Lymphatic Drainage with Dr. Perry Nickelston

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am excited to have on Dr. Perry Nickelston, who is a chiropractic physician with primary focus on treating chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. In this episode, we talk about the MOST underrated detoxification system, the lymph. Dr. Perry tells us why he is so passionate about the lymphatic system, why it's important, The Big 6 and the benefits of it and so much MORE!

To see a short video of The Big 6 from this episode CLICK HERE. (11 minutes)

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Why should you care about the lymphatic system?
• Common ways lymphatic congestion manifests as symptoms
• Causes of lymph congestion
• All waste is drained through the lymph system
• We have 600-700 lymph nodes and 1/3 are from the neck up 
• What is The Big 6?
• The proper order of doing The Big 6
• How the lymph flows/drains
• Tips for The Big 6 if you have a detox reaction
• Benefits of doing The Big 6 after training

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ABOUT GUEST:
Perry Nickelston, DC aka ‘The Lymph Doc’ is a Chiropractic Physician with primary focus on treating chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. Owner of Stop Chasing Pain, LLC. International speaker and educator of the self care MOJO series. Lymphatic Mojo, Blood Flow Mojo, Tongue Mojo, Glymphatic Mojo, Visceral Mojo, Vagus Nerve Mojo, Primal Movement Mojo.
Author of the upcoming book Stop Chasing Pain: A vital guide to healing your body, moving well, and gaining control of your life.
He is a 1997 graduate from Palmer Chiropractic University and a master fitness trainer with over 25 years experience in the health industry.

Dr. Perry's Big 6 info: https://www.stopchasingpain.com/the-big-6-tm/
For more info on Dr. Perry's workshops, membership site and product line CLICK HERE. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.stopchasingpain.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stopchasingpain/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialstopchasingpainllc/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

SPONSORS:
A special thanks to Christian Healthcare Ministries (CHM) for sponsoring this episode. I’ve been a CHM member over 8 years and I LOVE that it provides a healthcare solution for my entire family that is budget friendly while also sharing the same values that included prevention and healing. CHM allows me to submit medical bills for cost sharing and reimbursement. CHM is a membership based nonprofit ministry, and it has shared 100% of eligible medical bills for members since 1981. I know where my healthcare dollars are going and who they are supporting and have the option for maternity cost sharing. With the money I’ve saved being a CHM member over the years, I’ve also been able to allocate other healthcare dollars where they matter most to my family. If you want to learn more about whether CHM could be a solution for you, check them out here: https://chministries.org/lessstressedlife

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I want people to understand that when you're opening up these lymph pathways, it's not just about lymph. It's about the blood flow and the nerve flow as well, because they all go together. But the lymph is the controller of all of the other ones.

[00:00:16] Christa Biegler: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:43] Christa Biegler: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:01:00] Christa Biegler: All right, today on the less stress, like, I have Dr Perry Nicholson, aka the limp doc, who's a chiropractic physician with a primary focus on treating chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. He's the owner of stop chasing pain and international speaker and educator of the self care mojo series.

[00:01:21] Christa Biegler: Lymphatic mojo. Blood flow mojo, tongue mojo, glymphatic mojo, visceral mojo, vagus nerve mojo, and primal mojo, which is his, mojo is his like favorite word now, right? Author of the upcoming book, Stop Chasing Pain, a vital guide to healing your body, moving well and gaining control of your life.

[00:01:39] Christa Biegler: Welcome to the show, Dr. Perry.

[00:01:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Thank you so much for having me on. It's wonderful to be here. I love talking about length.

[00:01:46] Christa Biegler: Yeah, I'm excited to hear about how that transition happened. Now, I've been familiar with you for quite a while following along of even some of your students that have I actually was earlier talking to 1 of your past clients today.

[00:01:58] Christa Biegler: So I am very familiar with you, but I'm actually not familiar with your origin story. So he'll tell us how you got really into lymph. And even some of your mentors along the way, because I feel like you're a mentor now, and now it's fun to hear about who is the mentors mentor as well. So we've had in

[00:02:16] Dr. Perry Nickelston: there if you will.

[00:02:17] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, great question. Well, let me start off with the mentors first. Honestly, it's really the profession of osteopathic medicine in general, but not modern classical, the old school, because that's where Andrew Taylor still, who's the founder of osteopathic medicine, talked a lot about the lymphatics way back when and blood flow, the two of those together.

[00:02:44] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I just happen to agree with 100% of everything he said, because I find it true for the patients that I work with and for myself. And honestly, I came across the lymphatic system out of a necessity to save my own life. And I'm not kidding you. Like, I was at a really bad spot a form of a rock bottom where I got, I guess you might want to call it an auto immune disease.

