EP. 178 — Lymphatic Health with Lisa Levitt Gainsley

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I hope you’re well and I hope you’re still enjoying the new direction of this podcast. This year we’ve been moving really towards quite an optimistic place. We’re trying to talk about restoring, restoring our society, restoring ourselves, restoring our mental health as much as we can. And I’m also very interested in restoring our physical health. And not just restoring, but actually preventing things from going wrong. I’ve always been someone who’s waited until the house is burning down before I kind of react and then have to go to a doctor in an emergency. And now that I’m, you know, you know, right in the middle of my 30s, on my way, steadfast, to my 40s, I, I don’t want to live the rest of my life the way I’ve lived it up until now, just waiting for something to go wrong. I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which I’ve spoken about on this podcast before, which is a chronic health condition that impacts every part of my body and is so fucking complicated and so [00:01:00] exhausting that until recently I’ve just been like, well, it’s inevitable that I’m just going to suffer, so I’m just going to sit here and allow that to happen. But I don’t know what’s changed. Maybe it was the pandemic. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of always waiting only for the mainstream, incredibly expensive and incredibly tedious healthcare system to know how to treat especially a woman. It’s so hard as a woman to be understood or believed by the fucking healthcare world. So I like conversations like the one I’m having today that feel like holistic and soothing and preventative, even though it’s actually based in mainstream medicine. I invited certified lymphoedema therapist Lisa Levitt Gainsley on to explain lymphatic systems to us, what they are, how they work, the purpose they serve, and why it’s so important to look after them, whether it’s before you get illness or after, or after you’ve had something like chemotherapy. The lymph is so important.

Now we might’ve heard about lymph since we were children, because it’s often what people check when we’re sick, or, [00:02:00] you know, we know about lymph nodes when we’re talking about checking for breast cancer. But there’s so much that we aren’t told and so much that I learned about reading Lisa’s book and talking to her today. It’s fascinating how much it is a key to our well being and how that doesn’t just impact certain parts of our body, certain main organs, but also our mental health, which, as you know, is my obsession. It can change your mood, how your lymph is working. And I think that’s brilliant. And I think it’s a shame that we don’t spend more time teaching people about the inner workings of the brain and the body, because we deserve to feel some sort of form of autonomy over our day to day experience.

And so in this episode, we talk about our lymphatic systems and how our gut houses 70% of our body’s lymphoid immune cells. We also learn about how we can take control of helping our bodies release the waste from our lymph nodes. We talk about how we can take care of our bodies early and often in our lives, how our organs have [00:03:00] different emotions and just what toxins are in this modern world that end up in our bodies, and what we can do to prevent absorbing them. We learn a little bit about toxic beauty products that are here in the States and yet banned in Europe, and we learn how to give a good tit massage, which I particularly enjoyed, and I’m sure my boyfriend will enjoy learning about later. Uh, it’s a great episode. It’s a lovely chat. And it’s one that I think is important to have. I’m really enjoying just knowing everything I can about my body because it is my best friend. This is a lot of what I talk about when I talk about the way that we talk about our bodies aesthetically. We’re so mean to our bodies, we resent them and we’re so cruel to them and we deny them or we over exercise them or we under exercise them. We allow all of our trauma to pour out onto them because they don’t look like what we see in the fucking fake billboards and magazines. And actually our bodies are our ultimate ride or die. They are there for us through thick and thin, trying to keep us fucking alive, no [00:04:00] matter what we put them through. And I think that’s beautiful, and I think they deserve more respect, and I think it’s important that we understand them, and work to make their incredibly difficult and endless job as easy as possible.

My body is my best, best friend and so is yours and conversations like this just inspire me and books like this just inspire me to, to do what I can to support my best friend even a fraction as much as my best friend supports me. So let me know what you think, send me your letters, send me your questions, send me your thoughts, but for now enjoy Lisa Levitt Gainsley.

Lisa Levitt Gainsley. Hello and welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Lisa: Thank [00:05:00] you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here and I’m feeling good this morning. How about you?

Jameela: Really good. Really good. Really happy to be talking to you. So your, your book, The Book of Lymph: Self Care Practices to Enhance Immunity, Health and Beauty, has been sent to me by about nine different people.

Lisa: Really?

Jameela: Because I was struggling with my health a little bit, especially last year. And so many people have been recommending your work or have been following you online or listening to your talks and reading your book in order to try to find, I don’t know, I think, not an alternative necessarily to modern mainstream medical practice, but ways to bolster and support those practices, especially because I think during the pandemic, a lot of people became much more health conscious, much more interested in preventative care, which I think is a big part of what you do. And also, a lot of people don’t, especially in the United States and actually in places with free healthcare because the [00:06:00] waiting lines are so long. Uh, they don’t have access to all the healthcare they need. And so people are wanting to have more autonomy in their health journey. And I feel like everything that your work advocates for is in line with that. And so that’s why I’m interested. I’m never trying to replace medicine, but I am always interested in all the things that we aren’t told about the body.

Lisa: Yes. Yes. Well, thank you for saying that. And just to harpoon on, on the word that you use, which is alternative or complimentary or other ways of having medicine interact with the body. What I love about the lymphatic system, it is part of the Western medicine system of healing, and it is covered by insurance for cancer patients. So it is not necessarily alternative or complimentary, but it is in actually the mainstream health and wellness. I think that people just haven’t heard much about it for decades.

Jameela: A hundred percent. So let’s talk [00:07:00] about the lymph. What is it?

Lisa: Right.

