Improve Your Lymphatic System for Overall Health & Appearance

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing the lymphatic system. For many of you, the lymphatic system probably sounds a little bit esoteric. And for many of you, the lymphatic system may even drop notions of people talking about lymphatic clearance or doing bizarre seeming types of very light massage or jade rollers or bouncing on trampolines. And I must say, in researching this episode, I came to three general conclusions that I think are important to point out right now. First of all, your lymphatic system is absolutely essential to your immediate and long term health. It's an incredible system that is serving you right now as you listen to this. And it's a system that you need to support. The second conclusion is that the lymphatic system is somewhat cryptic, and it doesn't get as much attention as, say, the cardiovascular system or your brain and nervous system or even the gut microbiome. And then the third conclusion is that the lymphatic system and what is sometimes just generally referred to as lymphatics, often get kind of a bad rap. And the reason is that a lot of the practices that are out there in the wellness space and health space that relate to lymphatics can often seem a little bit goofy or odd or kind of new agey or woo. Things like rebounding, like bouncing on a trampoline or shaking, things of that sort. And to some extent, they look odd because typically those aren't behaviors that most people engage in every day. But once you understand the structure and function of the lymphatic system, which you soon will, you'll realize why things like rebounding, things like treading water, things like specific ways of breathing actually serve the lymphatic system quite well. And there's a real basis for why those practices actually work. So, those are three general points about the lymphatic system to keep in mind today as we move forward. Another thing to keep in mind is that the lymphatic system is directly related to your appearance. Later, you'll learn why if you were to stay up for one night and not get any sleep, or even just get a poor night's sleep, and you look at your face in the morning, you look very different after a poor night's sleep than you do after a great night's sleep. Sometimes you even look very different immediately upon waking after a great night's sleep, as opposed to a couple of hours later. Many people wake up with kind of bags under their eyes. They look kind of groggy. They look much older. And then a couple of hours later, they look fresh. And that stuff is all cleared away. And certainly not by doing anything cosmetic in terms of makeup or anything. That transition from bags under the eyes, feeling a heaviness in the face, the eyes tired, a sort of lack of life in the face and eyes. And then later, just a couple of hours, looking vibrant, the face looking very fresh and ready for the day. That has everything to do with what's called glymphatic clearance and the lymphatic system of the face and neck. So today you're going to learn how the lymphatic system works. You're going to learn how to support your lymphatic system for your immediate and long-term health, as well as for appearance. And you're going to learn about if you were to have, say, an injury to the body or, God forbid, if you were suffering from cancer, how you could support your lymphatic system. And in talking about all of this, you'll be able to make sense of why it is that things like lymphatic massage or the various tools and treatments that are out there may actually work and why some of them perhaps should be avoided. And as a final point, you're also going to realize by the end of today's episode that the lymphatic system is one of the major reasons why exercise supports longevity and heart health and brain health and all the other things that we've heard that exercise can provide. The point here is that your lymphatic system sits central to everything we care about in terms of immediate and long-term health. And as you'll soon see, it's also just a really cool system. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. Okay, let's get into the lymphatic system. But in order to get into the lymphatic system, we need to talk briefly about the circulatory system for blood. Now, everybody knows what the heart is. The heart is this organ that pumps blood. Many of you are probably familiar with the fact that the heart has different chambers, different compartments, but the heart also has two major jobs that are quite different from one another and two major anatomical distinctions that allow those functions to occur. And those functions, broadly speaking, are to deliver oxygenated blood to all the tissues of your body, including your brain, your spleen, every organ and tissue in the body needs oxygenated blood and also to return the non-oxygenated blood back to the heart and back to the lungs so that it can get reoxygenated. So I'm just going to briefly describe the blood circulatory system in very broad terms. We probably should do an entire episode about heart health and heart function and we will. But for those of you not familiar with how the heart works, basically the heart is going to pump blood out through what are called