[00:03:11] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I mean, I never really got a name for it. I just had a lot of inflammation in my body. I honestly, it felt like I had every single 1 of them at 1 shot. And here's the thing I couldn't get myself well, by the current approach that I knew of at the time to get myself. Well, does that make sense?

[00:03:33] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Absolutely.

[00:03:34] Dr. Perry Nickelston: My background was in chiropractic and I studied a lot about the nervous system and neurology.

[00:03:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I never really touched on the other systems once I got out of school, like the immune system or the lymphatic system, which is the most important and largest component of your immune system, I believe, and your vascular system at the same time. And the people that I was going to for help didn't either.

[00:04:05] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So, I kept getting worse by trying to get better through conventional approaches and conventional thinking. A lot of it, of course, was through the Western medicine approach, which at the time, honestly, I needed some of that because I had to get some surgeries and I needed medications and antibiotics, but there came a point when that was making me way worse.

[00:04:28] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I said to myself, okay, There's something I'm missing here because I can't keep thinking and doing what I'm doing now. So I had to do a complete 180, like a reset, and that's when I started to look more into different systems of the body and came across the lymphatics. And once I started to work with that system and first, it was just the awareness of, holy cow, where's this thing been the whole time and I just did a few lymphatic interventions.

[00:05:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I kid you not within 3 days, I felt more of a shift in my body and my mind and my physiology than I had in probably 3 years prior. Okay, this is it. And then that became my life calling to learn everything about the lymphatic system. But not only that, because here's what I find. A lot of people that focus on the lymphatic system forget about all the other ones as well.

[00:05:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You have to look at them all. Can't just chase 1. Those says thing is just 1. That

[00:05:42] Christa Biegler: makes sense.

[00:05:43] Christa Biegler: Yeah, it's impacting, innervating all the rest of it. And I want to highlight for a moment before I move on to unpacking the lymphatics a little bit and the other systems that work in symphony with it, what you said about how you needed surgery and medication, et cetera.

[00:05:57] Christa Biegler: And it's hard for people to figure out where they draw the line, and we just kind of fail until we figure this isn't where, like, this was helpful. And then I feel like everyone finds the next thing by failing at the current thing. Right? That's pretty much everyone's story is they found a new thing because the other one wasn't working for them.

[00:06:14] Christa Biegler: So I think we're always so afraid to fail and annoyed by failing, but it's a necessity sometimes to take us to the next place of where we need to be. So, let's talk about the lymphatic system, which I always feel is the most underrated detoxification system. Thanks to you and some maybe of your students and others.

[00:06:32] Christa Biegler: It's, I think, getting a little more limelight than it may be used to. Maybe that's just my perspective, but let's talk about. The lymph system and the other systems that it very commonly runs with hangs with maybe part of that question is also, I always think it makes most sense to tell people why they should care about this.

[00:06:51] Christa Biegler: So let's talk about some common ways that lymphatic congestion shows up as symptoms. So people know how it impacts them.

[00:06:58] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Well, that's a great question. Let's start off with why people should care about it because if something goes wrong with it, you die really quick and you don't want that, right? So if your lymphatic system stops working altogether, you got 2 days max, and then it's lights out.

[00:07:17] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So that's if it stops working altogether. So let's think about it this way. What happens if it's supposed to be working at 100%, but it's only working at 50%? You might not really notice it initially because you may not experience symptoms right away because the body is very good at trying to protect you and compensate and adapt and cover stuff up so you don't feel some, that's usually the last thing you feel, not the first, but year after year after year of that system, not working and you get all these different symptoms of things.

[00:07:57] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That you're complaining about and then all of a sudden 1 day. Hey, yesterday I was feeling pretty good. And then today I'm not what's up with that. How did that happen? It happens slowly over time. And you kind of alluded to it when you were speaking before about why it's important is that. This is the primary system of your body that detoxifies you.

[00:08:21] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I like to use the word waste management. It's designed to get out things inside of you that are not supposed to be there anymore, or stuff that gets in from the outside that can kill you that need to get out. And you name the waste, it's bacteria, it's viruses, it's parasites, it's toxins, it's cancer cells, it's waste cells of your own cells dying every day on purpose.

[00:08:54] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So you can make newer, stronger ones and keep living day to day. So anytime you actually have an injury to your body, you have waste because you damage cells and that needs to get out. And the primary system that does that, it's the toilet system of your body, if you will, like you're trying to clean the waste out of your house.

[00:09:17] Dr. Perry Nickelston: The lymphatic system does that for you. And if that clogs up slowly over time, You're going to get some kind of symptom or some kind of illness. I'll stand by that until I'm dead. It's just a matter of when you're going to get it and how bad it's going to be. And whether anybody took the time to assess your lymphatic system or not, and it's all it was a major contributor.

