who have been chronically disabled from chemical poisoning, typically from a pharmaceutical medication. I have listened to their stories repeatedly and found many cases of someone chronically sick doing a complex detox program (ie. 15 day water fast) and saying near the end of it, they re-experienced the symptoms the offending medication initially caused, and often even tasted it in their mouth, then those passed and they were finally “well again.” Because of this and other things, I believe many medications that are believed to be eliminated actually store in the body and never go away. I never really thought about exactly where they stored, but recently, from various datapoints, I realized this had to be within the interstitium.
I asked a well known expert in this area, and he told me his view is that initially the liver tries to process whatever toxins you are exposed to, but once it gets overloaded, it shunts them into the lymphatic system and interstitium, and that is where they lodge and cause chronic problems.
To be clear, this is a theory about physiology, not medical advice — no one should stop, reduce, or come off a prescribed medication based on this; that’s a conversation for your own doctor.
Water Theory III.
Another one of my favorite theories is the 4th phase of water theory. It basically says that water has a gel lattice phase it will assemble into (H3O2+H+) if it has a polar surface to aggregate onto and ambient infrared light (or sunlight) to fuel the creation of this structure. Amongst other things, the Gel state has a lot of structure strength and integrity (so it say holds cell membranes together), repels things (so it pads the center of joints and protects the vasculature unless it fails and then you get CVD), has an energy gradient that can be harvested (from the H+'s) that fuels a lot of biochemical reactions (such as photosynthesis), and spontaneously creates flow (which is where venous circulation comes from and some of arterial circulation comes from) . My perspective is that the interstitium heavily relies upon 4th phase water to function.
The Body Depends on Charged Surfaces and Structured Water IV:
The body favors negatively charged polar surfaces, partly to create 4th phase water, and also to maintain a colloidal suspension where everything is repelled from everything else (rather than aglommerating and having nothing work, kind of like a raw egg vs fried egg). The key things which facilitate this process are the most Chaotropic anions (in order Citrate, Phosphate, Sulfate) and the things which most disrupt this process are the most Kosmotrophic Anions (Aluminum is #1, is very pervasive in our environment and is often associated with health problems). The body relies upon the synthesis of cholesterol sulfate (also made from the sun) to create sulfate lining the epithelium, and uses phosphate from ATP to catalyze 4th phase water and protein unfolding generating energy. Citrate has minimal usage in biological systems, but can be given as a supplement to significantly improve the colloidal potential of the body.
Budwig Diet V:
One of the great forgotten theories in nutrition is the budwig diet, which many people told me worked very well. Essentially, it said to have (good quality) cottage cheese blended with raw flax oil. The cottage cheese was meant to give the flax seed oil the ability to penetrate into the body and cells with hardened membranes (sulfur does this) and replenish the sulfate supply, while flax seed oil (or more specifically good quality omega 3s; animal sources are almost always rancid) was crucial for cellular respiration and health. Many of these ideas came from her own clinical observations of very bad looking oils present in the blood stream. Most importantly, she found that it was necessary for people to get sunlight for it to work.
To be clear, this is a nutritional theory I find interesting, not medical advice — anyone managing a health condition should talk to their own doctor rather than treat this as guidance.
Light Therapy VI:
One random doctor (Jack Kruze) I followed in the past is obsessed with light and thinks proper light (particularly not indoor fluorescent light or blue light from screens) is the key to health. He repeatedly emphasized that many proteins in your body are photo dependent, and turn light into energy or other necessary factors for the body. For instance, this is what the key fatty acid in fish oil is especially good at doing (which ultimately comes from algae, organisms that live off light). Proper light is also needed for the both to create 4th phase water, and a major thing the mitochondria do is produce deuterium depleted water, which greatly aids the production of 4th phase water in the body.
Fat metabolism and Light Sensitivity VII:
I in turn began to suspect that if people have a health fat balance in their body (essentially lining their interstitium), their bodies metabolize light quite well and thrive off of it, while if their fat balance is messed up, they can’t and can become quite photosensitive. If this metabolism is in place, I believe the skin and body stay far more resilient and vital overall. Additionally, many “toxins” I believe work by either destroying 4th phase water, or altering light from health to unhealthy spectrums. I have also found many cases of people with chronic diseases who did the “detox” I described where they rexperienced their symptoms, and then at that point they went from being super photosensitive to thriving off the sun.
Qi Flow VIII:
The second key component of health is flow. If there is an unobstructed flow of anything in the body, there is health, while if there is stagnation, there is pathology (I have written much longer things on this subject). Often to treat osteopathically, I just feel globally for areas of disrupted flow, treat the lesion in the area, feel flow return and then observe improvement. What I have recently concluded is that when this process occurs in the fascia, the fascia by being kinked disrupts the fluid flow within the interstitium running through that fascia, and the flow I feel in MFR/BLT (fascial treatment methods) is the interstitium recovering.
