Now, let’s examine the conditions that exist when tissues get hurt.  Every time we damage tissues (whether we bump them, cut them, scrape them, burn them, expose them to some poisonous substance, starve them, etc.), they respond in the same way.  The cellular response to damage is a process called inflammation.

Damaged cells release chemicals into the fluid surrounding the cells. One of the substances that escapes from the damaged cells is called histamine; another is bradykinin.  Histamine and bradykinin cause the capillary pores to enlarge, which allows the blood proteins to escape into the tissue spaces.  Since these proteins attract water, they draw large amounts of fluid into the tissue spaces.  This creates swelling.

We’ve all seen this happen.  We’ve bumped our head or been bitten or stung by an insect and watched the area around the injury swell.  The swelling is due to the plasma proteins leaking into the spaces around the cells (interstitial spaces) and drawing fluid out of the bloodstream.

One of the proteins that leaves the blood stream is fibrinogen.  This large protein is responsible for blood clots.  Under normal conditions, the electrical fields surrounding the cells keep fibrinogen and the other plasma proteins in suspension.  However, at the site of an injury, as cells begin to suffer a loss of oxygen and nutrients, cellular energy diminishes.  This causes fibrinogen and the other proteins to clump together.  In a cut, this stops the bleeding by creating a mesh that catches red blood cells to form a blood clot.  In the interstitial spaces, this clotting of protein causes fluid to accumulate around the cells, which turns the normal biological terrain into a swamp.  Oxygen and nutrient exchange diminishes and waste accumulates.

The same conditions that occur when we have been sitting too long have just been created on a massive scale, so our cells start complaining loudly.  We experience that complaining as pain.  Pain is the distress call of our tissues.  When excess fluid accumulates in the tissue spaces the cells are “drowning” in fluid and waste and calling for us to throw them a life preserver.

The following is the illustration I use to show “unhappy” cells that are suffering from excess fluid accumulation and poor lymphatic drainage.  This shows what happens when tissues become irritated or inflamed.  If these conditions remain for very long, the tissue becomes stagnant or swampy and subacute inflammation sets in.  Over time, tissue function becomes depressed and cells eventually die leading to chronic and degenerative disease.



When we understand that pain is generally a signal that there is a lack of oxygen and an increase in toxicity in the tissues spaces, we know what we need to do to answer the distress call.  If we can restore the normal circulation of blood and lymph, we can restore oxygen supply to the tissues and drain away waste, thus removing the CAUSE of the pain. 

Unfortunately, most people are not concerned about dealing with the cause of the pain.  They just want to remove the effect, i.e., make their cells quit complaining.  That’s why pain killers are so popular.  Pain killers work by interfering with the signals our cells relay to the brain that there is a problem.  This lets us pretend that nothing is wrong. 

Pain is a Warning Signal

Think of pain as a warning light in your car telling you that something is wrong with the engine.  That blinking “check engine soon” light is annoying us and we’re just too busy to go the mechanic to have the car checked out.  So, to solve our problem we cut the wires—no more annoying light.
Of course, anyone with half a brain can see that this wouldn’t solve our engine problem and, by ignoring the early warning signs that something is wrong, we’re setting ourselves up for an even worse problem down the road.  Still, that’s what many of us do with our bodies.  We’ve been trained to assume that headaches, stomachaches, muscle pains, stiff necks, etc. are just natural parts of life, so we take pain killers so we can live with them.

But the body doesn’t usually complain without good reason.  Pain is telling us that tissues are being damaged and we should be concerned and ask ourselves “what is damaging my body?”  It is almost like we are touching a hot stove over and over again and getting burned again and again and we are being told, “It is natural to get burned, an unavoidable part of life.  Just take this pain killer for it and do your best to live with it.”  But we don’t have to “live with it.” 

We just have to figure out what is causing the damage and stop doing it. 

Meanwhile, let’s focus on how we can reverse the damage and thus relieve the cause of pain.  The beautiful secret is that we all instinctively know how to relieve pain.  So, we’re just going to learn to deliberately apply what we instinctively know.

Have you ever hit one of your fingers with a hammer, slammed it in a door or otherwise “smashed” it?  Besides letting out a few cuss words, what was your first reaction?  You probably grabbed it, didn’t you?  Your instincts were telling you exactly what you needed to do.  You were applying pressure.

You can’t blow up a balloon while someone is squeezing it, can you?  In the same manner, fluid cannot accumulate in a damaged area when pressure is being applied.  So, applying pressure is the first secret of pain relief, and the key to making pressure work is…
…DON’T LET GO.