Jameela: Where is it? What’s going on with it? Why is it important?

Lisa: Oh, gosh, I love it. So your lymphatic system is the superhighway of your immune system. You’ve heard about your cardiovascular system, right? You know about your blood cells. You know about your blood capillaries, maybe not in depth, but you know that there’s a blood vascular system that the heart pumps and how important that is to life.

Well, you also have a lymphatic system whose vasculature is twice as vast as the cardiovascular system. There’s lymph vessels, there’s lymph capillaries, there’s lymphatic organs. For instance, your appendix, your thymus, your spleen, your tonsils and adenoids. These are lymphoid organs, but we’re never really taught that, right? You’re not taught that your lymphatic system is actually the highway of your immune system. We think about the blood stream [00:08:00] as bringing nutrients and oxygens to our bodies, to our cells, to our organs and bones, but your plumbing, you have another plumbing, which is your lymphatic system that absorbs the excess waste, debris, toxins, immune cells, cancer cells to filter out the waste in your body so that you’re not like this giant balloon, right? It helps move out inflammation, viruses, toxins, et cetera, and filters them out through the lymph nodes so that your body isn’t a big garbage collector. Does that make sense?

Jameela: It makes total sense. It makes total sense and also feels outrageous that I haven’t really heard about that outside of maybe estheticians doing lymphatic drainage to make the face look slimmer, right? That’s the kind of main way that I feel as though my generation have heard about the lymph is lymphatic massage, lymphatic drainage, but it’s never been pitched to me before your work as something to really do and obviously like I’m not deep in the medical world. And so [00:09:00] therefore, of course, I’ve missed it, but nor are most people, nor are most civilians. So, so I haven’t been told it’s for my immune system ever.

Lisa: Right. The lymphatic system, I sort of think of it as like the triple threat, right? You are going to be healthier from the inside out. So it’s the book title, Self Care Practices to Enhance Immunity, Health, Beauty. It hits all these things from the inside out, so you can glow from the inside out. You know, even if you take acne, for example, acne is showing you that there’s a deeper issue underneath the skin. Similar to eczema, there is a deeper issue under the skin.

Jameela: Yeah, yeah, I have skin issues all the time. Like currently I’m dealing with like a little bit of vitiligo and or I’m dealing with, I’ve had acne in the past, especially last year and all these different things. And I’m quite a skin positive person. I’m quite open to the fact that I’ve got the eczema and psoriasis and it’s going to show and it’s going to be on my face and that’s okay. But what I do always get alarmed [00:10:00] by is what does this mean about my gut or my inner system? Like what’s happening there before, by the time it’s showing on my face, it’s like all of the alarms are going off. By the time it’s gotten to my skin, everything’s already chaos on the inside and it normally takes something happening to my skin for me to look at my digestion or look at my gut or look at my, I don’t know, my sleep, my health practices. And so I fully agree.

Lisa: Yeah, I so appreciate you saying that because, and that’s another thing I’d love to point out is that your lymphatic system moves so slowly so that it’s, it might look like it’s an overnight reaction, but it’s actually been harboring underneath the surface of the skin, kind of like a swamp, right? If you have a beautiful pond or fountain in your backyard, but that pump isn’t moving that water, all of a sudden, you’re going to see that film on the, on the surface of this, of the pond.

Jameela: Right, but it slows down with age surely, like that becomes more of a swamp because I feel as though [00:11:00] I ate only Haribo and didn’t sleep for months on end and only drank like Coca Cola and aspartame like in my twenties, and I looked like a glowing, I don’t know, fucking lighthouse in the distance. And now I am like much more cognizant of how I fuel my engine of my body and yet it’s just everything feels like more of a slog. So it’s, it’s slowing down with age or just because I’ve become lazy.

Lisa: Yeah. So actually, uh, there’s, there’s a couple things I do wanna address about that. So it can, it does slow down over age. However, somebody like me who had acne in my twenties and digestive issues and menstrual cramps, I was really, I got so much benefit and help through that, doing lymphatic drainage in my twenties, right? So now I’m in my fifties, so, and it’s much better because I’ve been doing lymphatic work on myself for decades.

Jameela: So yours is actually, you’ve de-swamped over decades.

Lisa: I mean, I hope so, but that’s because I’ve been in this [00:12:00] field for 30 years, right? Doing my own lymphatic self massage practices. But also what I think is so fascinating is the other thing that people don’t know much about is that you have a lymphatic system in the brain that works to help move out some of that amyloid plaque that is responsible for the neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, MS, Parkinson’s, where they see that neuro inflammation and through the cerebral spinal fluid, through the lymphatic vessels that, and when you sleep again, the importance of sleep that helps move out that waste in the brain. But what they found is yes, when you age, those lymphatic vessels narrow, so it’s harder to get that waste through. So there are so many, like you mentioned in the beginning, proactive things we can do now to engage the lymphatic system such as exercise, sleep, eating beneficial foods, anti inflammatory diet and herbs, doing lymphatic massage to engage the lymphatic system because it doesn’t have a central pump [00:13:00] to move it the way the heart pumps the blood. It depends on the muscular arterial contractions that you get from moving your body and you think about where the lymph nodes are located, majority the head and neck, around the neck, armpits, abdomen, thighs, behind the elbows, knees, in like the hinges of the body that gets movement because it needs movement, right? So the more we can engage in, and it doesn’t have to be a hardcore exercise, but just that flushing and movement and natural rhythm really can stimulate that lymphatic circulation.

