Lymph And Fascia 101

Jessica Peatross, MD

I’m honored to be here. Thanks for the warm welcome.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. So first of all for people that might not know, talk to us about what fascia and lymph are and and what are the differences between the two?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah. Great question. I get this question a lot. And I think in general a lot of doctors and physicians may not know the difference to what this is actually. And it’s very important. So I’m gonna give you first what you just said. Those like doctors and physicians don’t even know the difference. They don’t, you know, it’s really sad. So I feel like just let’s start with the old conventional definition of what fascia is and what we use to think it was as physicians was just a band or a sheet of connective tissue and primarily collagen which is a protein. And it was beneath the skin. And we just thought it attached to stabilized and closed and separated muscles, other internal organs and us stocks called it the inter stitch or the you know, Dysentery as well. Dysentery as well. Excuse me. And so the fascia is classified by layers superficial, deep pasha, visceral or parietal fascia. And we used to just think it didn’t have much function. It just had an anatomical location. It just held things together. But the new research is showing something different. It’s showing that it’s an uninterrupted visco elastic tissue which is in a three dimensional function and it is a collagen matrix. It’s actually a matrix. A three dimensional matrix. 

And not not only encloses but it supports organs and tissues. It lessens friction. It eases muscle tension. It tightens up reflexively. It helps your bloodstream, your bones, your skeletal muscle. And it’s really the bridge between external and internal communication within the body and the cells, right? So much more than we originally thought now. What’s the lift? The limp limp is the fluid that flows through the inter stitch. It’s you know, it flow it’s the fluid of the lymphatic system. It’s comprised of lymphatic vessels and nodes that have different functions. Like the venus system, the veins in our body, it returns fluid from the tissues to the central circulation and it’s really the sewer system of the body. So it’s the fluid that flows through the fascia and together these two work together.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, cool. So yesterday we just met actually yesterday in a group that were part of called the holistic leadership council. And so we were having some conversations about fascia and how when it becomes dysfunctional. Like you cause you, you said that it helps. I don’t remember the exact words but maybe loosen up muscles but it can also really tighten up right around muscles and potentially even organs and and be dysfunctional. Is that true?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Absolutely, absolutely the truth. And you know the fashion, It’s almost like a spider web and that encases everything. And if there’s any pressure. I mean the way I like it is like the fuzz when you open up an orange or citrus fruit, there’s almost like a fuzz that in cases everything. That’s the fashion tissue. And so if there’s it holds water her as well. Right. It’s very gelatinous. If there’s any pressure put down on that spider web, it can pull things out. Even muscles, even tendons, ligaments. It can cause a lot of pain for people. The inter stitch them if it’s not laid properly and there’s pressure in certain places where there shouldn’t be due to injuries scar to you. You know, the autonomic nervous system can be clamped down as well.

Tom McCarthy

And so sometimes it gets stuck in a dysfunctional pattern. Are there ways to get it out of that pattern? And then maybe that’s we’re gonna talk about later. But there are ways to get it back to becoming functional? 

Jessica Peatross, MD

For sure because and you really we have undervalued the lymphatic unfashionable system so much. It’s a connection of positive and negative salutes that communicate with each other. Right? It’s a PCO electorate network of salutes, hormones, neuropeptides and communicators. And when it’s healthy, the fascia is slippery and smooth it which is as you move it’s dimensional, right? If it’s not doing Well and remember stagnation breeds disease, get thicker, stickier drier tighter and it can cause because of this a lot of pain, even mood changes because hormones are involved difficulty sleeping, difficulty with energy and mobility. Of course. 