Next time you smash your finger or injure yourself in some other manner and find yourself instinctively grabbing that injured part, just keep holding on until the pain subsides. This normally takes between five and twenty minutes.

 Once the pain subsides you can let go and there will be no more pain.  You have prevented inflammation from setting in by preventing fluid and protein from becoming trapped in the tissue spaces.  This allows cellular energy fields to stay activated, preventing protein from clotting and creating a swamp. 

Once the lymphatic system has drained the “debris” from the site of injury, there is no more cause of pain. Thousands of people have learned this secret and successfully applied it to smashed fingers, bumps, burns, cuts and other minor injuries.

Of course, we don’t always get to an injury right away and the swelling has already occurred.  In other cases, the injury is in a place where the application of pressure is impossible.  That’s OK, because we still know what needs to happen in order for healing to take place.  We have to move fluid out the tissue spaces via the lymphatics to keep the swelling down so the injury can heal more quickly.

So, let’s look at another instinctive reaction to pain.  Most of us have probably “overdone it” on occasion and wound up feeling stiff and sore the next day. During unusually strenuous exercise we cause physical and chemical damage to our muscle tissues.  As a result, the process of inflammation occurs and we experience pain in those muscles.  Again, the cells are crying for oxygen.

So, what we instinctively do is start rubbing those sore muscles.  We do this because we know it makes them feel better.  Again, our instincts are right on track. 

You have probably noticed that sore muscles feel tense and slightly swollen.  Of course, this is caused by the fluids built up in the muscle tissues.  When we start rubbing the sore muscles, we are increasing lymphatic movement because the pressure and stroking actions increase lymphatic flow.  This helps drain the excess fluid away from the muscles, increasing the supply of fresh, oxygen- and nutrient-laden fluid from the blood.

So massage is our next pain relief technique.  But, like the pressure technique, it doesn’t work if you quit too soon.  When you notice a pain and start instinctively rubbing, stick with it.  When pain is chronic, those stagnant pools have been there for a long time and a lot of “garbage” has accumulated in them.  You can’t drain all of that away at once as those toxins will irritate other tissues and cause more inflammation.  You have to release them gradually over a period of time and help your kidneys and sweat glands flush them out.  That’s why you should always drink lots of water after a good massage. 

The Light-Fast-Stroke

But even massage isn’t always practical.  So, another technique that can be very helpful is rapid light stroking.  Dr. West called this technique, the Light-Fast-Stroke.  This technique is very valuable because it can be done over a large area of the body, such as an arm or leg.  All you need to do is brush very lightly across the surface of the skin using a rapid back and forth motion.

This technique works because it also moves lymph.  In a presentation at the International Society of Lymphology convention held at Montreal, Canada in 1981, Dr. W.L. Olszewski presented the research that demonstrated that this rapid, light stroking technique dramatically increased lymphatic movement.

I remember one time when one of my children had an injury to a portion of the thigh.  There was a big, red welt on the leg, the kind that normally turns into a large black bruise.  However, I told the child we were going to “rub the bump away” and proceeded to use the light-fast-stroke technique.  After a couple of minutes the red welt started to receed at the edges and in a matter of about five to ten minutes it was completely gone with no bruise.

Now, here’s another little secret.  The light fast stroke works even if you don’t actually touch the skin.  I’ve done the light-fast-stroke over the surface of an injured area about one to one and a half inches above the surface of the skin and it still created a relief of pain.  For example, I once did this on a girl who was very badly sunburned on her arms and shoulders.  The sunburn was so bad that she was swollen and blistered.  After about ten to fifteen minutes of light-fast-stroking above the surface of her arms, I was able to lightly massage aloe vera gel all over her arms and within one-half hour, there was no pain and no swelling in either arm.



Energy and Pain Relief

So, how does that work?  Obviously, it isn’t taking place from compression of the lymphatic tissues, is it?  Well, it has to do with the electromagnetic fields that keep the proteins from clumping together and creating stagnant pools.  The rapid stroking increases the electro-magnetic energy over that area which causes the proteins to break up and allows them to move into the lymphatic system, draining the excess fluid away from the site of injury.

Fredrick Plogg, M.D., who has worked with lymphatics in Germany, maintains that the diminished electrical effect is what causes the blood proteins to cluster together in the tissue spaces, making it difficult for them to be removed by the lymphatic system. He indicates further that the application of energy-—any energy for that matter—into the clustered plasma proteins will cause them to break up, making them easier for the lymphatics to move.

