979: Lymphatic Support and Detox: What Actually Works (Solo Episode)

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Fit Bottomed Zone podcast. I’m Katie from fitbottomedzone.com, and this episode is all about a topic I really love and it was the source of a lot of questions from you guys. And I love when I get to go deep on a topic thanks to your request. And this one is all about lymphatic support, lymphatic detox, what we need to know about our lymphatic system, and really simple free things we can do to support our lymphatic system in various ways.

I think this is such a fascinating topic personally. I love that you guys asked about it. And before we jump into the how to support the lymphatic system, I feel like it’s important to define a little bit of what it is and how it works. So an oversimplified definition is that the lymphatic system is the drainage system of the body.

And it is that, but it also is so much more than that. I feel like it sort of gets overlooked when it’s just thought of as a drainage system. It’s also part of the immune system and it transports lymph fluid, which is a fluid containing infection fighting white blood cells amongst other things.

Interestingly, unlike the cardiovascular system, which a lot of people are more familiar with, which of course involves our heart, our blood, all of that. The lymphatic system does not have a pump. So the heart pumps blood. The lymphatic system doesn’t have a corollary, so it relies on movement, breath, and muscle contractions for movement of that lymphatic fluid.

And this will be important. We’ll go into that a little bit more later on. The lymph system also includes things like lymph nodes. You’ve probably heard of those, or maybe you had them swollen in your neck if you were sick. The spleen, tonsils, and thymus, they’re all part of this system. And I unfortunately don’t have my tonsils since I was about five years old.

And when I learned about the lymphatic system and the tonsils being part of that, I realized that without tonsils, this is something I wanted to pay a little bit of extra attention to and try to be as supportive as I could. As far as what the lymphatic system is important for, it is key for various detox mechanisms within the body as well as for our immune system, immune defense, and for inflammation regulation.

So this is why a lot of people will see positive changes in other areas when they start supporting their lymphatic system. I also think it’s important to touch on why understanding that the lymphatic system does not have a pump, it has to be pumped through movement. Why it tends to get stagnant. And when I go through these, you might notice that it seemingly our modern lifestyle sets us up for a lot of lymph stagnation.

Because things that tend to lead to stagnant limp are a sedentary lifestyle, chronic dehydration, even very low level chronic dehydration can have a really dramatic impact on the lymphatic system. Nutrient deficiencies, especially minerals, which you guys might be tired of hearing me talk about by now.

But they are so important and were so helpful to me that I love anytime I get to explain yet another way that minerals are supportive of the body. And then some that are not maybe as intuitive. Tight clothing, especially during working out when many of us wear tight clothing. Poor sleep, high stress, and our environmental toxin load, which can include anything from the products in our laundry detergent or laundry products, air fresheners, cleaning products around the house, personal care products.

You’ve probably heard the many varying stats of the thousands of chemicals that we encounter on a daily basis and how we encounter more than previous generations have by a lot. So all of those factors combined. We have a lot in our daily lives that leads to our lymph not being as fluid and moving as it could be or should be optimally.

Now, as far as what we can do about it, this is something that I find extremely fascinating. So I mentioned before, there’s no pump for the lymphatic system, so it’s not circulating on its own unless we move. So for it to move, we have to move. So as you would expect, one of the biggest factors here is movement.

And the good news here, like heavier, more intense exercise is not necessarily better from a lymphatic perspective. Of course, things like strength training, excellent for building lean muscle mass, and I’ve had many podcast guests explain how that is beneficial for everything from metabolism to longevity and more. But for strictly the lymphatic system, perhaps the best exercise we can do is walking. It’s the easiest natural way to move our lymph, especially if we’re walking naturally, shoulders relaxed, arms swinging when we walk, helps lymph move throughout the whole body. I’ve also talked before about simply walking and how as humans, we were meant to move a lot more than we move in the modern, in our modern lifestyle.