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. You know, so I was telling you, I think I had that happening after I had chronic fatigue back in 2015 and still have some. So I’m very interested in this talk today, just for everybody, but also for my own purposes. So this is really, really cool. So how do we have functional lymph and fascia? Like how do how do we, what types of things can help us whether we’re uh I want to be preventative or whether we’re in a situation where we are challenged by it. Like what are things that you do? Because I know you work with people and this is one of the important things you do. Like how do you get their fashion and their limp to become more functional?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah, good question. And I think to properly answer that we may need to go over what the fascia is made up of. And yeah, the actual like components of it will help people understand what they need to make it. So, you know I mentioned there are different layers of fascia. The visceral fascia has all the autonomic nerves in it. So it’s part of the nervous system. It talks to our brain in a second. With pressure. Right? The superficial fascia has like skin and pressure receptors and thermo receptors as well. And this is where it holds the interstitial fluid or lymph. The deep Russia has a role in appropriate reception or balance in space. Right? So extremely important functions based on the layers and different areas show different density and type of innovation with the blood vessels and nerves. So now, once you go into those layers it’s made up of three primary comm opponents. There’s collagen micro tubules which is where we need consciousness of humans enter into the body. There’s a lasting which allows that.

Tom McCarthy

Again, that was really important. What did you just say?

Jessica Peatross, MD

So there’s a lot of studies in the esoteric and spiritual meaning of lymph and Sasha and what a lot of the trailblazers are now publishing in the esoteric and emotional, you know, reason for masha is the college micro tubules are the collagen helix and we believe that consciousness enters humans through the micro tubules, proteins of the collagen helix. And is it is absolutely because I’m going to go into here how Sasha connects the autonomic nervous system to the parasympathetic side. And really to heal, we have to get interest and digest and that’s why this talk so important for the electric body of humans. I took a side note there for just a moment but it is important to understand and I will go into depth about the emotional and mental cause of reason for caution and how to heal it. But you know the fossil tissues made up these college and micro tubules that we think consciousness enters humans on elastin which allows for flexibility. lamin in which is a structure that holds dissimilar structures together. Reticulated a protein that’s the type of collagen and then the extra cellular matrix which is made up of ground substance or water. So this is very gelatinous water based protein collagen helix for people. Okay so what does that mean? And how to heal it if it’s stuck? Well. First and foremost I mentioned a bunch of water. So you really need to be hydrated.

Tom McCarthy

Get your water right now. I’m gonna down this after I’m done, yeah.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Perfect. You know half your body weight in ounces of fresh clean filtered water. And often that means structured water as well because as you can imagine the fossil network and matrix is very much structured in an organized fashion. And we really want to add clean water without impurities there. So it can structure the water molecules can structure properly within that national network. Right and so being hydrated is one important thing you can do. The other thing you can do is really look at drainage and drainage is different than detoxification is literally opening up your natural emunctories like the liver, the bile, the lymph. So you can dump toxins. So how do we do that? You do that through usually you know making sure you can sweat and you can okay and that your liver function is good and all this is very very important and will help your body get into parasympathetic mode where the fashion system and the lymph can move properly. And so really doing a making sure drainages open, getting enough water, making sure you can sit and relax and be a human being and not a human doing is also what helps the system of time if you are a little bit, what do you mean by being a human being, not a human doing? I’m talking really about being imbalanced in the autonomic nervous system. 

So if you’re one of those people that doesn’t is not comfortable sitting still with your thoughts, you’re always going and doing, you may have a problem with your fashion lymph system which really only moves in parasympathetic mode and I will prove this to you through science. So the circulatory system has a pump, like the heart. The lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump. It only has the diaphragm, which is a muscle that moves with breath. You’re constantly in sympathetic overdrive. You’re probably taking shallow breaths. They’re not full breath, you’re not breathing into your belly and moving the diaphragm. So therefore your lymphatic system in your fashion system is stuck and will not move properly without proper breath and proper movement. And if you’re constantly going and doing, you’ve lost awareness of those very basic tenants of health and I guarantee you’re not breathing properly.

Tom McCarthy

You know, this is really important because I see this all the time now. And even I’ve been guilty of it myself. Like if I have an experiment where I’m not doing something, I better read an article or I better uh you know, read the Wall Street journal or check out the sports stores versus like you said? Just be with yourself a little bit. Right. And and we’re so attuned to having that phone or being on that computer, especially younger generation, but you know, I’m not that young and you know, I do it or I’ve done it and I have been working on this consciously recently to try and be better at what you’re talking about doing and and sometimes a little scary. Like I just got to be myself like what’s going on?

