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