So welcome to today's module, which is going to be the lymphatic system, the immune system and how yoga and movement can help to promote a healthy version of both of these things. Now today I want to make sure that we're going to look at the lymph system as a whole, understand some of the major components of it, how it fits in with circulation. And what terms, like lymph drainage and these sort of ideas that get thrown around quite a lot, what they really mean. I know when I started doing yoga I heard all the time about lymph drainage, and I really didn't know what they were talking about. So I hope that we make that pretty clear. I also want to talk a little bit about how moving, inversion postures, which put our head upside-down, things like legs up the wall. And of course just decreasing our respiratory rate and improving the amount of oxygen we're bringing into our system can really help. In addition I'm going to briefly go over the immune system just so we have a basic understanding. Since sometimes things like autoimmune reactions or promoting a healthier immune system can be aided by things like de-stress and meditation and yoga. So I hope you guys enjoy. So we talk about the lymph system, I just want to break it down into a couple of main components. And the picture you're seeing shows two people with the major lymph nodes in the body. So when we talk about the lymph system, we have the lymph itself, which is a watery, fluid component that's actually moving through lymphatic vessels. We have the lymphocytes, which are cells that are a part of the immune system. They include things like T-cells and B-cells. We have lymph tissue, or organs, and then we have bone marrow. So these are the big, major contributing factors. Now the lymph system is going to go hand in hand with the circulatory system. However, the lymph system has some really important differences. So the big component, or the big thing, the lymph system does is it returns tissues, ions, hormones, plasma proteins, other parts of blood back to our bloodstream. So what does that mean? What it means is our circulatory system, as I mentioned, is a closed system. And there's about 20 liters volume of blood all the time in our circulatory system. However, it doesn't actually, it's not actually able to recycle all 20 liters at once, it only is able to move about 17. So where do the other three go? You probably guessed it, the other three liters go into the lymphatic system. So it's actually picking up excess, or the components of blood that actually aren't being circulated in the circulatory system all the time. The other thing it's going to do is it's going to absorb fat through the small intestine into an area called the lacteals, the lymphatic lacteals. Which means that the fat that we eat gets absorbed into the lymph system, and then it returns back into circulation through our heart. Which is a little bit of a strange idea to think that fat's actually going to get recycled into our circulatory system through your heart. But it does make sense why high fat diets can have such an impact on vascular disease and heart health. And then the third function of the lymphatic system is to help fight infection with promotion of B and T-cells. So the lymphatic organs are lymph nodes, primarily in addition to the spleen. And the lymph nodes were the picture we saw where we have lymph nodes all over our body. But really they're going to be a large concentration in a couple of regions. So probably we've had a sore throat at some point in your life and you've noticed that some of the areas of your neck, or maybe underneath your armpits, have been swollen. And these are your nodes. And these are a site for what we call lymphocyte maturation. And lymphocytes are a particular type of cell that's part of your immune system. So if you get sick and all of a sudden you're fighting off a particular infection, your lymph nodes are going to be producing more of those cells, and that's why they get enlarged. The spleen, which is the largest lymph organ, is going to be responsible for destroying old red blood cells. It becomes a reservoir for old blood and blood proteins. And it's also going to be filtering the blood of bacteria and other antigens, or other proteins that are foreign to our bodies. So these are the major organs. Now what you probably noticed, hopefully, is that the lymph nodes are in a variety of places throughout our body, and they're connected through all these lymphatic vessels. Which means all of this movement that were constantly doing in yoga, twisting, putting our head down, putting our legs up, these things that we don't usually do when we're just walking around at our normal life or sitting in our chair at our desk. This is going to be one of the important things to stimulating our lymph system.