Jameela: Amazing.

What struck me about the book is because this is a mental health podcast, that there is a link to the lymph system and your mood and how you feel. And that in particular, I think is something that I thought was super relevant and super interesting because again, I’d never [00:14:00] heard that before. So can you further elaborate on that part of the brain lymphatic system.

Lisa: Yes. In fact, I think it’s also one of the underutilized benefits of lymphatic drainage. And I have a video tutorial on my Instagram for free that I have said it’s one of the main reasons why I do lymphatic massage for myself is for mood. And it can just take a few minutes for that energy shift to change.

When you think about cleaning out your closet, don’t you feel lighter and brighter, right? Just that energy. Same thing. We don’t realize that we are walking around with stagnant fluid. And the minute you start to engage that fluid, the minute you engage your lymphatic system and increase that circulation, you will feel lighter. You’ll feel a bit more energized. You feel tingly alive, awake in ways that you didn’t even realize was [00:15:00] impacting your mood. So, it is one of the main reasons why I do it and people write to me almost every day whether they’re doing it on their own or they’re receiving a lymphatic treatment, we’re working together, how that really changes how they feel in their body, which is the main reason I do this work, less to get people red carpet ready, but more so you feel good from the inside out because that’s where that glow comes from.

Jameela: Right and so what kind of toxins are in my brain?

Lisa: Yes, in your brain and in your body.

Jameela: No, but I’m just talking about specifically for mental health. Like, is that part of why I know that I know that endorphins and, uh, and generally happy chemicals are going around like dopamine in our brain after we exercise, but when you talk about lymphatic drains or you talk about exercise being beneficial to the brain, is that partially to do with these toxins moving out or is it just the rush of happy chemicals?

Lisa: I don’t know that there’s ever been a specific trial to illustrate [00:16:00] the exact chemical reaction for mood with lymphatic drainage. But I was at a conference in Banff, Canada this summer, and one of the practitioners says, we can’t really wait for the science to catch up to these principles that we’re applying and the results that we’re seeing. Right. So, but what we do know about what the lymphatic system does is it does move out the bacteria, the toxins, the excess waste in the body that the blood system doesn’t pick up, which includes hormones, the cancer cells hitch a ride, the immune cells hitch a ride. So, when you are clearing this excess waste in the tissues and in the body, then you are going to reap the beneficial results of that work.

Jameela: So it’s really about regulation because our, you know, our liver and our kidney and our bowel can only do so much to get things out of our actual bloodstream.

Lisa: And well, what you’re also talking about is the, you have lymph vessels that line the small intestine of your gut and [00:17:00] those are, are responsible for 70% of your immune system, makes up 70% of your immune system. And it is involved in, they are the first line of defense from foodborne illnesses. And so that gut brain access, the lymphatic system has a major role, plays a major role in helping to clear out some of that waste that doesn’t get stuck in those tissues, in the vessels that create that inflammatory process that’s at the root of most of the chronic illness.

Jameela: And when you talk about the immune response, you’re not just talking about, I don’t know, food poisoning or a stomach flu, etc. You are talking about the whole of the immune system, right? The gut holds so much. I mean, I’ve only really just learned this truly in the last nine months as to how much my body is impacted in every way by my gut. But again, people just say gut and I don’t really know what part of it because it’s fucking, it’s massive. My digestive system is meters and meters long, and it sounds far [00:18:00] too disgusting down there for me to really want to dig in on my own on Google. So I just go, yeah, my gut.

Lisa: Yes, well, I have this beautiful section in the book about gut health and immune health and lymphatic health in chapter two. And it’s true, the gut is just one part of your digestive system, right? And you have your small intestine and your large intestine, and what I love is my lymphatic teacher back in the early nineties, she also was influenced by the Chinese medical system, which talked about how the different organs also have different emotions and those organs that are involved in your digestion have a motility, a peristalsis, a movement. They need to move in order to secrete or absorb, do their job, draining fluid or absorbing minerals. And so many people carry so much stress in the gut and they want rock hard abs and they just shove emotions sometimes unwillingly. We [00:19:00] don’t mean to put our emotions in our jaw or our shoulders or a gut. It’s just sometimes where they go. What I always want is a soft fluid abdomen, so those organs aren’t locked and hardened, but they have the motility in that peristalsis so that they can help you go to the bathroom. They can help you absorb, secrete, and move out lymph fluid. Does that make sense?

Jameela: Yeah, makes total sense. It’s really interesting to think about that, and then also think about the way that exercise is positioned as quite a punitive culture. You know, that’s, that’s often about, you know, the kind of the boot camps and the high intensity, which can actually sometimes for some women be not particularly healthy because they’re stressing out your adrenals, and then if you’re stressing out your adrenals, your body’s in a state of stress, your body can go into fight or flight, uh, then you’re not really taking in nutrients as easily. And so really, what you advocate for in the book is like gentle exercise, things like swimming [00:20:00] and walking and yoga and things that are designed in the opposite direction of a lot of mainstream exercise, which is to to do it for your body, not to your body, because you’re trying to push your body to this like aesthetic goal on Instagram.

Lisa: Yes, I love the way you speak about it. You know, in yoga, I’ve been a yoga teacher for 25 years, we always say sort of like go to the edge and then come back, right? Don’t go over that edge. What type of exercise can you feel good about yourself? Sometimes weight training can have a very positive effect on the body.

Jameela: And it’s good for the bones. Yeah.

Lisa: And cellulite as well.

