The Extracellular Matrix and Ground Regulation

Book excerpt: The workings of the suitable environment for cells—called the extracellular matrix (ECM) and ground regulation—has occupied the European medical tradition since the early part of the 20th century. As it has become more clear that the origin of disease and its first signals register in the connective tissue, or myofascia, cellular pathologists and biochemists have sought to circumscribe networks of cell communication and microcirculation in the ECM. Alfred Pischinger (1899-1982) continued this line of work by further studying, in work published from 1926 through the late seventies, the connections of the ECM to the hormonal and autonomic systems. In the last twenty years Professor and Doctor of Natural Sciences Hartmut Heine and his colleagues have carried on Pischinger’s work, here summarized in one volume. Part One encompasses theoretical underpinnings; Parts Two and Three address applications and directions for further research. This updated English-language translation not only is an account of the work of Pischinger’s successors—Heine, Otto Bergsmann, and Felix Perger, (the three editors of this volume) and their many colleagues—but notes the positive development of complementary therapies based on this understanding of histology. Acupuncture is referenced directly. Both in Europe and the States the work of manual therapists, including Rolfers, cranio- sacral therapists, and other somatic disciplines have been informed for many years by Pischinger’s outsider model of how changes in the EMC register in the central nervous system and the brain, and are conveyed back to the periphery and connected organs. Heine’s exciting recent work shows that the regulation and construction of the ECM have relationships to cybernetic non-linear systems and phase transitions.