Jessica Peatross, MD

No, I hate it too. I’ll be honest with you, I am much better at being a human doing than a human being. It’s consciousness as well to look at this right now because myself included, even my patients and myself. If I lay down on the table and someone starts to gently manipulate my lymph and move my pasha. You know, one or two things will happen. I’ll either fall asleep and glitch out on the table or I might start crying. And I see this a lot with people when they get into parasympathetic mode and someone’s manually moving their lymph. That’s where repressed emotions and trauma is often stored. And so getting people into parasympathetic mode lets their body heal them on their own. We don’t, we just have to get out of the way, Get out of the way, how can you make people be so still, there’s a verse libel even that says be still and know that I am God. I don’t mean to get religious here. But what does that mean in scientific terms?

Tom McCarthy

Right, Right. That’s beautiful. So how do you recommend to people that say, I can’t sit still. I have such a hard time doing like you said, you’re you’re like that too. But you have little rituals or things you do. I know you do yoga, I read that in your bio. What are some things you would recommend to people?

Jessica Peatross, MD

You know, the first thing is awareness you have to admit and realize there’s a problem and many people hard time really seeing it ourselves. It’s easy for us to see our neighbors, our family, just not ourselves. And you really need to bring that awareness and self reflection into your life to make sure. And the other thing is if you think, oh, I get a bunch of stuff done, I never want to calm down. That’s really hindering your health because you need to be in balance and home use and that’s where healing happens. And so you can’t rest. You can’t digest your system is going to falter. So, I’ll tell you what I did because this is really the hardest thing for people. I mean changing your beliefs in your in your patterns. It’s so hard. So, what do you do? It’s really, I don’t have an easy pill. I don’t have an easy solution for people? There’s not a magic pill, it’s doing hard things that suck for temporary amounts of time because when you you are ingrained in a certain way, your neurons and brain cells are firing in a repeated pattern and over and over, it’s almost like a truck being stuck in the mud, it’s in a rut. 

And so when you start to finally pull them out and change the way they’re firing, it feels uncomfortable because your economic nervous system is only there to keep you safe. It’s not there to make you, you know, it’s and when you do something different, you’re out of your comfort zone, it feels unsafe. So it’s really weird at first and not, it feels not satisfying at all. But once you start to have those neurons firing a different pattern, you can settle into that piece. So what I’m talking about is meditation. Just sit for five minutes in the morning, five minutes start there, it doesn’t have to be all be off. You know, I love cold plunges. You know, you want to move your fashion, get rid of some inflammation, you just try and have an anxiety attack in a cold plunge. You just try, How long ago did you start doing cold plunges? You know, I have not been doing that that long. I did my first one about probably three years ago and I’ll tell you it’s wonderful for your foster. The next day I got up and my inflammation was gone and I was a fan. But in the middle of it, I made up cuss words.

Tom McCarthy

Well, that’s what I was gonna say. You say you love cold plunges because I’ve done it too. I jump in my pool here and uh, you know, you gotta, you gotta get yourself really jump in that pool and then in the beginning, yeah. In the beginning it is like freaking painful. But then you get used to it, your body becomes accustomed to it.