This helps to explain why, in many instances, just placing your hand on or over a painful area seems to help in relieving pain. In doing this, there is no mechanical action, no massaging, no pressure so the action does not pump the lymphatics. However, from experience we know that it does assist in returning the tissues to the “dry state,” and hence relieves pain.

Lymph drains waste material away from tissues and passes it through a series of lymph nodes that help breakdown waste materials.  One can think of these lymph nodes as tiny sewage treatment plants that purify the lymphatic fluid before returning it to the circulation. When the lymphatic system becomes congested, lymph nodes swell and lymphatic drainage becomes sluggish.  This contributes to dull, chronic pains and increased problems with infections.    It also causes tissues to become more “swampy” or toxic.
 
The tonsils and appendix are lymphatic tissue and were once thought to be useless organs.  We now know that they are part of our lymphatic-immune system and play a vital role in helping the body fight infection.  They become overwhelmed when they are overloaded with waste materials so that they become inflamed and irritated themselves. 

Tonsillitis and appendicitis are not the only disorders related to an overburdened and congested lymphatic system.  Most sore throats involve congested lymphatics, which is why you can feel the swollen lymph nodes in your throat when it is sore.  Earaches, too, have their roots in lymphatic congestion, as it is the congested lymph system that creates the swelling that closes off the Eustachian tubes. 

Even asthma can be connected with lymphatic congestion.  When asthma has its roots in allergic responses (a history of hayfever and allergies), then it is the swelling of the bronchials that constricts the airways and creates the shortness of breath. 

Mucus and saliva are created using lymphatic fluid as a base, so mucus problems in the respiratory system and pH imbalances in the saliva always reveal problems with the lymphatics.  Clearly, draining toxins from lymphatic fluid and decongesting the lymph is a critical part of recovering from many illnesses.  So, what do we need to keep our lymphatic system clear?

The first-—and most important—step in clearing lymphatics is to remove foods from the diet that tend to congest them.  Dairy foods are the worst offender.  Why?  Because milk is essentially condensed lymphatic fluid.  Think about it.  Breast tissue is largely lymphatic tissue and what the breast does is to take the lymph (the liquid portion of the blood containing dissolved nutrients) and concentrate it into a food for a baby animal.  So, when you’re taking concentrated cow lymph into your body it is little wonder that your lymphatics tend to be clogged.  Dairy allergies are probably the biggest offenders in most causes of chronic respiratory congestion, sore throats, earaches and tonsillitis. 

I remember having my tonsils removed when I was little.  My throat was very sore afterwards, so what did they feed me?  Ice cream!  Dairy was probably the reason I had tonsillitis in the first place, so let’s just congest the lymphatics further so we can transfer the problem somewhere else.

Other allergy-causing foods may also be culprits.  Wheat is another big one. Many children have quit having earaches the moment wheat and dairy (the not-so-fabulous bread and milk staple) are eliminated from their diets.
Because of their ability to move lymph, the previously discussed pain relief techniques can also be applied to many disease conditions.  I have personally relieved many a sore throat or earache by application of lymphatic-draining massage.  Generally, I do a very gentle and very slow massage stroke over the affected area moving towards the heart. 

For example, in the case of a sore throat, I start at the top of the throat and let my fingers very slowing and gently glide down the sides of the throat to the base of the neck.  For an earache, I start below the ear and move down the side of the neck.  Increasing lymphatic flow causes fluid and protein to move away from the inflamed area so that fresh lymph, loaded with oxygen and nutrients needed for tissue repair, can replace it. 

This lymphatic massage can be greatly enhanced by topical application of herbs that increase drainage and blood flow to the area.  I have used all of the following successfully: a mixture of lobelia and capsicum extracts, a mixture of lobelia and Tei Fu essential oils, Tei Fu essential oils or lotion alone and garlic oil.

 I have also custom blended mixtures of herbs like lobelia, capsicum, prickly ash, black cohosh and blue vervain and dilutions of essential oils like tea tree, eucalyptus, clove, thyme, lavender and others, in olive oil.  All of them have worked, but quite honestly, the mixture of lobelia and capsicum is still my favorite—simple, but very effective.

Internally, there are a number of herbs that can increase lymphatic drainage.  My favorite lymphatic herbs are mullein, lobelia, echinacea, red root, cleavers, plantain and calendula. Lymphomax, IN-X, Lymph Clear and Lymphatic Drainage Formula are all useful combinations for improving lymphatic drainage.


The implications this information on the lymphatics are far reaching and I certainly haven’t covered them all in this article.  To get the complete story, check out my Dr. Mom-Dr. Dad course, available on this website.  You may also want to read The Golden Seven Plus One.