arteries. You've all heard of arteries, which are fairly large diameter tubes. They have walls of those tubes that can resist a lot of pressure. And that's important because we need to put a lot of pressure to be able to pump blood far out into the body, out to your fingertips, your toes and everything in between. Okay, oxygenated blood is going to travel out through those arteries. And then eventually as those arteries approach the tissues that they need to oxygenate, and by the way, the blood is delivering not just oxygen, but also glucose, blood sugar, hormones, different proteins, amino acids, all the stuff that your tissues need, not just oxygen. But then those arteries are going to transition into smaller diameter tubes that we call the arterioles. And then eventually as those arterioles approach the tissues, they need to deliver all that stuff, all those goodies within the blood, those arterioles are going to transition and start branching into what are called capillaries. Most of you have probably heard of capillaries. Capillaries have a very, very thin wall, just one cell thick, which allows things within the blood, like oxygen, amino acids, and other things that the cells and the tissues of your body need to actually get out into those tissues. Okay, so most of us think about the blood system as pumping stuff out there, but we probably haven't thought about how the stuff that needs to get to our cells actually gets out of the blood and into those cells. And I just explained how. By having a very thin walled set of capillaries carrying that oxygenated amino acid containing glucose, containing blood, those nutrients and that oxygen can actually get out of the vasculature, out of those capillaries and into the cells that need them. Okay, at a future date, I'll talk about the actual mechanics of how that's done. But for right now, I think that's sufficient. Now, once that stuff arrives in the tissue, and here when I say tissue, it could be brain tissue. It could be muscle tissue. It could be liver tissue. Once that stuff gets out into the cells, the cells are going to use it. They're going to use the oxygen. They're going to use the glucose. They're going to use the amino acids. They're going to use the hormones. And as a consequence, they are going to create some waste products. There's going to be carbon dioxide that's created. There's going to be cellular waste in the form of actual physical debris. There's going to be metabolites. There's going to be ammonia. Basically a bunch of waste product is going to then get kicked out of those cells into what's called the extracellular space. Now a couple of times today, I'll talk about what's referred to as the interstitial space. The interstitial space is the area around the cells of the various tissues and organs of your body. And fluid and these waste products gets kicked out into that interstitial space between the cells. So once it's there, it needs to be cleared out of there. How is it cleared out of there? Some of it will be taken back up into the blood supply. And with it, a lot of water, a lot of fluid. I didn't mention this yet, but a lot of fluid, a lot of water gets out of the vasculature. And into those cells and into the interstitial space around those cells, while it's delivering all those nutrients and goodies that we talked about a minute ago. Now, some of the waste product and the water, so carbon dioxide and water, et cetera, will be taken back up by the blood supply. How does that happen? Well, there are capillaries that are referred to as venous capillaries. Okay, so we talked about the arterial system, which delivers oxygenated blood. There's also another system called the venous system, which takes deoxygenated blood back up to be oxygenated by the lungs. And it does that, of course, in concert with the heart. So we have the arterial system that delivers oxygenated blood. There are rare exceptions of arteries that deliver non-oxygenated blood to tissues such as the lungs. But let's just set that aside for now. We've got these arterial system that delivers oxygenated blood. And then now we have the venous systems. We have these little venous capillaries that are also just one cell wall thick. And the water, the carbon dioxide, the ammonia, the waste products is going to get reabsorbed there. It's going to then go from small diameter tubes, the venous capillaries, up to larger diameter tubes and eventually into the veins that are going to deliver that blood and the waste products and the carbon dioxide back to the heart and lungs to be reoxygenated and then sent back out to the body. Okay. And you may have heard the word pulmonary before. If you haven't, that's okay. The pulmonary system is the aspect of the circulatory system that is directed towards the lungs to oxygenate the blood. Okay. So we've got this really nice looped system where oxygenated blood can get out to the tissues of the body. The cells in those tissues can use the oxygen, the nutrients, et cetera. And the water and the carbon dioxide and ammonia and other waste products that come from just cells doing their business, from them doing all the things that they need to do as a liver cell, as a brain cell, et cetera, is then going to be passed back into the circulatory