Dr. Paul Anderson on Lymph and Movement: Boosting Immune Health through Physical Activity

In this episode, Dr. Paul Anderson explores the connection between the lymphatic system and movement, and how physical activity can enhance lymphatic function and support immune health. He covers:

• Understanding the Lymphatic System: Overview of the lymphatic system’s role in immune function, fluid balance, and detoxification.
• Importance of Movement: How physical activity stimulates lymphatic flow, aiding in the removal of toxins, pathogens, and waste products from the body.
• Types of Beneficial Exercises: Effective exercises for promoting lymphatic health, including rebounding (jumping on a trampoline), yoga, stretching, walking, and other low-impact activities.
• Breathing Techniques: The role of deep breathing exercises in enhancing lymphatic circulation and overall wellness.
• Hydration: Importance of staying well-hydrated to support lymphatic function and fluid movement within the body.
• Self-Massage and Dry Brushing: Techniques for manually stimulating lymphatic flow, improving circulation, and supporting detoxification processes.
• Combining Therapies: How to integrate movement with other supportive therapies, such as hydrotherapy, infrared saunas, and massage, for optimal lymphatic health.
• Signs of Lymphatic Congestion: Recognizing symptoms of a sluggish lymphatic system, such as swelling, fatigue, and frequent infections, and strategies to address these issues.
• Holistic Lifestyle Tips: Incorporating healthy lifestyle practices that support the lymphatic system, including a balanced diet, adequate rest, and stress management.

Dr. Anderson provides comprehensive insights and practical advice on how to boost lymphatic health through movement and other supportive strategies, emphasizing the importance of an active lifestyle for maintaining a robust immune system and overall well-being.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Medicine Health. We're in our series on why
can't I get better? Treatment? So what treatment can you
do that may help with chronic illness et cetera. Well,
this particular module, I want to talk about the idea
and the concept and the physiology of your limph, the
fluid in your body that sometimes you don't think about.

(00:23):
And also then what sorts of therapies can be done
that may be helpful to lymphatic movement and why that
would be useful in chronic person, chronically ill person, somebody
not getting better, et cetera. So, like I said, in
the other modules, we've done some of these on treatments
that are you know, kind of high tech or they

(00:44):
involve you know, equipment or you know more than one
doctor or other stuff. And you know, today in these modules,
we're focusing on things that either you can do at home,
are a little a little more low impact and easier
to get to, et cetera. So your lymph is a

(01:05):
portion of your vascular system, and so it is a fluid. Now,
your lymph, if you were to look at some of
it and then you looked at some of your blood,
they would look different. They're both fluids, but they kind
of have different purposes. So lymph is actually a part

(01:26):
of the drainage system from your vascular output. So if
you get down your vascular tree and you go through
the arterial arterial system down to the capillary bed, the
arterial blood's gotten the most oxygen, it's usually got fresh

(01:47):
nutrients and other stuff in it, and that's going to
go out into the capillary bed at the arterial side,
and it's going to percolate through your cells, usually the
fluid part of the blood, et cetera. And that's going
to feed your cells and drop off some oxygen, et cetera.
And then on the venus side, on the other side
of the cells, it's going to be picked up by

(02:09):
the venus blood, which has less oxygen and a little
more carbon dioxide to carry around. Then that's going to
go back to the lungs and you're going to respire
the carbon dioxide out, breathe the oxygen in, and it's
going to make the loop again. Now along the way,
it can pick up nutrients from your digestive track and
get other good things to distribute around your body. But

(02:34):
there is a third part of that system, So we
have the arterial system coming in, the venus side on
the way out, and the cells are in the middle. Well,
you can think of it like a drain at the bottom.
So if I got the artery going in the vein
going out, what we have is a slight difference in
pressure in versus pressure out, and that difference will leave

(02:56):
behind fluid, and so the lymph is there to drain
that fluid. So the lymphatic system drains the fluid, and
then something you probably have heard of, your lymph nodes,
These things like you get a sort of throat and
this will swell up, etc. Your lymph nodes are there
then to sample that fluid as it goes through, and

(03:18):
your lymph nodes will actually have cells from your immune
system in there. So if that fluid is draining out
something that's say infectious, etc. The lymph nodes will sense
that as the fluid moves its way through, so that
is important. What can go wrong with limp, Well, the

(03:40):
first thing is lymphedema, which means basically the arterial side
going in puts out more fluid than the venus side
takes away. That extra fluid goes out through the lymph
and everybody's happy if I choke off the lymphatic system
by either surgically removing your lymph node or having infectious
material or other things is going on, then that drain

(04:03):
becomes plugged literally and so you get more fluid in
the area. This is why people who had lymph node
dissections often for cancer, especially in areas like the axillary
area in upper arm, they will get lymphedema in the
area down below where the drainage is supposed to be
going to. So lymphanema can not only be problematic because

(04:29):
you're swollen and all of that, but also it means
that your immune system is not getting a sample of
everything that's going through. Because limph nodes are gone, there's
very slow movement and the immune response can be slower.
So if you have a limb where you have lymphanema
chronically and then you get an infection there, that can

(04:51):
be a problem because your immune system's a little slow
on the uptake there. So how does lymphit into treatments
that can be done, et cetera. Well, one treatment that
adjusts limph flow to some degree and helps it move
we've already talked about, which is hydrotherapy. So you can

(05:12):
go back to that one and listen to it if
you want. But then other things that can do it.
One is simply moving your body around. So you've probably
heard that. You know, your arterial blood is pumping under
reasonably high pressure going around, and then your venous blood
is returning it very low pressure. So if you are
moving and you're moving your muscles, you're going to pump

