How We Dispose of Our Garbage

Many degenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease(dementia) and Parkinson's disease are characterized by garbage accumulation in the brain. In the body, garbage disposal is carried out by the lymphatic system which runs alongside veins and the spinal cord, and driven by pulsation from muscle contraction, nerves and pressure build-up in the interstitium. It sweeps through in tissues and as it does so, carries with it tissue debris that has not been or has been poorly cleared by tissue phagocytes, and failed to return into venous blood. 

The debris passes through lymph nodes, where more phagocytosis takes place, and the lymph vessels empty into the the large veins, and the debris is cycled and broken down in the liver through metabolism and sent out in feces, or excreted in the kidney. New lymph is formed from interstitial fluid, found in all tissues.

The lymphatic vessels from the digestive tract contain the lymphatic fluid that carries digestive macromolecules(proteins, peptides and fat) resulting from digestion and which are sent into the liver for metabolism. Excess fat, proteins, cellular debris, bacteria and viruses, in tissues, which cannot be returned, through capillaries, into blood, because of sheer size, are dumped back into the lymph.

For long, it has been thought that no such garbage disposal system exists and operates in the brain. However, recent findings show that there is actually one and has been named the glymphatic system, from its derivation from glial cells, that sweeps the brain of its garbage. It, too, follows the paths taken by veins in the brain, as its counterparts in the periphery, and its debris disposal fluid derives into the brain interstitium from the cerobrospinal fluid through pores in the support cells, the astrocytes, surrounding the arteries. The fluid returns into blood, through the veins, as well.

The question remains that if such a garbage disposal system exists, why do we have 'garbage' diseases like Alzheimer and Parinsons's diseases. This must either be ineffective or the the garbage itself is un-scrapable(un-detachable) from the tissues.

Blood flow, due to increased pressure in the interstitium and raised circulation frequency, hence lymph flow, determines garbage clearance. That explains why after exercise we feel cleaner and healthier and think more sharply. Both sweating and lymph/glymph outputs are increased by physical exercise, hence more garbage disposal. High blood pressure decreases blood flow and, hence, lowers debris clearance from the body. Garbage presence in the body will prevent growth and rejuvenation of tissues, and promote aging.

Free radical formation is often decried as a bad thing. But not so when it is used by phagocytes to kill microbes by punching holes in them and making them easy to scrape, detach and digest, in the process. When bacteria develop resistance by making coats(capsules) that cannot be hydrolyzed by the conventional enzyme action, the only option left is for reactive oxygen free radicals to help. This is, in fact, the case, and people who do not have the propensity to easily form the free radicals develop chronic infections with the result that dysfunctional white cells accumulate and this gives rise to a nodular tumor called the granuloma.

Exercise and fasting produce stress, which generates free radicals and cytokines(body toxins); not too much of it to compromise the body tissues but enough to boost the liver's and the white blood cell's ability to deal with debris in our tissues. Signs of body toxins(cytokines) are papular rash, fever, and ulcer/sore. The body uses these very mechanisms of stress and cytokine generation to get rid of infections. These manifest as necrosis, inflammation, proliferation, apoptosis and autophagy; each outcome depending on the intensity of the stress or stressor. Exercise additionally drives fluid round the body to clear debris from tissues, through the lymph nodes in phagocytosis, into the liver for metabolism and elimination and in the kidney for excretion. 

Dr. Oliver Verbe Birnso, M.D. 


  


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