[00:09:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And primary component of your immune system.

[00:09:47] Christa Biegler: I think that's 1 of the coolest notes that it's a huge piece of the immune system overall. I always think when someone's got swelling in the wrong places, or just swelling in general, they're retaining fluids in general and, or if they're having rashes, I see a lot of rashes.

[00:10:04] Christa Biegler: You probably do to have rashes, but especially in areas where there's a lot of lymph. Notes under the armpits around the breasts, maybe in the groin. I'm always like, well, you need to, this is very clearly a lymphatic thing. So that's where my brain goes. I think your brain is like, all symptoms are maybe, but maybe not.

[00:10:22] Christa Biegler: What are the things you see

[00:10:22] Dr. Perry Nickelston: most commonly?

[00:10:24] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, I'm going to link it to everything because that system is so pivotal to the function of all the other systems. 1 of the the body ever works alone. Never gets injured alone. Never heals alone. There's no such thing as an isolated injury. There's no such thing as isolated healing.

[00:10:42] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It's all or nothing. That's it. So they all play a role. Common symptoms are definitely skin ones that you mentioned because you have a lot of lymphatics in the skin. And so when something goes wrong with it or it doesn't work as well, then the skin shows it. You also have most of the lymph in the neck.

[00:11:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: From the collarbone up, think about that for a moment. It's quite fascinating to me that you have about 600 to 700 lymph nodes, which are many toilets and your body is designed to have 1 3rd of that number from the neck up. So that tells me 1 thing the neck and the head are more important than any other place in your body because it's there for protection.

[00:11:28] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And it's always going to play a role in any type of brain issue. That you've got neuroinflammation, which leads me to the most common sign of lymphatic issues, which is brain fog. Congestion, mucus, you can almost name any other symptom under the sun, like chronic pain is a big 1 anywhere in the body and gut issues, most of your lymphatics are located in your gut. That's because 70 80% of your immune system lives in your gut. So of course, the biggest part of your immune system is gonna live there at the same time. Mm-hmm. So I already know if you have an immune system issue, you got a lymph issue, and if you got a lymph issue, you got a gut.

[00:12:07] Dr. Perry Nickelston: If you got a gut issue, you got a brain issue because they always go together and that leads me to the other system that it works with, which I think honestly is just as important, if not more important than the immune system one. And that's your vascular system, which is your blood flow, your arteries and your veins.

[00:12:23] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You cannot absolutely not 100% have any circulation issues without having a lymphatic system issue that goes along with it because the lymph dumps into the veins at the collarbone and the veins eventually go into the arteries and there's loopy loop and they go everywhere. So, another 1 of the things that you'll have is nerve pain, pain in areas because you have a circulation issue.

[00:12:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: In conjunction with a lymphatic issue, you get a lot of inflammation around the nerves. You have decreased oxygen going to the tissues. And when you have that, you're going to get PAIN somewhere. That's pain. And you have to look at the entire body system. You cannot isolate. 1 region, because it doesn't work like that.

[00:13:12] Christa Biegler: Well, I want to talk to you about a couple of regions that you do separate classes on, because it's things that you don't always think are related. I think you have a webinar on how. I mean, if I miss quote it, just fill it in correctly. I think it's liver and hip and back pain and shoulder pain. Will you talk a little bit about.

[00:13:32] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, that's 1 of my webinars that I do, because I do a lot of work with the abdomen and the organs of the body known as viscera and their role in chronic pain, which, from my experience, I play a big role. So, a lot of people end up coming to seek help for chronic pain. That's usually musculoskeletal. Yeah, particularly in my world, I'm a chiropractor or usually P. T. It's Hey, my shoulder hurts or my hip hurts or of course, the ever popular low back pain or mid back pain, neck, you name it and of course, you start there you treat where it hurts and hopefully it gets better and more importantly, hopefully it stays that way. But many people get caught in this vicious cycle of It always keeps coming back.

[00:14:22] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I tried the traditional approaches. I did what I was supposed to do. I went to over and over and over and it's just not changing. So for me, that's the definition of insanity, right? I mean, you just keep going after it's crossing your finger saying, well, this time, maybe visit 16. It'll stick. How about no, like, you're going to know quick, fast and in a hurry if you're on the right track.

[00:14:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And then I say to myself, well, why am I going to keep doing what everybody else is doing? Because it's obviously not working. So, I don't really so much honestly teach a technique, I just teach people how to think. Think differently than what you're doing now. And then I started to look, well, most of the lymph is in the abdomen, and of course that's where all of your organs sit, most of them.

