Stretch Marks Are Scars

Stretch Marks Are Scars | Tara Kachroo

In the first private session, with my history-taking taking up a lot of time, I ask about injuries, pain, movement issues, work habits, and—importantly—scars. Most people have scars. Sometimes they’re big, sometimes small, but they’re pretty much all important.

Somehow, every time I ask about scars, my clients don’t mention their stretch marks. Most of the time, it’s because they don’t even know they are scars! And sometimes, it’s because they think they aren’t important. But stretch marks are scars, and they can cause pain and dysfunction.

Scars create distortions in the surrounding fascia, which can send misinformation to the motor cortex, disrupting efficient movement coordination. Scars are also often sites of trauma, and the sensory nerve endings around them can become hypersensitive or irritated.

I’ve had several clients whose stretch marks caused motor control dysfunctions and pain. One client had back pain. We assessed her core function and found her left internal oblique wasn’t firing well, which affected her rotation and pelvic stability. Her unstable pelvis led to back pain. She only had stretch marks from her pregnancy on one side of her belly. Want to guess which side?

The loosening of the skin from stretch marks mirrors the underlying weakening of muscles that are repeatedly stretched without strengthening. That’s why I ask which direction the stretch marks go in! Correcting the fascial distortions around her stretch marks quickly restored her stability and eliminated her pain.

Another client struggled to keep her right knee straight, affecting her balance. We discovered that the stretch marks around her knees from puberty were interfering with her hamstrings. After a few minutes of release work, her knee straightened completely, and her balance improved significantly.

If you have stretch marks and want to see if they’re affecting you, contact me in the Kitchener-Waterloo area for an assessment. You can book online here.