Jessica Peatross, MD

So they say, Wim Hoff, who I really respect.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Says that cold plunges and cold weather are a metaphor for how you handle stress. And this is a very big deal. Guys, we beat on stress. It’s a bad thing. It’s not cold plunges and exercise. And all these things are for medic responses or stress responses. And so if you jump in the water and your catch your breath, you probably freak out when something bad happens in life to you and your goal is to get in the water. Slowly belly breasts bring it in and through the stress. Your body can adapt. It’s the same thing when getting into parasympathetic mode. If you’ve been pinned in flight or fight your whole life, it’s gonna feel dangerous.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. Yeah. And the plunge is a great way, but people that don’t have access to that can take a cold shower. They can, you know, in the morning and again, it’s a book. I wrote one of the things I say is uh in terms of taking effective action, sometimes you have to do what you hate to get what you want. But the interesting thing is like you said, I love cold plunges, right? And I, I used to not like meditating, like how can I meditate? I’m so busy. I love meditating now. I temporarily didn’t like it because like you said, it was different. It was not a habit I had. I tell people when something feels a little awkward or weird, this means your brain is learning, your mind is learning something. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it or you shouldn’t do it. You should always have something feels a little different, a little weird going on in your life, right?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah, 1000%. And you know, you guys can do hard things just because something’s hard or it’s temporarily uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean you should shy away from it.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. Especially stuff like what you’re telling them to do, which The cold plunge get ready. I mean it’s gonna shock you unless you’re really into that already, but it’s going to remove inflammation. It’s going to work with your fascia and help with your lymph flow. And after a while, it’s not gonna be a big deal for you, right?

Jessica Peatross, MD

1,000%. And yeah, 1,000%. There are many things you can do the flip side of cold plunge even infrared sauna, right? It’s on a same type of thing. You your re folding and giving misfolded proteins a chance to refold again. Call for the proper genes and things for you guys. So it’s really important that you do things like that, feel uncomfortable or maybe a little new and scary because you really want to heal the lymph and the fascia are the most underappreciated drainage pathways to help you dump toxins and trauma.

Tom McCarthy

Let’s talk about the autonomic nervous system a little bit. And so you’re saying that fascia influences the autonomic autonomic nervous system and also the nervous systems influencing probably the fascia to right. I mean, it’s a, it’s a dual pathway there uh explain to people a little bit what the autonomic nervous system is. And you said ideally like to hell I say, you know, you can’t do great things while you’re fighting a tiger, right? If you’re in that sympathetic state, it’s super tough to heal. So, talk to us a little bit as a physician because I think a lot of people, especially people that have a chronic illness, are afraid. They, especially if it’s uh, you know, severe diagnosis. I mean, they are really afraid and they’re not even giving their body a chance to heal when they’re in that fear state.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Amen. Amen, you hit the nail on the head with that. And so sometimes the first thing I adjust with people even before I look at their natural drainage pathways and how they dump toxins is what’s your state of mind? What’s your perception of stress? What are you in love or in fear in life? Because there’s really only two options. So the autonomic nervous system is a huge deal. I’ve seen people bed bound because of their brains because of their stress. So let’s just start there. What is the uh Economic nervous system? It’s made up of one side, the sympathetic or alerting nervous system on the other side, the opposite which these two should be imbalanced is the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s the calming breath, digest nervous system and it controls all this. The autonomic nervous system controls 80% of our bodily functions, it’s very susceptible to external stressors and the way you perceive those stressors, which is the most important thing. So today most people live in a state of disarray, constant state of high energy, high chronic stress and the sympathetic nervous system is usually in the fight fawn or freeze state. And it’s also called dorsal vagal tone. 

The vagus connects the gut to the brain is very much involved in this. And just so you know, fascia also has 6 to 10 times more sensory nerves than muscles do. So if you think about how the brain communicates and send signals down? The nerves? The nerves are all throughout our autonomic nervous system, they’re all throughout the fascia, which encases everything right? Like nerves. The impulses travel by way of cells that electrically polarized and deep polarize. So it does not stop there. However, though these tissue remodeling, mechanical load, cellular deformation, postural or appropriate deceptive changes also transmit signals within the fascia. So this is nothing but a network of communication. You see signals are altered by decreased function that is caused by things like chronic pain, scar tissue injuries, all those things. And you know, when you think of it this way and how much how many nerves that are responding and keeping us pinned or firing in a certain pattern all the time that keeps us in that stress response. Part of this could be an answer to long haulers, right? Airless Danlos pots, postural Ortho, static tachycardic, right? All these are definitely connected and need to be addressed within the fascia and limp as well as in other modalities too.