[00:15:07] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And if you have inflammation in your organs, they're going to talk to your spine, and they're going to talk to your brain, and they can send pain anywhere they want. So then when I started to do was also think, well, I mean, what sits in the middle of your shoulders and your hips? All those things. And then here's what people say, but doc, it doesn't hurt there.

[00:15:32] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Well, that's what stop chasing pain means chasing pain means that people just do something to where you point. Okay, very rarely is that the spot unless it's trauma. If I punch you in the shoulder, I know why your shoulder hurts, but if yesterday your shoulder was good and today it's not trust me is more do it than your shoulder.

[00:15:57] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'm still going to start at your shoulder, but I'm going to look at everything else at the same time. And honestly, what I do is I just look at places that other people typically don't look, and it blows my mind of why they don't look there, because in my mind, you should. I would say, how come somebody didn't tell me this before?

[00:16:19] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And my answer is the same thing. That's a good one. I got no answer for you. You should ask them that.

[00:16:23] Christa Biegler: Yeah. Yeah, I've heard you say that on other podcasts. I want to talk about some of these areas, but I have another one, you know, you have another whole program on like tongue stuff. So why do you focus on this is like an area that's also gaining a lot more attention now, you'd give a little lip service to why the tongue is so important.

[00:16:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I like that's the lip service. I got that thing thrown in. That's good. Well, honestly, 1 of the reasons I look at is because nobody else looks at it either. But I got onto the tongue through lymphatics. Because your tongue has a ton of lymph in it, and your tongue is actually considered a type of a detoxification organ.

[00:16:57] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And when I was really, really sick, I got a swollen tongue, a fat tongue. And I realized that your tongue will have an issue when you can't drain the lymph in your, underneath your jaw and in your neck. Because the lymph in the tongue has to drain down the neck to get out. So, nobody ever told me that when I had Candida as well, a systemic full body, significant and severe Candida infection, and I had multiple episodes of cellulitis, which people don't know is a very painful condition that can be life threatening if it takes hold into the body.

[00:17:35] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I'm asking myself. Why in the world am I just getting all these things? What in the heck is happening? My environment was set up for all this bacteria and toxins because I had nothing but waste living inside of me that couldn't get out. And all of those parasites and viruses and bacteria, they love it when you got a lot of waste in there because that's stuff they can feed on all day long,

[00:17:59] Christa Biegler: you're talking to train theory. And I didn't even ask. Thanks for bringing this up. This is like the, why do people get sick on and on? And it's like the, why are you a hospitable host? And all the smart people interview, they're like, it's mostly toxic burden. So

[00:18:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: you're supporting.

[00:18:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. And if you think about it, I forget who said, I think it was Dr. Jerry tenant who I heard this once he said, listen, bacteria and fungus, they have a job. Their job is to eat stuff. That's dead, they do it in nature all the time. Like, if a leaf falls off a tree, what do you think? Decomposes well, I thought to myself, holy cow, what if I'm full of waste? Then the bacteria and the fungus, of course, are going to thrive because they're actually trying to keep you alive by killing all the waste.

[00:18:45] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That makes sense.

Yeah,

[00:18:46] Christa Biegler: totally. That's always how it is. Right?

[00:18:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. Yeah. But they make waste too. So you get waste on top of waste and then you're swimming and waste because it can't get out. Right? And so I came to the tongue because I was like fascinated by the limp and it changed sizes when I began to work with a limp.

[00:19:05] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I practice different types of medicines to like Eastern medicine and aromatic medicine. And the tongue has a lot to do in their world with tongue diagnosis. where your organs are represented on your tongue. For instance, the outside of the tongue is the liver slash gallbladder region. So if you have a fat tongue or a swollen tongue, you get teeth marks.

[00:19:25] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And that first thing I'm thinking is congested liver, gallbladder. And if you've got a lymph problem, you're going to have that too, because 50% of your lymph comes from the liver. So, bing, bang, boom. So, there's a physiological reason that links back to all these things that they've been talking about and these other disciplines for many, many years.

[00:19:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And then it made sense to me of, okay, well, my tongue was so enlarged and it was weak that it was living in the floor of my mouth and I couldn't keep it to the roof of my mouth. And because of that, My cervical spine posture changes, my head position changed, and that changed blood flow, this ability to go up to my brain and away from my brain and the waist to come down because of my head position.

[00:20:09] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And when you look at the tongue, it has a lot of soft tissue, what they call fascial connections, to the pharynx and the base of your skull. So I'm like, well, if I've got brain fog... I really need to make sure I can get optimal blood flow to my brain and away from my brain. And I found through my research, because there's a ton of neurology in your tongue that'll explode your brain once you start to go down that pathway.