Jameela: I don’t mind. I don’t really mind my cellulite to be perfectly honest. I also don’t mind the fact that I’m not really a toned person. I’m never going to be a toned person. I’ve got Ehlers Danlos syndrome. So I’m, I’m, it’s nearly impossible for me to achieve a toned look without really hurting myself and depriving myself and punishing myself. So, for me, when it comes to being toned, I don’t [00:21:00] really, personally, give a shit about how it’s gonna look on the outside. But I do now, now that I’m getting old, I am noticing that like, I, that my back hurts more if I don’t have some sort of core that can be underneath the squish.

Lisa: That’s right.

Jameela: When I say I’m, I’m squish positive, basically. I’m squish positive. I’m cellulite positive. I’m all these things. I don’t really give a shit, but I, but I’m very obsessed now with how my engine moves.

Lisa: Yes.

Jameela: That’s, that’s the thing that I’m interested in is like, how do I keep moving for as long as possible? I’m suddenly paying more attention to the way that different elderly people move and you can sort of see someone’s quality of life sometimes via their vitality. Um, even if they’re not able to move their entire body, there’s something about their vitality that you can see increases their quality of life, and I think that’s really what I want. And for me personally, especially with a joint condition like EDS, I want vitality and I want, I want a strong engaged [00:22:00] core and body and immune system so that I’m not extra vulnerable when I get older.

Lisa: Yeah. I love the way you talk about that. And it’s such an important topic. If you’ve ever heard of Jane Fonda, the way she talks about working with her trainer, she, what she works on is how does she get into a car and can she turn her neck and look behind her

Jameela: Yeah.

Lisa: when she’s driving a car, right? Can you reach for something in the shower, which that’s where a lot of back injuries sort of hit this, the straw that hits the camel’s back and then the back goes out when you’re bending over to get your soap, right? So what are these simple movements that we can do to engage your entire muscular system, which engages your lymphatic system, which helps your quality of life? I mean, and you even also look at the blue zones where people live to be a hundred years old. And a lot of times those are the people who are walking every day.

Jameela: Yeah. I met an Uber driver who told me that he does four, he was like in his late [00:23:00] seventies and he was like fighting fit and so engaged and so sharp and, and energized. And he was just telling me that he does four one minute planks every morning and walks for half an hour, and that’s been his workout his entire life. And he was in amazing condition. He was just so well and so happy. And it was such a simple practice.

Lisa: Yes. And what works for one person might not work for the other person.

Jameela: Sure.

Lisa: Enjoying food, enjoying exercise and finding the shape that suits my body because I have hips and I have boobs and I have a stomach and this is how my body is and how can I have it serve me to live a long life and that might look different for every single person.

Jameela: So what are some simple things that someone could do starting today? Because I think the big thing that you advocate for is it’s never too late. That someone doesn’t have to have been doing this since they were 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. Someone can start [00:24:00] today. Someone whose parent or grandparent is sick or maybe going through chemo, you know, which is something that you’ve learned that lymphatic therapy can really help with the after effects of mainstream medicine. You know, when there are things that we. desperately need mainstream medicine for, the side effects are often really fucking brutal, as we know now. And lymphatic care can help restore someone’s immune system after something traumatic like that. So what could someone recommend to a friend or what could they do themselves starting today?

Lisa: So I love that question. First of all, if you don’t have an active chemo that’s untreated, if you aren’t in chronic heart failure, there are, there are some precautions that you want to take. If you haven’t had surgery in the past month, then you can get started by doing some lymphatic massage in the lymph node clusters. This is your lymph nodes are where your immune cells [00:25:00] filter out the waste, the toxins in the body. So we’ve, a lot of us have heard of lymph nodes, they get swollen when you’re fighting an infection, so

Jameela: Where are they?

Lisa: I don’t recommend, so the main, um, cervical lymph nodes at the base of the neck above the collarbone, that’s where the right and left lymphatic nodes are located that bring the fluid back to the bloodstream. So you’ll want to do like a gentle massage. I like to try to get as many fingertips as possible, and you want to work slowly. Your lymph moves about six to 12 times per minute. And those lymph capillaries that are just underneath the surface of the skin that absorb the waste are very superficial. So you want to go very light. It’s almost like petting your cat. Very gentle. So nurturing.

Jameela: And how long, how long do I do that for?

Lisa: So you can do, I would say about 20 pumps right in the neck. I also love the spot move where you separate some of your fingers, put a couple fingers in front of your ears, [00:26:00] behind your ear, and do the stroke around the ears because the lymph fluid from the face will drain from the ears down to the neck.

Jameela: And what’s interesting is that helps with ear congestion, right?

Lisa: Yes, it helps ear congestion. I also get a sore throat if I drink wine and sometimes I like to have a glass of wine. So I’ll just have a glass of wine and massage my ears if I really want that glass of wine.

Jameela: Do you do it while you’re drinking the wine?

Lisa: I will. Yes. Yes. Invite me to a dinner party. I’ll show you. Um, and the other thing is the armpits, right? So there’s such a high incidence of breast cancer. And there’s also an increase in male breast cancer, one out of every 100 men are getting breast cancer, so your axillary lymph nodes that are located in the armpit, take the fluid, a lot of the fluid from the breast, the torso, front and back and the arm. So if someone has had lymph nodes removed from cancer treatment, and they’re at risk for getting lymphedema, which is the swelling of [00:27:00] a limb or the torso, we, or even before that, so many women have dense breasts. They have fibrotic breasts.

Jameela: Mine are made of bricks. I swear to God.

