[Ageing and restricted mobility. Frailty from the perspective of myofascial structural models].

BACKGROUND: Decreasing physical mobility largely defines our idea of ageing. Frailty is generally considered to be a degenerative but normal age-related condition in elder people. A detailed analysis of this somatic process and the development of intervention strategies, however, require a differentiation of so-called normal mobility which does not focus on average values, but on functional connections.
METHODS: Myofascial structural models provide such a perspective, in which muscles, tendons, and connective tissue are not regarded as isolated tissue parts but as an integrated functional network.
RESULTS: Within these models, the key to an adequate understanding of physical frailty is the extracellular matrix, which tends to dehydrate in inactive or strained body regions and to store additional collagen. Thus tractive forces are reduced but at the cost of reduced elasticity. As the connective tissue is interspersed with mechanoreceptors that are sensitive to pressure induced externally, affected structures are accessible for prophylactic and therapeutic intervention.