Also, there is no such thing as a lymph gland, you can't directly stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system using MLD (or anything else), and lymphatic drainage does not remove healthy fat cells from the tissues (sorry about that last one).
Misconceptions and the Lymphatic System
More than any other system the lymphatic system is misunderstood, mislabelled and mis-taught. This is at least in part because we are still at the early stages of understanding exactly how the system works. We are also in an age of rapidly increasing interest and research into lymphatics with exciting new insights to be explored. Yet some fundamental misconceptions persist, so lets clarify a few things.
Misconception one: The Lymph System / MLD can detoxify the body
Detoxification occurs in the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin and digestive tract - the lymphatic system doesn't detoxify anything. But it's easy to see how this misconception occurs as lymphatics are very much involved in safely transporting toxic material from the tissues to the organs of detoxification and elimination.
Therefore MLD is an excellent adjunct treatment for people who are undertaking a program to strengthen their organs of detoxification and elimination. It's just misleading to say that the lymphatic system or lymphatic drainage treatments are detoxifying the body. MLD has been shown to have positive effects on respiratory and bowel function, and can be used to support these organs of elimination, whilst care should be taken when using MLD in renal insufficiently.
The Lymphatic System provides secure transport for toxic and harmful materials.
Lymph vessels are a secure transport unit, collecting foreign bodies and toxic molecules from the tissue spaces throughout your body, and safely transporting them to your lymph nodes, isolating them from other organs and tissues along the way.
Lymph nodes are passive filtering stations housing the lymphoid tissue which is rich in all types of immune cells. The immune cells neutralise any harmful microorganisms or infected cells so that the lymph that is finally retuned to the venous blood is filtered and cleaned. The immune system can isolate certain materials such as inorganic particles and microorganisms within the lymph nodes, but the lymph nodes don't detoxify drugs or eliminate anything from the body.
Misnomer: Lymph nodes are not glands
I'm always disappointed when I hear a medical person talk about lymph 'glands'. Glands are endocrine or exocrine organs which produce a product to be used elsewhere, eg hormones or sweat. Lymph nodes do not produce anything. As described above, they are passive filtering stations housing much of your immune activity.
Misconception two: MLD removes fat cells from the tissues... I wish!!!!
How many times have I been asked if MLD can help reduce fat??? It seems there is a lot of confusion about this one. Especially since the growing popularity of deep lymphatic massage as a tissue sculpting technique, which gives instant but temporary results since it is not removing health fat cells from the tissues.
The lymphatic system absorbs the long-chain fatty acids from your digested food, and this is an essential pathway for fat soluble vitamins to enter the body, so there are always lipid molecules in the digestive lymphatics and the thoracic duct. If your fat cells are ruptured for any reason the spilled lipid globules will be removed by the lymph vessels, so peripheral lymph vessels do carry fat molecules and cells, but only when there has been tissue damage.
MLD can be used to improve the appearance of fat, in particular cellulite which is generally accompanied by localised high protein oedema and changes to the connective tissue septa. MLD certainly helps to smooth this out, but Dr Vodder's MLD really shines when we use it to help the tissue to recover from invasive weight loss procedures such as liposuction and abdominoplasty.
Misconception three: MLD stimulates the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
This one that really sets my teeth on edge when I hear a trainer, or read a manual claiming that MLD is stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. A misunderstanding of the autonomic nervous system compounded by misinformation on the way MLD influences autonomic tone in the body.
The Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Basically you have two 'automatic pilots' that work together to steer your body while you focus on other things like ordering from the dinner menu. The sympathetic system is your flight or fight pilot, keeping you alive when anything is going wrong, and the parasympathetic pilot takes the controls when you are cruising and your body can do maintenance and repair. Since it is more important to stay alive when something is going wrong than clean out the storage locker, the sympathetic pilot is the dominant one and can override the parasympathetic system whenever necessary.
So where does this misconception come from? In Vodder-speak we talk about the sympathicolytic effect of MLD. Sympathico- (SNS) -lytic (to disintegrate or rupture). Now called sympatholysis, the term was first coined by Professor Heutzschenreuter during his research on the Vodder technique in the 1970s and 80s when he measured the profound effect of MLD on reducing sympathetic tone in both the therapist and the recipients during MLD.
There are no parasympathetic afferents from the skin to the CNS, so we can't directly stimulate the PSNS using MLD, however the very gentle, relaxing and non-invasive nature of MLD allows the sympathetic system to be calmed and Heutzschenreuter showed that within 5-minutes of beginning MLD there was a significant reduction in sympathetic activity in BOTH the client AND the therapist - so MLD is good for the practitioner too!
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