Nutrition - The Lymph System

What most people know about the lymph system is that when someone is sick their lymph nodes are swollen and can be felt in the neck.

There is so much more to the lymph system – it is the keystone to nutrition and good health.

Here are some basics on how the lymph system works:

·       Protein, oxygen, water, vitamins and minerals all nourish the 50 trillion cells of the body through the lymph system.

·       There is about four times the amount of lymph in the human body as there is blood. There is no pump for the lymph system, unlike blood, which has the heart as a pump.

·       Every cell of the body is surrounded by lymph. The lymph not only carries nourishment to each cell; at the same time the lymph system carries away the waste products from the cells.

Imagine your lymph system is like a river. You live on that river. You drink from the river. You eat fish from that river and plants that grow from that river’s water. That arrangement sounds pretty good – right? Well it is until your neighbor bathes his cow in the river and the factory upstream dumps waste into your river. In addition, a beaver built a dam and your river isn’t flowing well. Now the river is not such a grand place to live, in fact it can make you sick… and does. When you are sick your cells have toxic waste materials which then pollute all neighboring cells making the sick too.

When an analogy works I will run with it. The good thing is that you do not have to be a victim of your lymph system – you can take charge. Over the next month I will present ways to pump fresh water, increase the flow, stock good fish and plant life, be on friendly terms with your neighbors and make sure the factory is under EPA guidelines.

Here is another example of the why it is important to have a healthy lymph system. A study was done with chicken cells that were kept alive for over 20 years (way longer than chickens live). They just kept the fluid surrounding the cells clean and well nourished. So the implications of a clean, well-nourished lymph system vs. a polluted and meager lymph system are drastically different. What can this mean for your 50 trillion cells?

Over the next few weeks I explain different things you can do to help keep your lymph system at its best! This will not only improve the quality of your life, but will also increase the longevity!

Good Posture

I frequently ask people about their posture. The emotions associated with the answers are usually guilt, grief, or apathy.

What’s up with that!?

Let’s look at what posture is – then we can check out good posture.

Your spine has twenty four vertebrae. The vertebrae protect the delicate nerves and the spinal cord. If the spine was just one big bone it would protect better and there would be no worries about posture. However, there would be no movement either. So there is a compromise or balance in the body between stability and mobility.

In correct alignment the twenty four moveable segments, plus the skull, and tail bone all line up. That requires a small amount of work to hold the weight of the body right over the center of gravity. Movement between the vertebras is good because no one area is overworked. Balance in the aligned spine is good because the weight is already centered and small movements to correct the balance occur easily.

Without good alignment, the body is much heavier, as leverage quickly doubles the effective weight. Because the spinal muscles are overworked whole segments of the spine will fail to move well. This decreases balance, and overworks the portions of the spine not yet ‘locked up’ while sapping the individual’s energy.

So… A person with pad posture is not lazy; they are working harder than the person with good posture. The good news is that we can do something about it.

Chiropractic Adjustments restore motion where there is a lack. Simultaneously, restored alignments add stability to the spine. With the restored alignment and motion, it releases pressure on the nerves. The free flow of nerve energy communicates with your brain so that know the different positions of your body – after all if you know you were crooked, you would straighten up.

We just got a new Posture Screening Analysis program to help increase awareness of one’s own posture faux pas. I encourage you to come in for a complementary computerized spinal analysis. This is available to everyone – patients and non-patients alike.

Stretching is GOOD!

 

Try this Salute the Sun Stretch. Do just one or two breaths per position and repeat several times. Do not worry if you cannot do it like the pictures. You’ll improve with each repetition and before long you will look (more) like the picture

Stretching – Something people know they “should” do. Most people don’t like it and try to get it over as fast as possible.

The fact is stretching before an activity is the best and most proven way of preventing injuries. Keep in mind that the word “activity” really means “life” and “injury” in slow motion is “getting old”. For that matter we could equate life with flexibility and age with stiffness.

The purpose of this talk is to show you that the benefits of daily stretching for outweigh the reasons not to. You do not have to stretch and it will not kill you. That is the problem because there is almost never an urgency to do so. By not stretching we get even tighter and less likely to want to stretch.

So… what does stretching do? The bones that make up our arms, legs, back, neck, shoulders, and pelvis are held together with:

1.      Muscles – they do the work.

2.      Tendons – they connect the muscles to the bones.

3.      Ligaments – they connect bones with other bones.

Muscles act in pairs; one pulls a bone in one direction, while the other of the pair pulls it in the other direction. The tension on each side should be even so that our bodies are balanced. Stretching will help “re-set” this balance.

Here is how that works. Muscles have stretch receptors in them. When a muscle feels some stretch, it automatically relaxes. If the muscle being stretched does not relax it will pull or strain which is a polite way of saying that it rips.

Healthy muscles are able to tighten when called on to do so and then when done they should relax into a normal tone (which by the way should not be completely limp). With an overload of work, muscles will stay tight and pull back against a stretch causing stiffness in motion and potential injury. By having a regiment of stretches that are done regularly the muscles move in a balanced and uninhibited fashion.

When moving the body feels good. We want more of it and this helps our heart, lungs, digestion and many other seemingly unrelated areas of our health.

Ligaments – In general we do not want much stretch to occur in the ligaments as they hold the bones together. For instance, a whiplash injury will overstretch the ligaments holding the bones of the neck in proper alignment. With the ligament too loose the bones do not move well together and there will be grinding, lack of normal motion, and pain. An overstretched ligament is called a sprain.

Tendons – They attach muscle to bones and work together with muscles. Tendons have their own stretch receptors similar to muscles. When we stretch muscles the tendons get stretched too. The stretched tendon relaxes which will reset the tension on it so that it is in balance with the muscle and tendon whose job it is to pull in the other direction.

When I lift my right leg to walk, dozens of muscles (not in that leg) engage in order to support the raised leg, the leg on the ground and to stabilize the spine so that balance is maintained. That is just one leg raised and we do this with alternating legs hundreds or thousands of times each day without a single thought. However with just one muscle not working well in conjunction with all the others and we have stiffness, pain, and dysfunction.

So given that stretching is the best and most proven way to prevent injuries, would you agree that it is time to add stretching to your daily routine? Fortunately I have a great stretching routine. In less than five minutes per day you can stretch the main muscle groups while improving your breathing, digestion, circulation and balance.

You can do it! Stretch today!

Dr. Jeff Levine, D.C.