Lisa: Sweetie, this is your homework.

Jameela: Yeah.

Lisa: This is what you’re doing. My husband always laughs at me because I’ll just be like

Jameela: Wait, is hard tits not just something I was born with? Is that a sign of my lymph?

Lisa: I mean, probably. I mean,

Jameela: Oh god, my lymph must be absolutely fucked then.

Lisa: I mean, unless like,

Jameela: I can’t even have a mammogram. I have to have like a son, like a, like a ultrasound. I have to do, they can’t get in.

Lisa: Honey, honey, follow me. Follow me. Hand in the armpit.

Jameela: Hand in the armpit.

Lisa: Uh, you want to pump into that.

Jameela: Softly. I’m softly.

Lisa: Gently and massage your breasts. My husband always jokes. Cause I’ll be like,

Jameela: I feel like people will need to pay a bit more for this clip now.

Lisa: Right, they do. I just massage my breasts above [00:28:00] the, above the boobie.

Jameela: Do you also do this while you’re drinking wine in the restaurant?

Lisa: I actually will do it if you catch me at the Hollywood Bowl dancing. I got my, because I’m dancing, so I’m shaking my boobs, right? And I’ll just pump my armpits. So I’m getting all that lymph circulation.

Jameela: Again, how many pumps of the armpit are we doing?

Lisa: At least 20. I do at least 20.

Jameela: And then how many, and how many tit circles are we doing then after that? 20?

Lisa: You know, about, about 20 and that’s

Jameela: 20’s the magic number.

Lisa: Yeah. He’s like, honey, what about me? I want to get in there. And I’m like, it’s different. It’s different. Right. When the lover gets in there, they have a different goal than we do. Right?

Jameela: Yes.

Lisa: So I want, I want, as women and men as well, to really massage those breasts and lactating women right, to avoid mastitis, right? Let’s get in there, massage it because when we talk about exercise, it is hard to exercise the breasts and we need to keep that lymph flow. You can massage your abdomen. I love doing this when I’m going to bed at night [00:29:00] clockwise towards the left hip that helps the digestion. So just little things like that can really engage your lymph system. When you think about massaging those areas. And it’s so nurturing.

Jameela: Right. Yeah. And then there’s body brushing right at that. I think a lot of us have heard about we’ve seen it since we were kids and the sort of like health stores. So body brushing your skin towards your heart because that’s the vascular lymphatic system, right?

Lisa: Well, so, so yes, so ideally, so your lymphatic fluid is all eventually gonna go back towards the heart. So the back of the body towards the front. I do like to get a little bit more specific and I have a little diagram in my book.

Jameela: Mm-Hmm.

Lisa: And I have it online, which is, I do like to massage a little lymph nodes first. When I dry brush, I do like to dry brush towards the lymph nodes, but that’s ’cause I’m super specific. If you want to just think about doing it towards the heart, that’s fine too, because it will improve that [00:30:00] lymphatic system as well as the blood circulatory system.

Jameela: Right, right, right. So it’s like not, so not just the vascular lymphatic system, you are going towards the actual, the, the other more kind of like, I don’t know, I don’t want to use the word threatening lymphs.

Lisa: Yeah.

Jameela: But you know, but these, but these parts like that, this is where I’m noticing a lot of my friends, you know, the ones who will find the lump or who will have something removed. It’s, it’s a lot of, it is a lot of it is lymphatic now as you know, we’re kind of getting into our 30s and I’m definitely more aware of lymph nodes than I was when I was younger.

Lisa: Yeah. You know, what I found in the 30 years working with the lymphatic system is that some people don’t, they’ll learn of it in a couple ways. They’ll learn of it 1), if their lymph nodes are swollen and they’re catching a cold. Some people learned about it during COVID. Um, some people, if they had a cancer diagnosis, like my mother, when I was young, she had lung brain, lung cancer, and she passed away when I was 13, which is really what led me to this work is how do we live well? How do we take care of our bodies early and [00:31:00] often? So what I want to do is have people understand that they can fall in love with their lymph before there is an issue. Or if you do get a cold, or if you do get a cancer diagnosis, that even more attention needs to be paid towards working with your lymph system. And it’s just such a beautiful, nurturing, loving practice that it’s helpful like you said.

Jameela: And it’s not time consuming, even the amount of walking to do a day or swimming or a little bit of yoga. These things don’t have to take up your time, but it’s so worth making that time in your day because of the fact that it’s going to save you in the end. I can’t tell you how much regret I had in the last sort of nine months in which I’ve been recovering where I’m like, fuck, I just, there’s so many things I could have done that would have taken 25 minutes a day that would have stopped me spending months and months and months in bed, miserable and in pain and sick. And so for me, changing my diet, moving, which I did just for my mental health, [00:32:00] without really paying attention to the lymphatic connection there. Just moving every single day, swimming, getting some sun. And changing a lot in my lifestyle.

Lisa: Yes.

Jameela: Around how stressed I am. And I know that that’s something that’s been big for you.

Lisa: Yes.

Jameela: Uh, is, is recognizing that what is stressing me out in my life? And I think, you know, we all know that, you know, especially women, like we are diagnosed with stress above anything else that is going on with us, even when it’s something serious. You know, we have a serious pathology. We’re often told we’re just stressed, but we’re not really explained to as to why that’s so dangerous for our immune system and why it’s so bad for our health. And it is fucking stressful to be a woman in this world. It’s stressful to be everyone, but

Lisa: Right. To being in a body.