And this is not about just getting in an exercise for an hour a day either. This is why I love wearing my Oura ring because it shows me my inactive time as well and gives me an alert if I haven’t moved in an hour. Which from a lymphatic perspective, even small little bits of movement, whether it be just going up and down some stairs, some squats, a couple pushups, moving our arms, swinging our arms, any kind of movement every hour or half hour, really beneficial from a lymphatic perspective.

Another very gentle, easy one that is very supportive of the lymphatic system is rebounding, or in other words, jumping on a little trampoline. If you don’t have a little trampoline, you can actually even do this on soft ground, so maybe on grass or dirt something gentle. Gently lifting the heels and then letting the body fall. Kind of creating that jump when we go down. That helps the lymphatic system move as well as does something else I’ve recommended before. Which is at night for 10 or 15 minutes, laying with our feet straight up against a wall. So back on the ground, laying straight up against a wall, we make an L shape. This also has side effect of helping the body relax, lowering cortisol, which is what we want at night.

We want high cortisol in the morning, low cortisol at night. And this is beneficial for the lymphatic system, especially if you combine it with something like dry brushing or lymphatic massage while you are laying there.

I’ll talk more about those in a little while. Not quite as effective, but still, of course, beneficial would be other movements like yoga, stretching, or mobility work. As a side tangent, people who do not just stretching, but active mobility have some of the best heart rate variability that I’ve ever seen, and I feel like there’s a nervous system connection here that’s also benefited from doing mobility work.

Another one that is not as commonly known but very helpful for the lymphatic system is deep diaphragmatic breathing. The great thing about this is we can pretty much all do this at any point. Even if we’re at work or at school or driving kids around, we can take deep diaphragmatic breaths with a count trying to extend them, really fill the diaphragm.

Lymph is moved by this breathing and by the pressure of our breath. So a few minutes of this, a few times a day can be tremendously helpful.

Another factor, very, very important for the lymphatic system is hydration and especially minerals. And I briefly touched on this already, but I feel like this is worth a deep dive because even mild dehydration causes lymphatic fluid to thicken and makes it more sticky. But there’s more to this than just water and I feel like this is very fascinating.

Lymphatic fluid is, think of it almost like ocean water. It’s a mineral rich fluid, it’s very important part of the immune system. And it helps with inflammation and transport of many things throughout the body. Lymph is mostly water as are we, we are mostly water. Even mild dehydration thickens this lymph fluid.

It makes it harder and slower when it does circulate. Structured water or mineral rich water really helps lymph flow. So I have, I’ll put links in the show notes, a structured water device on my house on the main water line. And then I have been doing a tremendous amount of experimentation lately with different types of minerals and really dialing my levels in. Now, one note here is there are not to my knowledge, very effective blood tests that give you an accurate idea of what’s going on with your mineral status in your body. And this is partially because not all of our minerals are stored in our blood and the amounts that we need them in the rest of our body.

So there are things like hair mineral analysis, which I have been researching and may do a podcast on soon. However, what I have personally found is most effective is simply experimentation. A lot of minerals for the most part, check before you experiment, but a lot of them, your body will simply flush any excess. So it, especially if we start carefully and are very like aware of our doses, we can start and experiment with where we feel good. And that’s what’s been most beneficial for me, especially focusing on kind of the big minerals, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, as well as all of the others in smaller more trace amounts. Now for me, both from a lymphatic perspective and a lot of other perspectives within my body and energy levels, I have found really increasing my sodium really helpful. And I will link to the episode I did all about salt and how I feel salt was given very much an unfair bad rap and our avoidance of salt or even our limiting of salt has had, in my opinion, some potentially harmful consequences across the board

So I sometimes consume upwards of 10 grams of salt, not sodium, but salt per day. I’m not recommending that, that’s not medical advice. I’m just saying anecdotally I feel much better getting more salt plus taking enough magnesium and potassium, and I take that in various forms.