[00:20:33] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It'll blow your mind. But nobody pays attention to the tongue because it doesn't hurt. But once I started to work with my tongue and strengthen my tongue and do tongue scraping and cool stuff like that, then I could pull my head position back. My signs to start to clear up my mucus began to clear up.

[00:20:51] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I breathe through my nose and not my mouth and then my brain began to drain. And the 1 thing that really got me into this work is because I had such severe brain fog that I was showing symptoms of Alzheimer's. Where I really could not remember my children's names or what I just did, and that scared the hell out of me.

[00:21:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And when I began to do this work, guess what started to come back?

[00:21:16] Christa Biegler: Your brain.

[00:21:17] Christa Biegler: Exactly.

[00:21:18] Christa Biegler: Your memory.

[00:21:18] Christa Biegler: Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:21] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So that's why I got into the tongue, and then I started introducing that work to my patients. And they started to have so many changes in their musculoskeletal as well.

[00:21:34] Christa Biegler: Yeah. There is someone who talks about always sticking your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

[00:21:39] Christa Biegler: There's like someone out there that's like their life's work, sticking your tongue to the top of your mouth when you go to sleep.

[00:21:44] Christa Biegler: Yeah.

[00:21:45] Christa Biegler: And sometimes there's a little bit of like a, can you get both this and mouth taping? Then at the same time, you know, 'cause our goal is to close our mouth, especially when we're sleeping so we can be breathing through our nose.

[00:21:56] Christa Biegler: Any comments on that?

[00:21:58] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, that's a big one. That's something also that I suffered with. Honestly, I mean, I had just about everything you could possibly think of. So everything that I teach right now, I actually had, but here's the cool thing. I couldn't breathe through my mouth because I couldn't breathe through my nose because I had such sinus congestion from poor lymphatics.

[00:22:20] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So, taping your mouth shut's great, but what if you still can't breathe through your nose?

[00:22:24] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, gotta clear out the nose.

[00:22:26] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So there's, steps to things that you need to do. That's why in my world, limp work always comes first. Zero discussion, non negotiable. It always has to be assessed and checked to see how much of a role it's playing, if any.

[00:22:40] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And it will be something. But yes, mouth taping can change your life. So for me personally, and I found a lot of my patients the same way they breathe through their mouth at night when they sleep. And if you do that, I'm going to tell you right now, you're never getting well, it's not happening, right?

[00:23:00] Dr. Perry Nickelston: There's so much that goes into that. It's not even funny. I could speak for 8 hours on it. But the basic thing is that you're changing your airway there, and you're not breathing through your nose and you're automatically shutting down it. The waste management system of your brain at night when you sleep, because that's when your brain cleans itself at night, if it can drain down your neck.

[00:23:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And if you have your mouth open, it won't be able to do that. And then you get dry mouth. And then you get inflammation around your tongue and your gums and your teeth, and then you get bacteria that travels through your system and ends up somewhere in your body and causes you pain. So, if you tape your mouth shut at night, it can significantly change.

[00:23:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Everything in your body, because it shifts the chemistry of your body of oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios in there that gives your body the ability to actually recover, heal, function and regenerate. And then here's why bring it home a little bit and say, how in the world do you think all that oxygen and all that carbon dioxide gets anywhere?

[00:24:04] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And right now, you should be saying your blood. So that's where blood flow comes back into play again. And once blood comes back into play, then lymph comes back into play.

[00:24:15] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah,

[00:24:17] Christa Biegler: I want to talk about the anatomy of the lymph system, but before we do, because you've had so many of these symptoms, which I think there's just a different kind of empathy and experience and intimate knowledge.

[00:24:28] Christa Biegler: It's like an intimate connection to those symptoms that really, until you've had them, you can't always understand what someone's going through. I want to know what do you think were the causes of your severe lymph congestion?

[00:24:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That's a great question. People ask me, what takes the lymph system out?

[00:24:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I'm going to tell you my kind of joking reaction, but I'm not. It's called L. I. F. E. Life. Right. Everything coming at it all the time since the moment you were born of toxins from the environment and also from you, even the thoughts that you have, because all these things in life coming at you affect every system in your body, your nervous system, of course, and then that feeds into your lymphatic system.

[00:25:12] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And a lot of people get these symptoms because they've never done anything on purpose to take care of their lymphatics or knew that it was an issue for me. A lot of it had to do with I think 23 years ago, I had cancer actually, I had thyroid cancer and they removed the thyroid gland completely.

[00:25:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And at the time. Which I didn't think anything of it a significant portion of the lymph nodes in my neck now at the time, I really wasn't feeling so sick after that. I had to go through chemo and everything like that. And I'm like, okay, bing, bang, boom, that's it. That's over, but that slowly built up over time because of the removal of the lymph nodes and the neck.