system and then back to the heart and lungs so that the waste products can be expelled. For instance, when you exhale, the carbon dioxide is expelled from your body. And when you inhale, you bring in more oxygen that then gets on hemoglobin and then back through the arterial system and so on and so forth. Okay. So it's a beautiful system. And even if you only captured 5 to 10% of what I just said, you certainly will have in mind now that your circulatory system for your blood is sending out oxygenated stuff, returning non-oxygenated stuff that also has a lot of waste product in it. And that there's a lot of water in that whole business. This is all liquid and proteins and glucose, et cetera. But there's a lot of water in this whole thing. After all, your blood is liquid. So the important thing to understand about the lymphatic system is that the lymphatic system is there waiting at the interstitial space and at the interface between this arterial system that delivers oxygenated blood and the venous system of capillaries that collects the deoxygenated blood and all these waste products. And it's right there as a series of tubes ready to catch the excess fluid and the waste products and bring them back to the heart also, but to do a lot of really important things with them along the way. You might say, why would you have this third system, right? The circulatory system for blood sounds nearly perfect. And the key is it's not perfect. Your lymphatic system is responsible for taking the fluid that remains in the extracellular space and all the gunk, all the waste products from cellular metabolism, again, proteins, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and bringing that back into the circulatory system of blood. But along the way, doing a number of very important things, including checking it out to see whether or not there are any contaminants, right? Any infections, bacterial or viral infections. That occurs in structures called the lymph nodes, which you've probably heard of, and we will return to a little bit later. But leaving aside the immune surveillance role of the lymphatic system, just the mere role of needing to clear away what really is about 3 to 4 liters of excess fluid in the interstitial space is so important. You might say, well, how important can it really be, right? 3 or 4 liters, is it really that important? It is absolutely crucial. Why? Because if too much fluid and amino acids and cellular waste products build up in the tissues that are using the oxygenated blood and need all the nutrients, that is ripe for infection, right? Bacteria love to grow in warm environments with lots of amino acids. It's ripe for inflammation because of the CO2 and because of the ammonia and the waste products. And if that inflammation occurs, you get buildup of tissue, in particular adipose tissue can really thicken, skin can thicken, and it starts becoming chronically inflamed. And this is something that, believe it or not, is fairly common. It's common in people who are obese. It's common in people that don't move enough. We'll talk about why that's so in a moment. The lymphatic system's just basic role for draining that fluid out of the interstitial space is something that all of us should really care about, healthy or unhealthy. So even if you're not obese, you need to get your lymphatic system tuned up so that it's clearing that stuff. It's clearing what we call lymph, which is kind of like a sticky, kind of sticky fluid because it's got stuff other than water in there. It's got all those waste products and it rarely has red blood cells in it, but it often can have a few white blood cells and it can have some other stuff in it. And we need to clear that out. So it's semi-viscous. It's not super fluid. It's not a gel. It's kind of somewhere in between. And we need to clear that out. In fact, if we don't clear it out, our body very quickly goes into local or systemic inflammation. And if we don't clear it out within the brain, we get what's called brain fog. You get cognitive impairment. And the brain fog that occurs from lack of lymphatic clearance from brain tissue comes on very quickly, even after one poor night's sleep. And it is very severe. If any of you have ever experienced brain fog, it is awful. The inability to kind of hold a thought and maintain a thought, you're kind of somewhere between sleep and awake. And then you're stressed about that is serious. So the mere clearance of the stuff from the extracellular space, the water, CO2 and waste products by the lymphatic system is crucial. So before I talk about the immune surveillance role of the lymphatic system, I want to talk about what you can do to encourage the collection and drainage of all that extracellular fluid and the waste products with it. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. 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I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drink element.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. That's 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste amazing. Right now, my favorite flavor is the new cinnamon roll flavor, but I also like the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor. 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