I take ionic minerals, I take Beam fulvic and humic minerals. I take a lot of the Eidon mineral blends. On a daily basis, add salt to my water and take magnesium and potassium. So, have really been experimenting with the minerals. I find that adding even just a little bit of different kinds of minerals to water also seems to make it feel more satisfying for me.

Now, let me know if you want me to do a video on this part because it is hard to explain. Via audio, but self lymphatic massage can be really effective. I’ve gotten to learn some various lymphatic massage techniques from different practitioners, and I’ve had guests like Kelly Kennedy on this podcast.

I’ll link to her episode, but you can work on your own lymphatic system at home. And I find this is very relaxing and a great part of my, not quite every day, I wish it was, but my regular routine. So again, let me know if you want me to do a quick video on how I do this. But it’s, the general idea is this is not deep tissue massage.

This is gentle movement massage, gentle touch. I was told kind of the idea of the pressure you would use to push honey out of a sponge, so not super hard, gentle pressure that feels pleasant, but a little bit firm and starting with certain points, the one that’s most often recommended is the collarbones, which are considered kind of the master point.

I realize most of you are listening, not watching, so I will try to explain this as I show it on the video, but by using two fingers, one on either side of the collarbone and pumping back and forth about 10 times on each side, this is actually something we can all do throughout the day. To kind of, they say open the lymphatic system or prime the lymphatic system, and I’ve heard multiple practitioners say, this is the point to start with for any lymphatic work.

And then there are secondary points to those that we can then open before then everything moves toward the heart. So this is considered kind of those points on the collarbone of opening the drain. Again, light pressure is the key here. This is not deep tissue massage, and it can be done daily or a few times a week.

In line with that is something else I’ve written about before and I’ll link to that blog post in the show notes where you can Google it. And that is dry brushing. Which seemingly has beneficial effects potentially for circulation and also for supporting lymph flow. This is something I often do before showering, especially in the morning because I tend to get a rush of energy when I dry brush.

Don’t fully know what the mechanism is there other than perhaps that increase in circulation and lymphatic flow. But I do get like a really like fun and pleasant burst of energy from dry brushing and notice my skin is softer, and this is said to potentially support lymphatic flow as well. Just like with lymphatic self massage, the idea is you want to move toward the heart always. Even when I dry brush, I also open up those collar bone points with my fingers first. And this is best before showering. Not just in the morning because it’s energy giving, but also because it does tend to remove dead skin cells. I’ve done this before in front of a red light and you can actually see the dead skin cells kind of coming off your body.

So it does help remove dead skin cells, which is a great natural exfoliator for the skin. As well, and I’ll link to what I use. But the key here is to use a natural bristle brush and light pressure. You’re not trying to be abrasive, you’re not trying to deep exfoliate your skin. This should feel pleasant and invigorating, not painful at all. Now, another kind of current hot topic when it comes to supporting the lymphatic system are these vibration plates. And you’ve probably seen these floating around on social media perhaps. And I do think they have their place, they can be beneficial. However, they also can be pricey. And I will say walking is kind of the gold standard.

Hopefully we all have availability of walking or at least gentle bouncing on the ground or bouncing on a rebounder, which are both much more inexpensive options. So I would say those are important first before we can are considering vibration plates, we would wanna make sure we are getting normal basic movement like walking.

And that we are hydrated and have our minerals in a good point. Because if our lymph is stagnant and sticky and thick, getting on a vibration plate isn’t necessarily going to be that effective to begin with. And since lymphatic system is involved in detox, detox and immune system, if we aren’t hydrated, there is a potential, this is not well studied, but there’s a potential, it can make things worse and that make us feel less energetic, make us feel less lymphatic flow.

So I do think personally that vibration plates have their place. I just don’t consider them foundational from the pros they do and can stimulate muscle contractions, especially some people use them for working out or hold a squat or a lunge on them. They do also seemingly stimulate passive lymph movement, which can be accentuated by our movement or spine movement or some kind of movement while on the vibration plate.

