Watch Til Luchau's technique videos and read his past articles in Massage &
Bodywork's digital edition, available at www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com,
www.abmp.com, and on Advanced-Trainings.com's YouTube channel. Watch Til's
ABMP video playlist where all his videos have been compiled.
To learn more, listen to Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe discuss issues related to coronavirus and
manual therapy on their Thinking Practitioner Podcast, sponsored by ABMP.
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?
If there's good news in the cytokine storm
story, it might be that these cytokine
imbalances appear to be detectable (and
to some extent, treatable) in COVID-19
patients via commonly available blood
tests and immunosuppressive drugs.
When excessive inflammation is found in
a coronavirus patient, doctors face a tricky
decision about how much to suppress the
immune system in the face of an active
infection, but as experience dealing with
this virus mounts, protocols will emerge
to help guide these treatment decisions.
As has happened with past epidemics,
the flood of attention, awareness, and
resources will increase our overall
understanding of how inflammation gets
out of control in other conditions. And
there are many, many of those conditions:
virtually all musculoskeletal complaints,
the majority of chronic diseases, and a
growing list of psychological and behavioral
conditions are now understood to have
a primary inflammatory component.
For now, many bodyworkers, manual
therapists, and massage therapists are
restlessly watching the COVID-19 story
unfold from the sidelines. We're looking
and learning while in this holding pattern,
but at some point, we'll have our work to do:
helping people stay healthy now has even
more important implications than it used
to. Immune competence is emerging as a
key factor in overall health, and we have
clear contributions to make there. As time
passes, we will learn more about how we can
support post-coronavirus recovery of both
individual survivors, and of our world.
Notes
1. R. Cron, as quoted in Apoorva Mandavilli, "The
Coronavirus Patients Betrayed by Their Own
Immune Systems," New York Times, April 1,
2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/health/
coronavirus-cytokine-storm-immune-system.html.
2. Grant S. Schulert et al., "Whole-Exome Sequencing
Reveals Mutations in Genes Linked to Hemophagocytic
Lymphohistiocytosis and Macrophage Activation
Syndrome in Fatal Cases of H1N1 Influenza," Journal
of Infectious Diseases 213, no. 7 (April 2016):
1180–88, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiv550.
3. J. L. Ferrara, S. Abhyankar, and D. G. Gilliland,
"Cytokine Storm of Graft-Versus-Host Disease: A
Critical Effector Role for Interleukin-1," Transplantation
Proceedings 25 (February 1993): 1,216 –17.
4. J. R. Tisoncik et al., "Into the Eye of the
Cytokine Storm," Microbiology and Molecular
Biology Reviews 76, no. 1 (2012): 16–32,
https://doi.org/10.1128/MMBR.05015-11.
5. Fields Virology, 6th ed., eds. David M. Knipe and
Peter M. Howley (Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer/
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Health, 2013).
Til Luchau is the author of Advanced Myofascial
Techniques (Handspring Publishing, 2016), a
Certified Advanced Rolfer, and a member of the
Advanced-Trainings.com faculty, which offers online
learning and in-person seminars throughout the
United States and abroad. He invites questions
or comments via info@advanced-trainings.com
and Advanced-Trainings.com's Facebook page.
N e w ! A B M P P o c k e t P a t h o l o g y a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / a b m p - p o c k e t - p a t h o l o g y - a p p . 83
Lung tissue sample from a 1918 influenza
victim, showing extensive damage to alveoli from
inflammatory cell infiltration.
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