[00:26:04] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And then about eight years later, bam, I just got hit with something else. And then I stepped back on myself and, okay, then I asked myself, well, why in the hell did you get cancer in the first place?

[00:26:21] Christa Biegler: That's going to be a

[00:26:21] Dr. Perry Nickelston: piece of it for sure, right? Because your lymphatic system kills cancer cells every day, because many people don't know this, but cancer just doesn't jump you out of nowhere. You have cancer cells in you right now that you're never going to know about because your immune system job is to kill it before it kills you.

[00:26:40] Dr. Perry Nickelston: But what tips the needle? Why is it stop being able to do that is my question.

[00:26:46] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. I can't clear out.

[00:26:48] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It's going to hit a point where it's overloaded,

[00:26:51] Christa Biegler: right?

[00:26:52] Christa Biegler: And then what, allows that to turn on malignancy is the other big

[00:26:57] Dr. Perry Nickelston: question, right?

[00:26:58] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. Well, exactly. Right. And to me, it's all about the terrain because if you don't have adequate blood flow to something, but not just to something away from it and the lymphatic system at the same time, you're going to get something somewhere.

[00:27:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'll tell you that.

[00:27:21] Christa Biegler: You said you had your thyroid removed as a result of thyroid cancer, right?

[00:27:25] Christa Biegler: Yeah.

[00:27:25] Christa Biegler: Yeah. So what's been the outcome besides everything falling apart eight years later? Now today, do you have side effects from not having a thyroid that you have to do things about?

[00:27:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Well, I'm on medication because without it, I'd be dead in about a week.

[00:27:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So I have to take levothyroxine, right? And I keep that monitored through my endocrinologist because, it's outside my wheelhouse. You need Western medicine, right? I just like for the different disciplines to play nice together. That's all I want.

[00:27:58] Dr. Perry Nickelston: For sure.

[00:27:59] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, I honestly don't have any issues that I know that are attributable to the thyroid gland because I'm 56 years old.

[00:28:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'm an absolute monster today because of all the stuff that I never teach anything to anybody that I don't personally do myself, or which is one of the reasons that I teach it and teach to people and do in my clinic every day. So I work my lymphatic system and my vascular system. Every single day.

[00:28:29] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That's been a huge game changer for me. And yeah, one of the reasons that I teach this material is because I also, when I found it, asked myself, all right, why didn't all of these doctors that I went to say anything to me about that? Lymphatic system. And I thought to myself, well, hey doc, you're a doctor.

[00:28:50] Dr. Perry Nickelston: How come you didn't know? You know what? That's a really good question. It wasn't on my radar at the time because I didn't think it was in my wheelhouse because you only hear about lymphatics typically with lymphedema, which means something is definitely wrong with it. And then you have a body part that gets really, really swollen and stays swollen.

[00:29:10] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And the other one is when you have cancer, but they don't want to look at it for other things. And then now they're finding through research that lymphatics are really tied to a lot of these chronic diseases, inflammatory issues, particularly glaucoma and Crohn's disease and endometriosis have a huge tie.

[00:29:31] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Totally

[00:29:31] Dr. Perry Nickelston: to lymphatic. And now what's really gonna start to explode? I'm gonna tell you that right now that I see it is because there's been a huge increase in neurodegenerative, neuro inflammation disorders in the world where Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and a l s and you know ms.

[00:29:48] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah.

[00:29:48] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And they're seeing that there's a lymphatic drainage systems.

[00:29:52] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Around the brain and in the brain, they're called different names, but they're the brain toilets. And they're going to play a substantial role in your brain being able to function. That's kind of a big deal because if your brain goes, guess what? Everything below it goes.

[00:30:08] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah.

[00:30:09] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Right?

[00:30:09] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Right.

[00:30:10] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So that's why I have to clear your brain because I'm going to tell you in my world, your knee pain, it's chronic, it's not getting better if your brain is dirty.

[00:30:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah.

[00:30:19] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Because the pain in your knee is coming from your brain anyway. And then they just recently discovered a brand new layer of the brain that they didn't see before that actually is lymphatic like, that it's a big role in cleaning.

[00:30:35] Dr. Perry Nickelston: What's it called?

[00:30:37] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It's the it's S L Y M, I can't remember the first part.

[00:30:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: S L Y M. Subarachnoid lymphoid.

[00:30:47] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, I can't remember the exact name of it. I can bring it up, but the big takeaway is that they've been teaching that there's three layers around the brain called your meninges. And there's always been a fourth one. It was just so small that we couldn't see it. And they're finding that that's helped separate the dirty from the clean brain fluid called your cerebrospinal fluid.