Tom McCarthy

That’s great. I love that. So when you, when you talk about, because we were talking about this earlier, I think you said, you know, an acute injury, there’s gonna be pain and it’s necessary because you know, you don’t wanna walk on that leg that just got broken. But a lot of people are experiencing chronic pain where there is no injury anymore, right? And I was telling you the story about my son who actually had a large herniated disc. But what he found out was that was not, was cause what was causing the pain. It was him being a perfectionist. It was him probably having some fear, you know, because he was a college athlete And uh you know, just trying to do everything perfect and make the coach, you know play him more and things like that and and that was causing the pain because when he started to understand that whatever was going on with the fashion or whatever with the muscles, there was no reason for that for him to be in pain at 23 years old. So uh can you just enlighten us a little bit more on that? Like why pain is, I’ve heard it said pain is more the brains opinion of something versus fact because a lot of people uh you know have a lot of pain because of tight fashion and things like that, there’s really no reason for that to be happening.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yes, amen again. And congrats to your son for figuring it out, it sounds like and yeah, he was in a loop with what I’m talking about, a neuron acquiring or a loop of sensory input and I’m gonna prove this to everyone right now. There’s a researcher out there named Alan Gordon? And he recently had a publication in Jama, which is one of the biggest doctor journals out there. General american medical Association and basically he found that he couldn’t, he could not only decrease people’s pain, but he had an 80 80% remission rate Remission. And Jama I’ve never heard of such a you know what he did, he said, he said you know after the acute injury is healed you have no reason for pain. The reason your pain is your thinking about the pain which creates a neuronal loop and sensory input causing neurons to fire in a certain stuck way. And you’re anticipating the pain and anticipating the pain and not moving certain ways and restricting yourself because you’re worried about the pain and that is a listening the pain response even more. And by he wrote a book called the way out. People who read this book, he teaches you how to reframe things and how to fix it in your head, 80% remission rate. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And so I kind of wanna amazing, I mean everyone needs this and so and you can use it for other things like depression and moods as well. It’s not just for pain. So I want to talk to everyone a little bit about what he’s talking about and this can help to their along with reframing what’s going on with the pain. You can also do something called factual Unwinding. Have you ever heard of this? Okay, what happens is touch stimulates the fascist mechanical mechanical mechanical receptors. 

Excuse me and aroused. This is a parasympathetic nervous system response. So you’re touching, that’s why you need manual manipulation within the fascia on the left. Parasympathetic nervous stimulation causes a sense state of deep relaxation and calm, followed with rapid eye movement, twitching or deep breathing. And this is what people glitch out on the table when you’re messing with the fascia. And this is a state that can be observed clinically in this state. The conscious mind is relaxed and off guard. Okay, so stimulation of the mechanical receptors. Once you’ve got the parasympathetic nervous system turned on influences the central nervous system, the central nervous system responds to the appropriate receptive input by allowing the muscles to perform actions that decreased tone and increase ease. So there’s stimulation of mechanical receptors, sensory input, autonomic nervous system turned on tissue response and then the action of the central nervous system all through touch and slow sweeping movements and breath work within the myo fascia. This is called fashionable unwinding. It almost is like triggering the nerve again on and nervous system and giving it a chance to say, oh I’m firing and I don’t need to, I can calm down.

Tom McCarthy

Where can people find somebody that can help them with this? I mean that sounds phenomenal. It changed my life Tom personally, you actually had it done?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Personally. My week drainage pathway is my lymph. That’s why I’m so interested in this. I had a strict upbringing which made me tighten up in my fashion and have bands in my fascist. So I have searched most of my life to figure out a way how to unwind this and release trauma and it changed my life for those people listening. So I found someone trained under the john Barnes system and it’s called Maya fashion release with breath work. And what they do is get you on the table. They even kind of shake your whole body to see where you vibrate, where things need to be adjusted and it’s very slow sweeping movement and while you’re exhaling, they’re gonna get you to breathe and on the exhale they’re going to be moving the foster very slow so I could not stay awake. I would glitch out and be like, how long was I asleep?