They’re especially potentially beneficial for people who can’t do a lot of movement for whatever reason. However, they aren’t suitable for everyone. Anyone who has a medical condition, from my understanding, anyone who has joint replacements and or is pregnant would definitely wanna check with their healthcare team before attempting vibration plate. There’s also kind of two separate categories of vibration plate. The ones that are kind of circulating on social media and are less expensive are gonna be a bigger, stronger vibration. You’re gonna feel them a lot more. There’s also ones like Juve, which I will link to in the show notes as well.

This one is more of a micro vibration, which makes it especially beneficial for like bones, joints, and ligaments and microcirculation so that because this one is gentler, it seemingly is more suitable for more use cases. And it’s specifically studied for use post-injury for joint and bone recovery as well as it seemingly has some beneficial hormone effects.

And there’s a really fascinating interview Kelly Brogan did with them. About how this mimics some of these same things we get from walking. Not that they’re a replacement for walking, but a great supplement as well. So I’ll link to that. That’s a much pricier option, but there kind of are different categories and they seemingly have different mechanisms.

All that said, if you’re gonna do that, start with short sessions and work up. Make sure you are hydrated first, please, please, please, and start with walking. It’s completely free. You don’t have to buy any fancy gadgets for it. Another thing that is seemingly helpful for the lymphatic system in a way we can support lymphatic flow is contrast therapy or hot and cold therapy. And here’s why that works.

Things like sauna and hot bath or hot tub, increased circulation. They vasodilate you, they are exercise mimetics. So other than the strength aspects, you’re getting a lot of the same benefits of exercise with your heart rate, increasing, sweating, detox pathways, opening, kinda all those mechanisms. Cold exposure is the other end of the spectrum.

It’s a vasoconstrictor constrictor, so it causes constriction of the muscles and blood vessels. And this creates seemingly, as you might imagine, a little bit of a pump situation with the vasodilation, vasoconstriction, the relaxation and the constriction of the muscles. And so contrast therapy can be especially effective for people who can’t do a lot of movement, but can handle being in a sauna and a cold plunge, for instance.

This is one I personally enjoy. It also tends to release a lot of endorphins. I don’t think, again, this is a foundational part of lymphatic health. I think it’s a very fun one if you’re able to add it on, but I don’t consider it foundational to supporting lymphatic health. And again, go back to those simple things.

Make sure we’re walking, add a weighted vest if we wanna get more benefit from walking. Make sure we’re hydrated, getting enough minerals, getting enough sunshine, which also supports as it does with seemingly everything in the body, seemingly supports the immune system and the lymphatic system. And then do free things like self lymphatic massage at home, opening up those points and get little mini movement snacks every hour or so to keep our lymphatic system flowing.

If we wanna get a little fancy beyond that, if we’re doing the foundational things, I have personally also experimented with different herbs and supplements that seemingly are helpful. Again, nothing I ever say on this podcast is medical advice. This is only a starting place for your own research.

All of this has been self experimentation and research for me. Always check with your doctor, especially if you have any specific concerns or health challenges that you’re working through. This is what I have personally tried. I have experimented with cleavers, burdock root, and echinacea as traditional lymph supporting herbs, as well as various essential oils on the dry brush topically.

And some that I have loved. There are roses and lavender and occasionally peppermint. Another big one. Perhaps you’ve heard me mention this in the realm of getting rid of my autoimmune disease. This is a very specific and targeted use of enzymes. I did get a lot of questions about this when I included it in a recent video on Instagram. So I’m planning to do at least an episode, if not a whole series on enzymes and how to time them and use them for different effects. What I have found is that when enzymes are taken on an empty stomach, so like first thing in the morning or before bed, for me that’s more, they work more as a proteolytic enzyme, which is helps with clearing proteins and inflammation in the body, including in the lymph.

And when they’re taken with food, they serve a more digestive enzyme type purpose. Nattokinase and serrapeptase seemingly are very effective. At least for me, they were with clearing the inflammation from autoimmunity. And I consider that’s a big part of the complete reversal of my Hashimoto’s. And I do find them lymphatically supportive as well.