IX:
Many people I know who have suffered from weird chronic diseases have told me they became unable to handle the sun, and in many cases where they did detoxification that successfully resolved their illnesses, they also noticed they gained the ability to be in the sun and were nourished by it. Because of this, I began to put together the model that junk diets (esp in regards to fats) + toxins and liver/lymphatic overload congest the interstitium, or completely block its flow. Many issues are created from this, but in many ways, the largest one is that the interstitium looses the ability to effectively conduct light.
X:
In dermatology, there is a very fervent belief that sun is terrible, you must avoid it constantly (up to and including wearing sunblock inside) and on a daily basis, the general practice of dermatology I have observed largely revolves around freezing (or excising) many many skin lesions, and telling the patients those lesions were caused by the sun, so they need to be better about avoiding the sun. I believe this belief is overstated for a lot of patients, though I recognise that’s a minority clinical opinion, not the prevailing medical guidance.
To be clear, this is my personal opinion, not medical advice, and it isn’t a substitute for a dermatologist’s guidance on your individual skin cancer risk — anyone with concerns about sun exposure or skin lesions should talk to their own doctor.
XI:
In general though, I have been curious why so many people I have seen in dermatology have some combination of the following: -Skin looks very dry and un-hydrated/sad (leading to many many external moisterizers being given that have minimal efficacy). -Skin in general looks like it has no vitality and is on its way out. -Tons of lesions form all over it. -They seem to burn and form skin lesions from the sun way too easily.
XII:
The model I have to explain all of this is that many of the signs are a reflection of poor interstitium quality that is being managed by borderline futile treatments to affect that issue, which if anything actually further worsen the insterstitium itself (for instance, something always seems quite off when I see post cryo’s skin, and in turn lots of subsequent lesions pop up that need to be cryo’d as well). Skin hydration for instance, is meant to come from an internal source. For the converse, I believe a major key to maintaining healthy vibrant skin is maintaining healthy flow in the insterstitium, especially near the skin.
Most importantly, I think that one of the most important (but easily overlooked) flows of the body is that of light. There is a Chinese phrase my dad (Bruce Frantzis) likes to use which goes: “the knees are a weight transferrance joint, not a weight bearing joint.” I believe the same can be said about the skin. It is a light transferrenace organ, not a light bearing organ. The interstitium exists to funnel the radiant energy away from the skin to the body. When it does that, you are nourished and healthy. When it does not, the skin burns and gets damaged from the sun very easily. There is a very specific feel that obstructed flows have somewhat like electrical resistance through a wire and burning, and I think that is a lot of what happens when your ability to transmit light through the interstitium fails.
Skin Connection XIII:
Based on all of my observations, I suspect that the interstitium is intimately interwoven with the dermis (skin), and dumps many of the toxins the body cannot excrete into the skin through small channels designed to do so. This is consistent with what the researchers found, the depth of metastasis of melanoma, what I have felt, and in dermatology the dermis is considered to have a lot of “disordered collagen” which is what the interstitium looks like when it is dehydrated and put on slides (which is how dermis cell structure was derived).
When the interstitium is not able to perform this function (such as by damaging it with topical medications designed to “fix” the lesion) it creates a backlog in the interstitium which forces the toxins to be distributed to other less desireable areas that toxin, and simultaneously deny the skin of the fluid nourishment it needs. This thus gives a physiological basis for the very abstract Herrings law of cure.
I also believe that many skin lesions are just end points where the interstitium is dumping toxins out of the body, and at some point I would love to have access to a mass spectrometry machine to test this out or convince the people who do one of the environmental toxicity tests to study this.
XIV
: I am really wondering if one of the mechanisms of corticosteroids is that they cut/block the flow in the insterstitium. Beyond the fact they stop places reacting from toxins depositing in them, topical steroids also have the well known side effect of skin atrophy if they are used for more than a few weeks…which would totally coincide with the flow to the dermis dying and then it atrophying because there is nothing to noursing and fill it. I had a chat with one of my attendings of exactly what the process is and the histology of how skin atrophy occurs and it seemed congruent wit that.
To be clear, this is a personal hypothesis about mechanism, not a caution against corticosteroid use — they’re a legitimate, effective prescribed treatment, and nothing here is a reason to stop, reduce, or avoid a treatment your doctor has prescribed.
Other: It is now on my to do list to track down the people who did the instertitium research to get as many details as possible on what they found with it investing the skin. Also I suspect one of the reasons why people with collagen disorders are so prone the weird chronic diseases is because their poor collagen formation creates suboptimal interstitium that is more easily impaired.
My thoughts are also shifting to what can be done to repair the interstitium, but that is a wee bit more complicated. A lot of the technologies I have mentioned in here probably work, and what I am personally trying to do is tie my breath to moving it (mind moves qi, qi moves fluids including but not limited to blood), which for one reason or another is an ability that awakened for me at about the same time I decided I wanted to see if I could do. I have to say it feels very good! What I’m moving right now might actually be the capillaries, but it feels different and I am pretty sure is the interstitium.
Overall, this is a fun lens to look at disease through since so many things in society are working it out. I could say more but those are the main points; thank you for reading.
Alex Frantziz, Osteopathic Doctor