@mayomayo Welcome to Connect. I am sure a lot has changed since your spine surgery. All surgery creates scar tissue internally in the fascia. I am also a spine surgery patient, but mine was a single level cervical fusion without hardware. What has helped me a lot before and after spine surgery is my physical therapist who does myofascial release therapy or MFR. This can break surgical scar tissue in the fascia and release the stuck fascia that keeps our bodies from moving properly. Of course movement changes with rods on your spine and that has limited the rest of your body too. MFR gets fluids circulating better within the body as well as allowing the waste products to be removed. If it's stuck the tissue gets dehydrated and painful.

Here is part of another post I had written that explains what the fascia does. This is just physical therapy and you may want to try it. There is a provider search on the MFR website. It has helped me a lot. Currently I am rehabbing my ankle after a bad fracture and 2 surgeries. I had limited mobility all summer and have had to use MFR to break fascial adhesions caused by sitting too much.

I wanted to explain that what bathes your cells is the lymph fluid and it carries nutrients as well as waste products. The blood cells are inside the circulatory system and the smallest capillaries have walls that are only one cell thick. The lymph can leak out between these cells. Your body is also constructed within a connective tissue framework, the fascia that holds the cells of the organs together. Fluids must be able to pass through this to supply the organs. When there are fascial restrictions, it cuts off this exchange of nutrients and the waste products accumulate in the tissue. The fascia is also a conductor of electricity and signaling throughout the body. The lymph collects and drains back into the circulatory system where it gets filtered as the blood goes through the liver and kidneys where wastes are processed and eliminated.

The fascial tissues can be remodeled with myofascial release which does literally remodel and rearrange the fascia as it converts into a semi liquid state and slides on itself. In our MFR discussion, you can find a video that shows this happen in living tissue. You will find the video at this page.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/?pg=5#chv4-comment-stream-header

I think aging isn't responsible as a catch all for fascial dysfunction. Instead, it's our habits of being sedentary and eating foods that cause inflammation that create the symptoms of "aging". It is inflammation driving it, and it you reduce inflammation through healthy choices, you slow down that process that everyone accepts as aging. The fascia gets stuck to itself and stops having the ability to slide.

Another note of interest that I saw was in some Mayo news and research to regenerate heart tissue that showed a photo of a perfectly formed white heart. It might have been in the Ken Burns documentary. The heart muscle cells had been removed through some process and what was left was the fascial framework of the heart or the "scaffold" on which the heart was constructed. When you see that, you realize how extensive fascia is because it surrounds all the cells of the organs in our bodies and it holds the circulatory system where it belongs as connective tissue. The fascia actually is an organ itself which they recently named the interstitium in recent literature.

Our Myofascial release discussion.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/