If you don’t have a healthy lymphatic system, your body is going to have a really difficult time, fighting off any illnesses, viruses or diseases. Your lymphatic system plays such a major role with your immune system to help fight these things off. My name is kelly. I am a physical therapist as well as a certified lymphedema therapist, so i specialize in the lymphatic system and today in this video we’re going to talk about what simple things you can do each morning to help keep your lymphatic system stimulated and healthy. But before we begin make sure that you subscribe down below for weekly new videos, you can also follow along with us on instagram, and you can check out our website for more resources on the lymphatic system.
So the first thing you can do in the morning is to do a few deep breaths. So really simple. I like to put my hand on my abdomen and take a nice big belly breath, feeling my abdomen push out or expand into my hand, so big breath in and then let it all out – and i do three to five of these. Why? Because you have a lot of deep lymph nodes in your abdomen in your chest and major lymphatic vessels that take all of this fluid throughout your body and moves it back up to the heart.
They all have to go through the lymph nodes, because that is where this bacteria and debris are filtered out before the fluid gets back to the heart. So we want to make sure that we’re stimulating those areas to get that fluid, moving and continuously staying active and so by doing the deep breathing we can stimulate all of those lymph nodes and lymph vessels in that area. So another thing that we can do each morning is to stimulate the lymph nodes in the other parts of the body. So we have major lymph nodes in the armpit areas and in the groin area, as well as the head neck area, and what we want to do is just gently stimulate them again to make sure that they’re moving and filtering that bacteria as quickly as possible. You think about if, when you’re sick, you go to the doctor, and you have swollen lymph nodes, well, they’re working really hard to help fight off those illnesses.
We want to just help, stimulate them to help speed them up and give them a jump start and so taking the full hand and putting it directly on where the lymph nodes are. We can do nice gentle circles without a lot of pressure right in those areas. The lymph nodes sit pretty close under the skin, so you don’t have to press really hard at all, but this will be enough just to help stimulate the lymph nodes. We do eight to ten circles in each area that we have lymph nodes or that you might notice swelling so for a lot of people that ends up being the head and neck area, and so the lymph nodes actually sit right below the ear and then right By the clavicle or the collar bone, and so we can stimulate down nice and low with gentle circles, you can also stimulate right below the ear kind of underneath the jaw, which is another great way to help stimulate the lymphatic system. Each morning now, if you’re, looking for a handout for this, i have created various guides for different parts of the body for the lymphatic system, as well as the full body and the head neck area that you can find on my website that you can print out And have more as a cheat sheet each morning to know exactly where to do lymphatic circles and then also where to do lymphatic drainage with massage strokes, guiding that lymphatic fluid through specific lymphatic vessels in which direction to go.
So again you can find that on the website, which i will link up above and i’ll put in the description box down below. But if we were to look specifically at the lymphatic vessels in the face and the head neck area, the lymphatic vessels start from the middle of the face and they run from the middle out to the lymph nodes that are below the ears. And so, if we were to try to guide the fluid in this area, i would start at the middle underneath the jaw, and i would just do gentle, strokes or massage strokes in that direction towards the lymph nodes. We can do that five to eight times or, however much someone feels like they need. We just want to make sure that we don’t press really hard.
It should be nice and gentle. We can also work down the neck because the lymphatic vessels run from the nodes here to here down the side of the neck, so we’re just guiding that down. So those are simple ways to do lymphatic drainage. Again, if you want to go more in depth, you can check out the handout on my website and you can also check out all the other videos i have on my youtube channel. I personally do these exercises and this lymphatic drainage, especially when i feel like i’m getting a cold or something’s coming on starting to get a sore throat.
I will start to do those right away and that really does help speed up any illness signs. For me, the next thing to do each morning to make sure that you keep your lymphatic is some healthy and stimulated is by drinking a glass of water. Now i know that sounds basic and you hear that all the time, but it really does make a difference to stay hydrated. When you are dehydrated, your body doesn’t have enough water, your lymph nodes will actually swell up and when they swell up, they can’t work properly. And so we want to make sure that you’re drinking and staying hydrated to make sure that we keep all of that area or all that some flushing through and so they’re not getting backed up and clogged, which is not going to be able to help combat any Illnesses or infections that may come on, and the last thing to do each morning or really each day is to just to get up and start moving.
We know the lymphatic vessels have these little valves throughout which help guide the fluid through the vessels to your heart, but it doesn’t have a natural pump to them. What stimulates and what moves this fluid. It’S actually you moving that does, and so by getting moving doing exercise really anything that gets you active, you’re, going to help pump your muscles, which help push around the lymphatic vessels to guide that fluid, and so whether it is getting up and going for a walk Or just getting and doing some chores around the house or going out and gardening or taking the dog out anything that you can possibly do to start moving you’re going to be helping your lymphatic system. The worst thing we can do is to lay around all day and not move, so whether you have a desk job or you just happen to be laying around more anything, you can do to get up and move you’re going to be doing something to help your Lymphatic system and your overall health, so those are some really simple and basic things that you can do to help keep your lymphatic system really healthy and functioning. Overall, they seem really basic and they really are, but they can make a major difference if you want their content related to the lymphatic health or lymphatic system .