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah. Feeling happens.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, wow. Yeah. Then you know, you’re really in your parasympathetic. That is so cool. So the John Barnes system, is there like a website or something like that?

Jessica Peatross, MD

That there is my relief. Someone trained really someone trained under John Barnes. I mean, I can’t say enough good things like literally I would go, it felt like an hour and a half of meditation because I would just go somewhere else and my body would just want to move and stretch.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. Hey, sign me up, I’m gonna, I’m gonna look that up. Yes, That’s awesome. That’s great advice Jess. So Jess, how do people, I mean people, I’m sure blown away by everything you’re talking about, How can they work with you, what type of products and different things do you have? I think you’ve launched an app recently, is that right?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah, absolutely. So in, let’s see December 2020 I launched Wellness Plus and Wellness Plus is a, is a platform and a membership to help you learn how to empower yourself to not have to outsource every single question about your body to help you become your own best doctor and healer. Because ultimately that’s what good doctors do. They don’t give you the fish, they teach you how to fish.

Tom McCarthy

They don’t see themselves as God, they see you as the God, right? You wake up,

Jessica Peatross, MD

You know, your body better than me, who am I to tell you exactly what you need? I need to empower you. So you’re aware enough to know exactly what you need and so on this platform, I do so through education professionally create and edit videos,, blog post posted every day. We have 250 root cause quickly with diseases as well as conventional holistic treatment. They are each about three pages long. We have uncensored Community forum or two NDs and two MDs answer you. And then we have, you can order testing with vibrant labs or blood work and we have a practitioner directory as well.

Tom McCarthy

So they can do that from anywhere. They don’t have to come in to see you. They can order labs and then you help them with deciphering what’s going on or how does that?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Well actually we give them the labs directly. The labs don’t even come to me and then I have courses on the site that lets them know how to read the labs, but if they have questions they can always ask us however longer the question is in the community for them too.

Tom McCarthy

Very cool. How did they find the app? How can they find it and get on it? 

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah, so it’s app.drJustinD.com. And the name is wellness plus, we’re just still trying to get that site. Yeah. So and then you know, for people who if they like that, you know, it’s really a self driven proactive platform and we talk a lot about drainage. We talk a lot about nervous system regulation. I talk a lot about mind body spirit medicine and you know really getting into the energetic of the fashion and the lymph as well, which is the body, the body is electric, it’s super important.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. And then you’ve got a line of products also though?

Jessica Peatross, MD

I do, they’re not my products, they’re actually, I formulate for soul is a CBD company who’s pretty famous for clean CBD gummies and my hero line of products got hero hormone hero and thyroid hero are the first products through them that do not have CBD and so you if you look there, you know natural herbs, nothing bad in them to help you get to the root cause.

Tom McCarthy

Okay and I want to make sure to, we also mention your instagram handle because you are, you’re awesome on instagram and you provide tons of value just on instagram. So how do people follow you on instagram?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Sure. So it’s Dr.Jess.MD same name over on Tiktok. And yeah, I really believe that a lot of this people should just know and they’ve been lied to and misled about their bodies and split. And my goal is to wake the other medical doctors up and to empower all the people to become that. You’re smart enough guys, you don’t have to have alphabet soup behind your name.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I think you’re making a lot of people up Jess. I love your energy and I love your spirit and you’re doing so much good in the world. Thank you for everything you do and thank you for being on our summit. Any final words you’d like to leave everybody with?

Jessica Peatross, MD

Yeah, guys, as long as you’re breathing, you can get better. Your body can heal. Nothing is a death sentence. Nothing is a life sentence. You must have faith. Your thoughts are powerful, powerful manifester so believe in yourself and if you don’t start there.

Tom McCarthy

Listen to the doctor everybody that was amazing. Thank you Jess. Really appreciate you being with us.

Jessica Peatross, MD

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks everyone.