Jameela: Specifically from this angle that you can relate to personally. Can we talk about stress and the lymph and its impact on your immune system?

Lisa: Yes. So we know that the stress and cortisol levels are inflammatory in the body. And we know that inflammation is the root [00:33:00] of chronic illness. And one of the central roles the lymphatic system plays is regulating the fluid balance of the body. So yes, if somebody gets an injury, fluid rushes in to heal the body, but that’s just sort of an acute inflammation. But then what happens when that acute issue has been resolved is if your lymphatic system isn’t working properly, then you will get an accumulation of fluid. So what we can do is, yes, how can we mitigate stress? Often, a lot of cancer patients that I’ve seen, one of their main takeaways is how are they reducing stress and toxic people or work situations in their life. And there are so many people, and I think this is, I know this is why I have gone to, even though I have a clientele that I see one-on-one, why I’ve gone into education more is not everybody can afford to get a lymphatic massage, but there are things you can do [00:34:00] for free

Jameela: It’s fucking expensive.

Lisa: To your, yeah, bloody how? I don’t even wanna pay somebody to do a lymphatic

Jameela: No, I don’t do it.

Lisa: Massage on me. Right. So that’s why I wanna teach people there are things you can do for yourself for free that can help mitigate stress, that can help reduce inflammation, improve your mood and increase your health and vitality by doing some lymphatic self massage things that are nurturing. So, one of the things that cancer patients of mine have had in common is they look at the toxicity in their life and it, and not everybody can make a choice to leave a job or leave a career. Not everybody has that financial freedom, but looking at who are the toxic people in your life that you do not have to give your energy away to. How can you really create boundaries where you are protecting yourself so that you’re not in stress, not in fight or flight, and not in that toxic relationship is a very important thing to look at.[00:35:00]

Jameela: And this might sound like an ignorant question, but you know how, and again, you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’ve been told before by, by doctors and nutritionists that when you are in a state of fight or flight, you, you are not getting the, the nutrients from your body because your body thinks you’re in danger, right? So your digestive system is sort of like shut down temporarily. And so they say that it’s really important when you eat to try to eat mindfully, as in like not be on your phone, not be looking at the news, not be on the go, eating on the run, on the way to work or something like it’s very important to be in like a quiet, quietish place or having a relaxed, nice time and, and being like really cognizant of, of chewing your food properly and making it go in, in order to make sure that you are actually benefiting from this food you’re eating beyond just like, instant energy. Is it similar with the lymph where [00:36:00] if your body has the idea, because you know, our brains haven’t updated to think that there’s a significant difference between the saber tooth tiger and the doom scroll of, you know, on the internet, right? Our brain has a very similar reaction and the similar parts of the brain light up in the same way in spite of the fact there’s a vast difference between the level of actual imminent physical literal threat. And so does the lymph also shut down in that situation? Does it stop circulating as much?

Lisa: So I wouldn’t say shut down, but what I would say is how can we optimize the efficacy of our lymphatic system, right? How can we increase that lymphatic circulation? I’m a big believer in visualization meditation. When my mother was sick with cancer, we had a family friend come and teach us visualization where we would go and visualize the immune cells beating the cancer cells. And even now I’ll go to level if I’m in a health situation and I’ll visualize a [00:37:00] beautiful climate in my body taking over any negativity that might be going on in my body. And I encourage people to also do that when they’re doing their lymphatic massage. I’ll say if you’re doing lymphatic massage, imagine rainbows or crescent moons or the sunshine, sun rays and changing the chemistry of your body. There have been studies that show that visualization has a beneficial impact on that stress fight or flight situation.

Jameela: Yeah, I do want to clarify though, because there’s like a huge amount of pushback against sometimes that like, there’s an understandable huge amount of pushback against, against the kind of teaching of, of visualization, etc. And the fact that sometimes people feel as though they’re being, and I just want to address it for anyone who then suddenly feels like blamed or victim shamed or anything of like, did I not have the positive enough thought or did my parent not have the positive enough thought or, or, um, you know, is it to go against science? But actually what’s kind of interesting is because I was a huge skeptic of this, like the word manifest used to drive me [00:38:00] fucking crazy, make my skin crawl. Um, and, and like, you know, I, I’ve been someone who’s really, you know, I’m, I’m very British and very cynical and very into like, what’s tangibly right in front of me, but as I grow older and I start to understand little bits here and there of kind of more quantum physics, I realized that actually when people talk about imagining the best scenario outcome for your body, it sounds incredibly, sorry for this word, woo woo, but also at the same time, we have the placebo effect in science, which is mainstream medical scientific fact that that is a real phenomena that occurs. And that’s the same principle of you think you’re taking a medication and your body starts to see actual results, like tangible results from the medication or treatment that you think you’re doing, that you’re not, you’re taking a sugar pill or you’re taking a, you know, um, just a fake medicine and yet you can, they can see that there’s data that proves that that has had a positive impact on their [00:39:00] body. So I am trying to open myself up, but I just also want to always make sure that I address that so that

Lisa: I so appreciate you saying that because it didn’t, visualization didn’t save my mother’s life, right? She did chemo. She did radiation. She did brain surgery. We did visualization. We did meditation as a family. She changed her diet to a macrobiotic diet, right? So she did all these things and that didn’t save her life. She died at 52. So I’m not sitting here saying.

Jameela: I’m sorry.

