Proprioception is from Latin
proprius, meaning "one's own", "individual", and
capio, capere, to take or grasp. Thus, it means to grasp one's own position in space, including the position of the limbs in relation to each other and the body as a whole.
Explaining how does it feel to have proprioceptive problems is practically impossible to convey. It is as if you have to have it in order to grasp the concept. If you don't have it, all explanations remain in the field of "esoteric" knowledge.
For those who want to understand it better, you can read the research of proprioceptive problems found on astronauts who have spent a lot of time in outer space:
Astronauts experience significant proprioceptive problems during and after spaceflight due to the microgravity environment. In microgravity, the body is unloaded, which decreases the utilization of proprioceptive input, a key factor contributing to balance dysfunction upon return to Earth. This disruption manifests as a
loss of awareness of limb position, with astronauts reporting they can lose track of their arms and legs, sometimes feeling as if their limbs are not present. The altered proprioceptive function affects the feedback control of movement, leading to delayed movement strategies and impaired mass discrimination during tasks like accelerating a ball up and down with whole-arm movements.
The central nervous system adapts to spaceflight by reinterpreting vestibular and somatosensory inputs, which are no longer suitable for the 1G environment upon return.
This results in sensorimotor dysfunction, including excessive postural sway, spatial disorientation, and alterations in muscle activation and joint kinematics. After landing, astronauts often
perceive the floor as moving up toward them when hopping down or being pushed down under them when hopping up, a phenomenon linked to impaired proprioceptive feedback. These proprioceptive deficits, combined with vestibular disturbances, contribute to post-flight postural ataxia and locomotor control deficits.
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts:
Developing Proprioceptive Countermeasures to Mitigate Postural and Locomotor Control Deficits After Long-Duration Spaceflight - PMC
Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts
The human body exhibits remarkable adaptability to diverse environments. Astronauts in microgravity experience physiological changes like those observed in s...
www.frontiersin.org
Probably the most common causes of impaired proprioception is aging, which favors falls in the elderly. It's impaired in genetic disorders such as joint hypermobility or Ehler Danlos syndromes, autistic spectrum disorders, Parkinson's disease and traumatic injuries. It has also been described after a stroke, viral infections, when a person is very tired, as a consequence of excess vitamin B6, chemotherapy, weight loss or weight gain, etc.
Proprioception encompasses the internal body and the external body and its movements, but also the immediate environment perceived by the skin, joints, the feet, the eyes, sense of smell, the manducatory system contributing to posture, the vestibular (inner ear) perception of the head's position.
This highlights the problems with impaired proprioceptive where there is attenuation (anesthesia and pseudo paralysis) of perceptions, or exaggeration of perceptions (pain). Perception of the environment is different from others, and often people with proprioceptive problems have difficulty in making themselves understood.
The brain is normal, though, but it's embedded in a peculiar body which is often very performing due to its softness and laxity, and it's greater hearing capacity, which could explain a greater capacity of observation and adaptation.
Proprioceptive problems introduce the concept of a "somatopsychic" disease mentioned earlier and how many with proprioceptive problems have extrapyramidal symptoms such as dystonias (trembling).
Receptors at the muscle level, which inform the brain about the body's motor activity, send wrong signals to the automated regulatory system for automatic movements, giving rise to shaking and involuntary muscle movements. There can be bruxism, permanent muscle contractions, generalized tonique seizures of non-epileptic origin, and restless leg syndrome.
The problem with proprioception is not due to a problem in the central or peripheral nervous system, which is why these tests are always normal, but from a generalized problem at the level of the conjunctive tissue which is modified in its structure and its mechanical behavior. It is in these tissues where multiple sensors in the entire body inform the person of what is going on. Signals that these sensors transmit to the brain for perception purposes or signals transmitted for automatic regulatory purposes in the entire body are either nonexistent, exaggerated or modified, producing a great difficulty in localizing the body or things in the environment.
The conjunctive tissue is either too elastic or its sensors won't react or, on the contrary, they overreact. Vulnerable or thinned conjunctive tissue and/or its deformation don't do the job of protecting the body properly from overpressure, or it creates problems from contracting muscles and its coordination with other muscles and its movements, with other sensors in the eyes or the feet, explaining visual fatigue or double vision.
Disturbance of the body's perception can result in sensorimotor disconnections resulting in falls, pseudoparalysis, falling objects, difficulty executing certain tasks, stumbling against door handles. Parking a car can be very difficult, as the environment is not integrated properly and there are referential/space problems.
Proprioceptive problems from the conjunctive tissue at the respiratory level has several consequences such as fatigue, shortness of breath specially when going up the stairs, sleep apnea. There can problems swallowing food and gastric reflux.
There's a like a dissociation between the brain where the body doesn't obey the brain. The body might feel like a foreign object to the person.
There might attention deficit disorder secondary to the conjunctive tissue anomaly. The antennas and sensors are hyper-tuned, but there's too much information coming in without proper grounding.
The difficulty of "keeping your feet in the ground" and/or not being grounded properly in the body, is due to proprioceptive problems. There's a real problem feeling the sense of self in space due to malfunctioning receptors. This can go beyond the physical realm. Depending on programming, background and the genetic recombination dice, they're more easily manipulated by their environment and/or people. "We can take over because there's no one home" kind of energy. Alternative practitioners have reported a higher quantity of spirit attachments in people with hypermobility spectrum disorder of the Ehler Danlos kind, who are often very empathetic despite problems in expressing themselves properly.
Despite psychiatric diagnosis in people with spectrum Ehler Danlos, one of the most experienced experts in the field claims without hesitation that the brain is the only organ that works in Ehler Danlos. It's the perception that is askew, leading to misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, ADHD, severe anxiety, etc. It's a sensory problem at the level of the conjunctive tissue where the body gets constantly the message of "freeze" or "fight or flight" to quote the polyvagal theory. The conjunctive tissue is the richest sensory organ in the body, more sensory than the skin.
Physiotherapy for the proprioceptive system becomes essential for getting healthier. There's no way around it. No biochemical molecule, peptide or vitamin will ever completely compensate the malfunction of millions of receptors with very complex functions at the level of the entire conjunctive tissue located in viscera, fascias and throughout the entire body. Adapted physical therapy is essential.
Among the most useful treatments to correct the defect of proprioception stemming from malfunctioning fascia or conjunctive tissue are compressive garments, which stimulates proprioception and prevents positions and movements that are painful by informing the brain that the right stretch is that one, and not the one of the malfunctioning conjunctive tissue.
I have had patients that are like textbook cases of conjunctive tissue disorder who don't believe me that they have a problem and who after years of trying multiple treatments finally recover from their pain by using a compressive garment. Then, they finally believe me.
Garments are made by very precise measures. For gloves, every finger is measured and each finger at each articulation. Despite garments triggering pressure urticaria in my body, I persisted in wearing them, if only for the grounding effect it had on me.
People who were not able to walk anymore, were finally able to do it with specialized compressive garments that stabilized all their joints, including at the level of their hips.
More info, see:
Patients with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) frequently suffer from severe chronic pain. We carried out an observational cohort study to assess the effectiveness of compression garments (CGs) for reducing this pain. Patients with non-vascular EDS were ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.cerecare.eu
Site du professeur Claude Hamonet, professeur émérite des Universités (UPEC), médecin spécialiste de Médecine Physique et de Réadaptation, notamment pour le syndrome d'Ehlers-Danlos, Docteur en Anthropologie sociale.
claude.hamonet.free.fr
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