[00:31:12] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And that's the fluid that power washes everything up and through here that goes, that checks out when you have brain fog and you have all of those neuroinflammatory conditions. And here's the most important part. Even if you clean that area up there, I always tell people it has to go down the drain, and the drain is your neck.

[00:31:38] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So you still have to clear that, regardless.

[00:31:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, you're kind

[00:31:41] Christa Biegler: of answering this question I have, which is, I want to talk about the anatomy of the lymph a little bit. I always thought the cisterna chyle was the pump, so kind of right below the breastbone, I guess, maybe. Around the diaphragm was the kind of the pump for the lymphatic system, which is why breath work was can be very important for pumping lymphatic.

[00:31:59] Christa Biegler: But when you do the big 6, you start at the collarbone. So you're kind of answering this a little bit. So a couple of things will you talk about that? And then can you walk us through the big 6? So also people can take a part of Dr Perry home with them as well.

[00:32:12] Christa Biegler: Oh, I would

[00:32:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: love to.

[00:32:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to do that. The big 6 change your life. So let's talk about something that's really important for you to understand about how lymphatics work. And once you understand this, so many things will make sense. Fluids move in the body primarily through pressure.

[00:32:30] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Okay, it's called hydrodynamics. The movement fluid and pressure goes with fluids from high pressure towards low pressure. So, if there's low pressure on 1 side, the water is naturally going to seek it out. Right? It's the easiest way to get there. So, you can think about having a water dam where there's no water on 1 side and all the waters on the other.

[00:32:53] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Well, it's actually going to go that way. The lowest pressure for fluid flow in the body for lymph and veins is the collarbone, and I'm trying to tell you here. That's the drain. That's where everything has to

[00:33:08] Christa Biegler: go

[00:33:08] Christa Biegler: in the collarbone. The drain is the collarbone.

[00:33:11] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:12] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Think about your sink and you have a drain if what if that drain is clogged? Well, I don't care what you do to your sink. That makes sense.

[00:33:22] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:33:23] Christa Biegler: Can't get out.

[00:33:23] Christa Biegler: It's gonna

[00:33:24] Dr. Perry Nickelston: overflow.

[00:33:25] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, because you don't clean the drain and I play in the sink, what happens? It gets worse, right?

[00:33:31] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah.

[00:33:31] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So you have to clear the low pressure first to open up the drain.

[00:33:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So, you always start at the collarbone and then everything furthest away from that is the highest pressure, right? So, if the lowest pressure is at the collarbone, the highest pressure would be in your head at the top. In your hands and the biggest one is your feet because they have the furthest distance to go to get to your collarbone.

[00:33:59] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That's why the feet swell so much. Right?

[00:34:03] Christa Biegler: Do you think that the pressure in the head? It looks like a headache.

[00:34:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yes. Yeah. It's called intracranial pressure. Listen, here's really important. People understand that collarbone is not just a drain point of your lips. That's the drain point for your veins.

[00:34:19] Dr. Perry Nickelston: That come in from where Yes. Is the answer everywhere. The veins in your feet, the veins in your hand, the veins in your head, the veins in your belly, they all go to the same drain. Mm-hmm. . So if you're backed up at the collarbone, you can back up blood flow everywhere too. And trust me, that's not gonna work out well for you.

[00:34:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Mm-hmm. , you gotta get pain somewhere.

[00:34:38] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Right.

[00:34:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: But it's also everything from the brain wants to come down to that. So what moves your lymphatics, you touched on it before, is breathing. Because breathing changes pressure. When you breathe in, pressure increases. When you breathe out, pressure decreases. So it's like a sump pump.

[00:34:55] Dr. Perry Nickelston: If I put a pump in my basement, I got to get the fluid out. That's exactly what breathing is. Assuming that you're breathing, and if you're breathing through your mouth, you're not using that pump effectively. So hence, you're going to shut the pump down. And the other thing that moves lymphatic is moving you.

[00:35:12] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Movement.

[00:35:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah,

[00:35:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: right. And a lot of people don't do that either. So you're right that the largest lymph node in the body is in the abdomen called your cisterna Kylie. But interestingly enough, 50% of the population doesn't have 1. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because it all goes to the same place anyway, and everything's going to dump into that same pipe, whether you got 1 or not, it doesn't matter.

[00:35:37] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Why don't people have it?

[00:35:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It's just a variant. Just the way it is.

[00:35:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Oh, I did

[00:35:41] Christa Biegler: not know this.

[00:35:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So it's a semantics. It can still get blocked up in the abdomen. Okay. But it's still got to go up to where.