Lisa: Thank you. I’m not sitting here saying, and I’m so glad you brought this up, that, oh, you just visualize rainbows and sunbeams and you will be fine and your lymphatic system will be fine. But what it will do is it will calm your system down and take your nervous system out of that fight or flight where healing does occur. And that’s what I think is so beautiful and such an integrative principle when you do your lymphatic massage, just like when you’re cooking and you’re chopping vegetables, I’m not like thinking about [00:40:00] that thing that pissed me off during the day. I mean, sometimes I am, but then I’ll just put some music on and try to shake that out.

Jameela: I chop so much faster when I’m angry.

Lisa: Well, and just like I do think in exercise, sometimes being aggro and angry and getting your stress out on the soccer field or on the punching bag is very beneficial to stress levels.

Jameela: Yeah, no, that, that completely, I think, can make sense to anyone, which is that obviously trying to imagine a harmonious state in your body is going to reassure your brain and that’s going to lower your cortisol levels and that will no longer get in the way of helping move the inflammation along. That, that, I think anyone can get on board with.

Has there been much pushback to the work of the lymphatic community, even though there is so much mainstream science to it?

Lisa: So in the 30 years that I’ve been studying the lymphatic system, there has been such a fight. I mean, we are recognized by the A. M. A. the American Medical [00:41:00] Association. And like I said, if somebody has had cancer, lymphatic, a certified lymphedema therapist is covered by insurance, most insurance, including Medicare.

Jameela: And will you just tell everyone what lymphedema is, because I think that’s also a really prevalent condition, especially in, maybe especially in women, or maybe we just, it’s easier to identify, but that’s a prevalent condition.

Lisa: Right, right. I think it, I think it’s so much easier to identify in women because more, the incidences of breast cancer in women are definitely higher than men. And then, so if somebody let’s say had breast cancer and they had lymph nodes under the armpit removed, their risk for getting lymphedema, which is the fluid accumulation of lymph fluid that there’s no cure for. That doesn’t really, that doesn’t go away. You can help manage lymphedema through so many of these archaic practices, like wrapping an arm, you might see if you’re in the airport, a woman wearing a compression sleeve, different from an athletic sleeve. So you’ll see it, whereas sometimes men [00:42:00] will have it in the legs, though it’ll sometimes be chronic venous insufficiency combination. Some people, when they get older, they’ll see it bilaterally. So it’s just an accumulation of lymphatic rich fluid where drains have been removed or blocked or lymph vessels have been damaged through radiation, so that’s what lymphedema is. So if somebody has a cancer diagnosis, you’re going to always want to watch out for lymphedema because it doesn’t just occur post operatively, it can occur a year later, 5 years, 10 years later. Kathy Bates is an actress and she’s a big advocate for lymphedema treatment act, which has been passed in Congress. So there’s been a lot of awareness, but a lot of doctors and surgeons still don’t even know that much about lymphedema or the lymphatic system. And they always tell me when I have them on my podcast, they’re like, yeah, we had like 10 pages of it in our textbook in medical school. I mean, they also don’t have a lot of nutrition education.

Jameela: Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa: Right. Which [00:43:00] seems so bizarre, and I asked so many of my doctor friends and surgeon friends and they’re like, well, one of the big reasons we believe is because it’s so microscopic that you can’t, they have not in the past been able to see the lymph vasculature in dissection in cadavers. And so they

Jameela: The nutrition thing is really wild. Like people, people really pushing back against anyone talking significantly. I mean, we’re only just starting to have the conversation about sugar and just starting to have a conversation about processed food or GMOs and all this sort of thing. I think it’s bonkers how much doctors don’t really go into, they just say things like, oh, gotta have a healthy diet, which I think a lot of people think of as just low carb or low fat or low this, that and the other, but still with like 200 chemicals written in the packet. And I’ve been the most ignorant person around food my whole life until truly this year. I’m amazed to see how many doctors actively push back when people start to advocate for the fact that [00:44:00] food is part of the, it is part of the practice. Nutrition is really important, especially if you’re saying that 60 or 70 percent of the immune system is in the gut. It is vital that we take care of that. And I’ve said before in this podcast that as an Indian and Pakistani, like, I’m, I’m mildly, I’d say, offended and very sceptical of western medicine for taking practice that’s been used for thousands of years in Asia, where we use like the food and hot food and capsicum and all these different things to not heal the body, but at least support the body. And the way it’s dismissed by Western doctors, I find to be very dismissive and short sighted and reductive. And it feels a little bit wild to be in a country where healthcare isn’t, is, is so expensive. It’s not just not free, it’s so wildly expensive. And then the food here is problematic. When I leave here, I notice a huge [00:45:00] difference in every element of my health. My hair gets thicker, my skin gets, uh, clearer, my eczema gets better. Like I, I’m not bloated all the time. I can eat foods in Europe that I can’t eat in America. Like, this is not in my head. This is not because I’m relaxed on holiday. I’m working abroad and doing the same hours. And there is a difference. And I find it really frustrating and a bit scary the way that we’re not allowed to have this conversation. We’re not really encouraged to think of preventative medicine and like, that feels so short sighted in a country that can’t even pay for its citizens to have health care.

Lisa: Yes, you bring up such a great point that in the United States, we have held doctors for a long time to be you know, the experts on everything and we have put our faith that they know everything. And listen, they can save our lives for sure. But there’s also this pedestal we put them in that they have to know [00:46:00] everything. At the same time, when we go in there and saying, this has worked for me in some cities, some doctors who are open minded say, oh, tell me what you’ve done. Oh, this is, you know, they’ll say, oh, you’ve changed your diet, now you don’t need blood pressure medicine. I’ve seen that happen with clients, right? That’s rare, but I’ve seen that happen. Whereas some have an ego and they’re like, wait, I don’t know about that. So that can’t possibly be true.

