The Lymph System
Correcting a Dysfunctional Lymph System
The Importance of Moving Fatty Acids Through the Body
Below is the chapter on Lymph Talk, taken from Dr. Sean Woods’ book, “The Healing Vibe.”
The lymph system is a complex one. One of this book’s goals is to teach you the basics and how to fix it when it is not functioning properly. If you are dealing with a serious issue, the lymph system is involved and needs to be fixed to get healthy. The lymphatic system is a waste removal system and is the reason you find a large part of your immune system contained within it. The microbial world you do not want in your body loves to feed on waste and the more waste, the more bad microbes. Both the waste and the bugs themselves put a huge strain on the lymph and puts the immune system on alert. The fastest way to thin lymph fluid and to improve lymph flow is to open the kidneys and a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
Most likely you have heard of the lymph nodes. These nodes are little filtering centers of the lymph system. The lymph nodes are small bean-shaped structures that filter the substances from the lymphatic channels. The body has hundreds of lymph nodes and they work on waste to reduce and clean it. The lymph node chains you have seen in anatomy books are big enough to be seen by the naked eye. What you don’t readily see in the lymph system is that these lymph vessels get smaller and smaller and create vast subsystems that are removing waste at a cellular level. These subsystems are just recently being discovered by scientists with the use of high-resolution imaging and advanced staining techniques. These minute structures, along with minute structures of the meridians, collapse easily and many cannot be seen in a cadaver. The subject needs to be alive to see these structures in action. Great advancements in technology have allowed scientists to discover new body parts and systems that we never knew existed.
Your lymph system uses a few different avenues to remove waste from the body. The most apparent ones you will see is the skin in the form of acne, dandruff, eczema, and psoriasis. A second avenue is the veins, and it only does this if the lymph can raise the Ph of the waste so that it is safe for the veins. If you look in anatomy books, you’ll see that the lymph system mostly piggybacks the veins and not the arteries. When an overstressed lymph system puts acidic waste into the veins, they can burn, showing as varicosities in the legs, chest, and face. The veins send the waste to the liver for further detoxification. If the liver is detoxing poor food choices and damaging toxins consistently, acidic wastes build up and the bile made by the liver becomes dry and thick, which leads to liver congestion and stagnation of the biliary ducts. If this happens, the bile no longer has the power behind it to do its multitude of jobs. This failure creates a major problem over time because healthy bile is needed for digestion and to keep the lymph system moving.
The third and least understood way in which the lymphatic system removes waste from the body is through the kidneys. The kidneys do not have the filtering power and elastic surface area that the liver has. You can have hundreds of stones the size of marbles in the liver without direct pain, while a small stone of two millimeters in a kidney can put you to your knees. Kidney congestion from an overload of lymphatic waste manifests itself in many ways and is a direct culprit in the severity of disease and the suffering seen in the world today.
If the waste particle is big and toxic the lymph system becomes the better waste removal system. This fat-based system is effective for putting out fires from acidic waste and the body’s macrophages are great for gobbling up and reducing the waste to a manageable size for safe removal by the kidneys. When the lymph system encounters waste that is foreign, toxic, or is harmful, it will use cholesterol and mucus to neutralize the waste and attempt to move it out of the body. Diseases are created as the body loses its ability to remove this waste, wherever it may be.
So, what is an example of something large and complex that gets into the body? Undigested food in the form of gluten protein, milk protein, denatured fats, and waste products. One of the worst culprits is fried wheat (fried chicken, chicken nuggets/tenders/wings, donuts, breaded and fried anything). There is no good usable nutrition when food is presented to the body in this way and its presence can be very detrimental to the body. Heavy metals and chemicals in our food, in the air we breathe, and in the products we put on our skin, are also a constant burden to the lymph.
The fats that you consume get broken down in the small intestine and are absorbed into the lymph system. The need for bile at this junction is high, as fats cannot be digested properly without it. There is an extremely important digestive enzyme called lipase that is manufactured by the small intestine that helps get fats packaged correctly so that they can be transported with ease into the lymph system. Without bile, lipase becomes ineffective. Undigested fats in the small intestine are nothing but trouble. Common symptoms of failure are gas, bloating, migraines, arm pain, leg pain, and weight gain and these problems are the nice ones. When you lose the ability to move fatty acids properly through your body, you are talking about serious degeneration of the entire body.