August 25, 2022
The Hanger Reflex
The “Hanger Reflex” is the latest thing on Tik Tok. Just search for it, and you will find this “mysterious” reflex. Take the challenge: get a wire coat hanger and stretches it to fit onto your head. You will find that your head will involuntarily rotate to one side. This is reminiscing of some craniosacral work where a light touch could induce movement involuntarily. Perhaps this could explain some of the phenomena we experience in bodywork. This “hanger reflex” was first reported by J. E. Just Christensen from Department of Neurology of Aarhus University in Denmark in the article “New treatment of spasmodic toticollis?” published in a medical journal The Lancet, August 31st, 1991. Christensen reported: “Placing a close-fitting cardboard box on the head and rotating it to the right or left results in an involuntary torsion of the head in the contralateral direction. Ten healthy volunteers experienced this reaction. One woman did not, probably because of her conic shape of her head.” The suggested medical treatment was botox injection, but Christensen observed that when a box was placed, it induced a head rotation in the direction opposite to the patient’s horizontal torticollis. As a result, the patient could easily turn their heads to both sides. After a couple of days a patient reported a considerable improvement, the effect lasted 10-15 minutes after removal of the box. Christensen wrote that the “treatment aimed at the efferent component of head control, like pressing a finger onto the chin to counteract the abnormal head posture. The box response may be regarded as a sensory stimulation and thus aimed at the afferent component. “ Recently a group of Japanese scientists further explored this phenomenon and coined the term “hanger reflex”. The authors wrote a review titled “The Hanger Reflex: An Inexpensive and Non-invasive Therapeutic Modality for Dystonia and Neurological Disorders” published in Neurologia medico-chirurgicao in October 2020. The authors from Kanazawa Neurosurgical Hospital wrote that the research started when the senior author watched a Japanese TV program reporting this phenomenon. Then he tested on a patient with cervical dystonia, and “astoundingly, the abnormal head rotation ceased immediately after the application” of the coat hanger. Dystonia condition involves involuntary muscle contractions that cause slow, repetitive movements or abnormal postures. As it is impractical having someone wear a coat hanger on the head all the time, the researchers designed “an esthetically acceptable portable device”, something like a head brace. The device was worn 30 minutes a day for 3 months, and patients with cervical dystonia improved significantly. The authors further tested the device to treat headaches, cervical pain, and adhesive capsulitis. The authors explained this phenomena due to the application of a shearing force on the skin. They believed that this reflex is a type of sensory illusion induced by skin sensation, where one believes that continuing to turn their head will relieve the discomfort. The direction of head rotation was following the direction of shear, the head rotated medially when the skin was sheared to the medial side and laterally when the skin was sheared to the lateral side. The authors also tested the reflex in other directions, including frontal, backward, and lateral. Furthermore, this phenomenon can be induced in other parts of the body. They devised a clampt type device on the wrist to treat a patient with bilateral focal hand dystonia (writer’s cramp). The authors concluded that this hanger reflex might help develop an inexpensive and non-invasive treatment for dystonia or other neurological diseases. Watch the research study here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on22yoI40TI |
| Comments by John Sharkey This study specifically refers to the epistemological logic behind neurological reflexes. In this case a reflex they have humorously called “the hanger reflex”. Reflexes are operating under the radar of conscious control, with the cerebral cortex becoming aware only after the fact. Specialised neural entities, such as spindles, are monitoring and orchestrating your moveable body in time and space, adjusting tone in an appropriate manner that ensures you get from point A to point B safely. Our human form provides speciality across myofascial tissues such as those responsible for intrinsic activities such as breath, digestion, urination and defecation and those more immediately concerned with the outside world such as the osseofascial system. However, without a healthy reflex facility, none of these utilities of physiology and metabolism would function appropriately. Unfortunately reflex facilities go wrong resulting in inappropriate force production, speed of motion, spasticity, ischemia, pain, reduced range of motion and impaired quality of life. Specialised nerve cells, or receptors, are sensitive to relative positioning and timing of motion specific to local and distant anatomical myofascial structures, for example, head position relative to upper and lower limb ambulation. It may surprise you to learn that your head is constantly moving throughout the day, even when you are sitting still. An important reflex facility called the vestibulo-ocular reflex, is a feedback facility involving your eyes and head position, ensuring you keep your eyes level with the horizon while stabilising our retinal image of our visual world. Otolithic changes and adverse changes involving the semicircular canals can have a negative effect on misreporting head position and angular acceleration. These tensegrity architectured structures provide tensional and compressional based coordination, supported by gelatinous fluidic dynamics via six canals arranged in three planes so that coordinated inhibition results in appropriate velocity, deceleration and control of head and eye movement. In the “hanger reflex” we are seeing a combination of compression combined with a force specific vector applied to the frontal temporal area with a shearing force described in this instance as torque. Knowledge of such reflexes is critical for manual therapists wishing to offer hands-on therapeutic interventions to patients presenting with spasmodic myofascial issues. John Sharkey is a clinical anatomist, exercise physiologist and founder of European Neuromuscular Therapy. John provides unique fascia and tensegrity focused dissection courses and manual therapy workshops worldwide. Visit: johnsharkeyevents.com or go to: https://ntc.ie/dissection-south-africa/ |
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