Jameela: Or there aren’t enough studies done or there aren’t enough, you know, or it’s not enough peer reviewed studies. And by the way, I have immense respect for data, for research, for studies, but I also find it curious in a country that is dominated by big sugar, big pharma, et cetera.

Lisa: Well, yeah.

Jameela: That, you know, there sometimes is a, is a lack of studies and, and it is mad how many things are allowed in, in everyday foods that are given even to children in America that are illegal in Europe.

Lisa: And beauty products. I think we [00:47:00] have about in Europe, I think there’s like a couple thousand chemicals that are banned and beauty products in Europe that are allowed here.

Jameela: Really?

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Have you, uh, you know, the company beauty counter?

Jameela: Yeah. The company? Yeah.

Lisa: Yes. So they are, they’ve been lobbying Congress to get a bunch of chemicals banned cause I think it hasn’t been updated since the thirties.

Jameela: Holy shit. And so is that bad for your

Lisa: Yes.

Jameela: Skin and lymph?

Lisa: For your lymphatic system, what you put on your body, 60 percent of has to get absorbed and work through your lymphatic system. So when you talk about what can overwhelm or damage the lymphatic system, when you are overwhelming it with chemicals, it has to process and food it has to process, all these things that has to process in addition to its regular function and it’s moving at such a slow speed and you’re not moving your body, then it can only move out that inflammation at such a short rate. You are slowing things down. When you think about the rain gutters [00:48:00] outside your house, right? If those are cleared from debris, you’re going to get that rain gutter, it’s going to be moving out that garbage, right? It’s going to be moving out that rainwater, but if it’s impacted with leaves and debris and waste, then it’s not going to be moving things efficiently. That’s a great analogy about your lymphatic system. So how can we optimize this vasculature? By diet, by exercise, by beneficial herbs, by doing some lymphatic work in the lymph nodes and around the face, the arms, the breast, the abdomen, to increase that auto motoricity of your lymph vessels to move out that fluid.

Jameela: Yeah. I can’t think of anything that could ever be a bad thing about learning to get in tune with your body, learning how to check how your body feels, like we are so distracted away from that again, especially with the aesthetic issue in the way that in the beauty standards that we are held to, especially in the west, where people are taught to analyze ourselves in a mirror rather than actually by touching ourselves [00:49:00] and feeling our bodies and being in tune and really, we’re not taught to listen to our bodies. We’re just sort of taught to listen to the mainstream narrative and wait until the house of cards falls down before we actually start to address an issue. And I, what I do really like is the fact that you are advocating for self awareness, self autonomy, and you are never trying to replace main, like vital mainstream medicine with this. You are just saying that this is an incredible support and a way to hopefully try to somewhat delay or avoid having to be too much in the mainstream healthcare system because you don’t want to be sick.

Lisa: I mean, you know, I have a lot of young people who come and see me because they want to avoid the chronic conditions that their parents face, that they see them ailing with, which is what you had said earlier on, that you see how somebody is living in their body when they’re older. So how can you roll that back with that awareness at this age? How can you do things to take care of yourself without it being an overwhelming [00:50:00] chore?

Jameela: Mhm.

Lisa: Right? You can lie down, watch tv, and massage your armpits. You can lie down at night before you’re going to sleep and massage your stomach in the morning when you’re putting on your face moisturizer face oil. You can massage your face to help de puff some of the debris that either you have sinus stuff or allergies, seasonal allergies, or we just get puffy from the food we can, or alcohol that we can consume. So your lymphatic system, just a few minutes, a few times a week can help really address so that you don’t have an inflammatory response that can be detrimental to whatever your parents genes, they may have given you, right? So the environmental genetic composition that we’re all walking in with doesn’t necessarily mean we’re fated to the same. situations our parents face.

Jameela: And so if there’s one main thing you want people to take away from your book and from your work, what would you say that is?

Lisa: It’s never too late to fall in love with your lymph.

Jameela: [00:51:00] 100%. 100% and I’d never thought that 37 would be the age in which I start to actually learn truly anything about how my health works, how my body works, especially given the fact that I’ve been so sick for so much of my life. I’ve just been playing the sort of defense, um, and for a really long time, which is a really stressful way to live. And it’s, it just means so much fucking time wasted in recovery. And I guess that’s why I’m trying to responsibly branch out with who I talk to on the podcast about stopping people from getting to where I was.

Lisa: Yes, I so appreciate that is the conversation that you come with. You just never know what’s going on with somebody. So for somebody to say, let’s have a conversation about what are things we can do often to help create this habitable, vibrant ecosystem at any age. It’s an important conversation.

Jameela: Thank you so much. It’s been so lovely to talk to you and I look forward to continue to [00:52:00] read your work and follow your research and, and learn more about myself. I’m going to go and massage my tits right now.

Lisa: Yay. And if that’s a takeaway that anybody can walk away with, it’s massage your tits. I love it.

Jameela: Thank you.

Lisa: Thanks for having me.

Jameela: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh With Jameela Jamil, produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. It is edited by Andrew Carson and the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener: I weigh my relationship with [00:53:00] my husband and my family and my friends, I weigh my perseverance and my resilience through some really tough times. I weigh the children that I teach and the knowledge that they’re getting from me and from the world around them and helping them make sense of it all.