What is the Lymphatic System And How it Functions? – Dr. Berg

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hey guys Dr Burke here in this video we’re going to talk about the lymphatic system now what is this system it’s kind of like an extension of your circulatory system your blood vessels and capillaries it has some unique properties number one it carries oxygen to throughout the body into the cells it carries nutrients hormones it removes waste it also has an immune component part to attack you know viruses that’s why you would to have your lymph nodes in your neck or your armpits or your groin those lymph nodes are there to detect and test out if there’s a microb coming in the body it’ll send signals to certain uh glands to make white blood cells to start generating antibodies and killer tea cells to actually defend you so it’s actually trying to protect you okay so um we have that and then um we have a fluid balance too so some people have lymphadema it’s like a lot of swelling in their body um and the lymph system controls that now if we look at the exchange between the arteries the capillaries which are small little arteries and the lymph they basically work together with a with a little uh space it’s called the interstitial space or the space basically is just the space between the lymphatic system the cells and the capillaries and that space has um plasma plasma is basically kind of a combination between water liquid protein hormones and electrolytes and the electrolytes allow for the traveling of this fluid back and forth okay so it’s it’s kind of a complex system but this is the basics of it so you have this exchange going back and forth you have unique properties with the lymph that it can carry uh pretty much large particles of fat through the body that cannot necessarily be carried through the blood at this point they have to be broken down um and then you have different um lymphatic uh organs like the spleen well the spleen doesn’t really do a lot with the lymph it does a lot with the blood cells it’s basically like a mini junkyard that recycles red blood cells it does it but two million it replaces two million red blood cells every single second so it’s a highly efficient machine and it also has some other functions with digestion believe it or not um then you have the thymus the thymus and by the way the spleen on the left side over here and the thymus is on top of the heart right here the thymus is kind of like a training camp for um immune cells so it trains them to fight off infection and there’s a lot of mysterious unknown um they don’t really know what it does but they know that it does that so if there’s a virus that comes in the body the lymphatic system will trigger it it’ll work with other uh GL glands like the adrenals to start to generate an immune defense because the adrenals are connected to stress and so um and the interesting thing about viruses viruses don’t really have any power of itself it’s basically an inactive genetic code wrapped in a a little sack and it waits until your cells are weak and then it gets into the body and it hijacks the machine of your own cells it basically hijacks the copy machine I know it’s kind of weird so it basically will start making copies of the cell at a very fast rate to the point where there’s so many copies of that virus in that cell that the cell explodes and then it travels on in other places to invade so the really only defense to viruses is to keep your body really really healthy okay and if we talk about Foods related to your lymphatic system really you’re dealing with just a healthy diet there’s not really a specific food that attacks just the lymphatic system you just have to eat healthy if for example you have a severe protein deficiency um like in Starvation because fluid follows protein um what happens the protein in the blood goes down and then the fluid actually goes out of the blood into the interstitial space and you can actually start having swelling in the ankles edema and even in the gut okay so you see like these kids in U these little kids in Africa that are starving and then these huge bellies that’s low protein so low protein diets can create a lot of problems with with fluid balance in the body so that’s an interesting thing one last point about the lymph is that it doesn’t have a pump like the artery system has the heart it it uh p pushes fluid by motion so if you’re sitting all day you’re not getting a lot of exercise you’re not getting activity the lymph kind of just stays stays there and hangs out it doesn’t do much so it’s very important to stay active and also breathing will help push it as well through the system okay so those are some interesting points about the lymph hope you enjoyed it I’ll see you in the next video hey guys thank you so much for watching please click the Subscribe button and I will see you in the next video