Video

Transcript

let’s talk about lymph nodes and what they are a lot of people don’t really

know exactly what a lymph node is in relationship to your immune system now

the lymphatic system is really an extension from your circulatory system

and so all this blood rushes through the body and it goes into the tissues and

then from the tissues it turns into lymph and goes through the lymphatic

system now the lymphatic system does not have a pump so it’s pumped through the

body through muscular movement so when all this lymph flows up to the body it

gets dumped back into the circulatory system it’s kind of a back up drainage

system to prevent excess fluid retention as in lymphedema however that’s a minor

function the big function and the most important function is the activation of

your immune system you will have an entire war going on within your lymph

nodes if there is a pathogenic microbes and the pathogen is a microbe that can

cause disease one of the purposes of a lymph node is to contain and hold off a

pathogen can protect the pathogen from spreading throughout the body so that’s

why you have lymph nodes in your armpits to prevent pathogens from invading your

whole arm or even in the back of your throat as the tonsils you have lymph

nodes in the side of your neck you have them throughout the abdomen area into

the groin there’s hundreds of lymph nodes to the body and the largest lymph

node is the spleen which is located underneath the ribcage on the left side

over here let’s just take a look at what is inside a lymph node well you have

lymph o sites okay those are immune cells that do their work inside the

lymphatic system but they can also come outside the lymphatic system and travel

around to the tissues there’s three primary lymphocytes one would be the

natural killer cells these cells are like part of your special forces they

specialized in killing viral infected cells okay so when the virus invades the

cells they will kill the entire cell and the virus together also they will

attack tumor cells and cancer and this is why sometimes when you have cancer

you get swelling of your glands I think people don’t realize that the

immune system is not just about fighting infection it’s also about preventing

cancer from invading the body and this is why when people could cancer and they

get chemotherapy destroys the immune system and then they end up with

secondary infections and even the cancer can come back so we need our immune

system desperately to defend against many different things and then we get

the T cells T cells have very specialized functions to kill very

specific microbes and they are activated by another immune system called the

innate the innate immune system basically is a system that you’re born

with these guys don’t need any training they know what to do

they’re like the first line of the defense but if they need help they’ll

hold down the fort and recruit these guys right here and just one of the

functions that they will do is they will direct the appropriate attacked

recruiting more help to defend against pathogens because we don’t want too much

immune system which will destroy the body yeah we don’t want to have too

little immune system either because then the infection goes on forever so it’s a

judgement call another function is determining self from non-self so

there’s certain tolerance of your own body tissue that the immune system must

tolerate and not attack and that also includes the friendly microbes of your

body so that job is very very important because you don’t want to end up having

your own immune system attack itself as an autoimmune diseases and then we have

the B cells which stand for bone marrow and the T cells are thymus and that’s a

little gland on top of the heart which is a place where these cells get

training and not every t-cell graduates only 30% of those t-cells survive this

intense training but the B cells make antibodies

antibodies don’t necessarily kill any microbe these antibodies are like

the identification of who needs to be assassinated with a big yellow X on

their back also these antibodies are very specific

to certain pathogens in fact you have an almost unlimited number of antibodies

and I’m talking trillions but what happens in this lymph node is you have a

lot of antibody reactions going on you also have the immune system taking tiny

parts of pathogens and presenting them to the t-cell this is just one of the

ways that your immune system can help locate the good guys from the bad guys

you have a lot of lymph blood exchange through this lymph node so you have

these lymphocytes going in and out of this tissue all the time and also one of

the things that the lymph node will do it’ll filter certain cancer cells and

lastly I just want to mention this point when someone has their spleen out they

have an increased risk of infection and if your lymph nodes actually shrink or

become dysfunctional your risk for infection and fighting off these

pathogens go way up chronic stress activates cortisol which

then shrinks the lymph nodes and the entire lymphatic system but also if

you’re deficient in zinc you can have certain dysfunctions with the spleen as

well as your lymphatic system in general now if you haven’t seen my video on how

to boost the immune system I put it up right here check it out