(05:33):
a lot of venous blood back into your circulation, which
is what you want. Lymph is even at a lower pressure,
so if you know venus pressure is here, lymph is
way down here as far as the pressure. So it
requires body movement to return back into the circulation. So

(05:56):
people will, you know, look to move limph fore and
they might start out by, say, you know, walking and
moving the core of the body around. That can be
very helpful. Some people will use rebounders, which is like
a little trampoline where they bounce up and down, usually
holding onto something so they don't fall off. Some people

(06:16):
use things that sort of move the lower extremities vibrate
them back and forth. That can be very useful as well.
It's not really made for lymph, but there is a
bone growth stimulating device that's used by a lot of
physical therapists that does a vibrating vibrating plate, tables that

(06:37):
actually moves lymph as well as triggering your bones to grow.
So many many things can be helpful with the lymph,
but muscle movement is one of the big ones. Now
you might think, Okay, I've got arterial blood going in,
I got venus blood coming out. I got the lymph
collecting it all and sending it to the lymph nodes.
Is that where it ends or does this fluid go anywhere? Well,

(06:58):
it turns out that the limb eventually works its way
around and you have a system that drains your legs
in your lower pelvis, etc. And there's a collection area
in the abdomen, and then you've got ducts that ducting
that goes up lymph, lymphatic ducting that collects from the
upper extremities in the chest, and all of that goes

(07:22):
into the venus circulation, so it goes back into the
blood eventually, so it's a closed circuit. It recycles all
of that good stuff. Now, the other thing that you
might think is, you know, well, I've heard that lymph
is sort of a milky colored fluid, and where does
that come from Well, there's another part of lymph that

(07:44):
sometimes is forgotten about because it's a real thing, but
sometimes a footnote, and that is that there are small
lymph vessels there, capillary size and larger that go in
to the cells in your digestive tract that absorb your food.
And they're called the lacteals. So they were originally named

(08:08):
and they looked milky, so they named them with the
Latin root lactin for milk, So lacteal and the lacteals
in your digestive tract are not there for water soluble
nutrients at all. They're there for fat soluble nutrients. So
if you are absorbing fat and any fat soluble vitamin,

(08:29):
any plain old fat or central faty acids or anything
with fat in it, that is not going to go
in to the blood from your gut, believe it or not,
It's going to go in the lymph. So the other
part of the lymph is absorbing fat and faty nutrients,
et cetera, taking them into the body, circulating them around
and then through the lymph, and then eventually dumping them

(08:52):
into the venus circulation. So we always do wind up
with those fats getting back into the blood, it's just
they take a little bit longer trip. So that's why
lymph kind of looks milky, or you can think of
it as a milky substance. So it is produced from
the net difference between arterial and venus flow through your

(09:15):
capillaries and also through fats and fatty acids, et cetera
that absorbed in the GI tract that go in and
eventually get to the blood. So other things about lymph
and lymph movement. So I mentioned earlier that some of
the contrast type therapy is like contrast hype your therapy

(09:36):
where you're heating up, cooling down, heating up, cooling down.
That'll move the limp. One of the best ways to
move lymph is moving your body and especially your lower extremities,
because we all know that blood can pool in the
lower extremity, but also lymph can kind of pull down
there too because it's such a low pressure system. And
then you have the movement of the body, either just

(10:00):
walking or working out. Both of those will help. The
other thing would be moving up and down, jumping, vibration, etc.
But the better that you turn over your lymphatic fluid,
it's similar turning over your venus fluid, because that's eventually
where it winds up. The more you turn it over,

(10:20):
the more that you get the benefit of a few things.
One is the nutrient fats that have gone in through
the digestive system, so those need to get in your blood.
But then also the lymph that's percolated through the lymph
nodes and the immune system has looked and seen what's there.
The immune system can then send out information to the

(10:42):
rest of the immune system and say, hey, in this
lymph node, we found this, and so the rest of
the immune system, let's see of immune memory cells to
whatever the problem is, will light back up and help you.
So some people ask, well, what happens when you know,

(11:02):
I get a sore throat and these little nodules come up,
these little lumps come up around here, or maybe you've
had like a nose or eye infection and you get
some lumpy things here along front of your ears, et cetera.
We've got lymph nodes all over the place. Okay, there's
the famous ones that are up in the head and
neck and around the elbow, in the lower extremities and

(11:26):
the pelvis, et cetera. But they're really all over the place,
And as I said, they're also all over your digestive
tract and the absorptive tissues. So the lymph nodes. If
they are sampling something out of this drainage through your
tissue system and there's a bug in there, whether your

(11:49):
immune system has seen it before or not, the bacteria
or virus or whatever will be sequestered in the lymph node,
and the immune war we'll start right there, and the
lymph node then will get very swollen in many cases
and hard, and because there's literal immune war going on

(12:10):
trying to kill this thing. Now, the other thing that
it's doing is it's helping with something called APCs or
antigen presenting cells, and those cells then are going to
take a sample of the bug that's being fought with,
and they're going to go and they're going to get
into the bloodstream and go tell other parts of the
immune system, hey, we've got this bug here. And then

(12:33):
your immune system has kind of two options. One is
is there any particular memory to this bug or is
it a new one. If there's memory, it'll go right
into producing memory B and T cells. If it's a
new one, it'll go into the new production side. So
Lymph and limph movement can be done very simply by

(12:54):
moving your body around. It can be done by contrast
hot and cold, any number of things. Just like getting
the venus blood return out of your legs, getting the
lymph mood around your body will increase your body's ability
to create a healthy environment. We're all done for that one.
Please like, share, and subscribe whatever format you're on. Thanks

(13:14):
for growing the YouTube channel. I'll see you on the
next one.