And on that same note, Pectasol and then other binders, you do wanna be careful with these because they can be very powerful. But I feel like Pectasol was also a big part in my autoimmune reversal and also Lymphatically supportive. If you’re not familiar with that, supplement it I did a whole episode with Dr. Isaac Elias, who wrote The Survival Paradox, all about understanding Pectasol and how it specifically targets and binds to and removes an inflammatory protein in the body called Collection three, which is potentially implicated in a lot of cancers. However, it’s also implicated in a lot of inflammation throughout the body, including potentially with things like autoimmunity or lymph stagnation.

So I haven’t, I don’t have any data from lab testing to support this, but my anecdotal data, I believe that enzymes and Pectasol all were really helpful in the autoimmune reversal for me. And I now still take them to support healthy levels of inflammation, in others low levels of inflammation and supporting my lymphatic system.

So I wanted to try to keep these solo episodes a little shorter. And so before I get too long-winded, I wanted to wrap up by just kind of summarizing some of the key points and key takeaways into easy implementable action steps in case this is a topic you are interested in and you want to do your own N of one experiment and see what works for you.

At a high level your lymphatic system needs movement, hydration, and basic care. It’s not super complicated. It responds very quickly and if you take care of it even a little, it will take care of you a lot. Gentle, small daily habits go a tremendously long way in lymphatic support. No extreme detoxes needed. In fact, I would say in most cases seemingly like extreme detoxes can be uncomfortable and might potentially do more harm than good.

Lymphatic system responds really well to the basic human things that we’re just simply not doing in our, as I’ve talked about, nature deficit and movement deficit disorders. Start with the simple, either free or almost free things, sunlight, walking, hydrating with minerals, and then dry brushing or self massage if you want to at home.

I’ve used castor oil at times with essential oils for the self massage part. Because there are also seemingly beneficial effects of castor oil outside of the lymphatic system. But these little simple daily practices make a big difference. This will be a topic of another podcast, but seemingly supporting our secondary or our other primary detox organs, like the liver and the kidneys, and the skin can also help when doing lymphatic support because as things move around, the body might be eliminating quite a lot. Also, the same things that are helpful for the lymphatic system are helpful here, including hydration.  I’ve also done things like liver flushes. Personally I’ve done herbs and supplements to support my liver and kidneys. I’ve done detox baths.  I can talk about all of those in other episodes if you are interested.

When it comes to the lymphatic system, when in doubt, keep it simple and consistent. Consistent tiny baby steps will have a bigger payoff than one time, massive actions when it comes to the lymphatic system. So if I simplified it and distilled this down to some simple action steps, it would be these.

Start walking every day, even for just 15 to 20 minutes. Bonus points if it’s at sunrise or sunset, or you’re outside at all getting natural light. During that time, drink enough water and add minerals to your water. A pinch of salt, fulvic minerals, ionic minerals, whatever kind of minerals your body loves best.

Add those and hydrate. Be intentional about it. From there, once the foundational things are done, we can add in if we want to, things like dry brushing or self massage a few times a week, or learn a basic lymph routine and prioritize daily movement over fancy supplements or intense detoxes. If you have any follow up questions, I would love to hear them.

I read every comment and rating and review on these podcasts, or you can message me directly on Instagram. I always love to hear from you about future topics you would love for me to talk about, future guests you would love for me to talk to or any other feedback that you have. If you have 30 seconds I would also be tremendously grateful if you would leave a rating, an honest rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts, as that helps other people find and listen to this podcast, which also helps me keep Fit Bottomed Zone running, and I would be very, very grateful for that. Either way, thank you so much for sharing your time, your energy, and your attention with me today.

I know those are your most valuable resources and I don’t take it lightly that you chose to be here. I’m very grateful that you did, and I hope that you’ll join me again on the next episode of the Fit Bottomed Zone Podcast.