[00:35:52] Dr. Perry Nickelston: The head,

[00:35:55] Dr. Perry Nickelston: right? So that's why when you can belly breathe and you can massage your abdomen or even pat your abdomen, you vibrate that area.

[00:36:04] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You move that area. That's why walking and twisting and rotation. Helps that area at the same time. All right. So here's the thing you need to know about fluids. If you know that everything wants to go to the collarbone, that's the key. It wants to go, but can it get there? That's the issue. Now, what keeps it from getting there is one, there's already big blocks in the lymph nodes, so stuff can't get through the lymph nodes efficiently because they're too stagnated.

[00:36:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: They're too overloaded with what I call muck. It's just junk, right? And the other one is, you have so much tightness and tension in your body that slows down the fluid flow because all your muscles in your fascia are so tight. Now, why are they going to get tight? Well, one, are you moving? Because if you're not, they're going to get tight.

[00:37:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And guess what else tightens the body? Stress. Because stress, you get the tension and the tightness, you get them what they call sympathetic dominant fight or flight known as hypervigilance. That's what the world lives in right now. And when you get that way, fluid flow slows down because everything tightens up.

[00:37:25] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So you stagnate, not just limp, but you stagnate blood flow. That's why people are super duper stressed, get end up having pain. Chronic incessant stress is the number one cause of chronic disease and chronic pain. Why? Because you overload your bucket. It's only going to take so much that it's going to tap you and say, I'm out here.

[00:37:47] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You need to change something. And in order to get you to change something, it sends you this really effective signal called pain. And unfortunately, we don't pay attention to it until it gets you hard enough. And then you do. So let's get back to my topic before if we know the lowest pressures at the collarbone, you have to clear from the collarbone.

[00:38:13] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Hence, I created what's called the Big Six. Now, why six? Because nature, or whatever you believe in, is really, really smart. Remember I talked about those lymph node clusters that you have, the lymph nodes, the toilets? Well, they gather in clusters, little communities. And they gather around the primary joints of your body that are quote unquote supposed to move the most.

[00:38:44] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Why would they be put there? Because movement moves lymph.

[00:38:48] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah. So funny.

[00:38:50] Dr. Perry Nickelston: But these are the areas that don't move when you sit all day. And that's what the big six is. It's just the places that you get the most tightness from the muscles connecting bone to bone. And you get the biggest restriction of lymphatics.

[00:39:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: But hang on for it. The lymph always travels with nerves, arteries, and veins. So when you choke the lymph, You choke the blood and then you get pain in the nerves. That's what happened. So you have to create space for stuff to flow.

[00:39:28] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah,

[00:39:29] Dr. Perry Nickelston: and you create space by using your hands, right? Manual stuff, hands, your own healing hand.

[00:39:39] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So I teach people to do this daily, big six reset every single day of your life to change your life. I'm going to show you what they are, but before I do that, I really need to. Say something here that's very important. Many people don't know how backed up with waste and muck and toxins and inflammation that they are.

[00:40:02] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Some people do because they're really, really sick. So if you have an autoimmune disease and chronic pain, I already know they're backed up. But you can supposedly think you feel great, but that doesn't mean that your lymph system still isn't an issue. When you do these big six, It's really, really simple, but that's where it gets deceiving because it seems so simple that it can't make that much of a big difference.

[00:40:27] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I'm going to tell you, that's where you're wrong. It can make a huge difference because you're changing how fluids flow in the body. And when you free up this flow, the muck in that sink is going to start to move around until it can get out. And it's going to get out through your pee, your poop, your sweat, and your breathing, but primarily through urination.

[00:40:48] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So when you do the big six here, I need to make a caveat. If you're really, really sick right now, I want you to go super easy on this. All right. Because what may happen to you is that you can get a detoxification reaction from what I'm going to demonstrate for you today. That means that you can feel pretty damn bad later on after we do this.

[00:41:11] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And listen, that's normal. That's okay. Don't freak out. Don't get nervous. I tell people better to get that stuff out than in, but it can happen. And people say, what does a detox feel like? Well, one, I say, did you ever have a really rough night out at the bar? It's kind of like that. You're going to be tired. fatigued, lethargic. You can have a wicked headache. Some people feel nauseous. Some people get sweats. Some people break out on the skin. Some people have more pain than they did before they did after they did the big six than before. Or they say, I didn't have this pain before and I did your big six and now I got it.

[00:41:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Well, guess what? That's all normal. And that's okay. That's your body trying to get rid of all of this stuff and get used to all these changes. So I want people to do is also lymph is 90% water and most people are dehydrated. So before you do the big six, I would like for you to take a nice big giant drink of water and keep drinking water as much as you can.

[00:42:21] Dr. Perry Nickelston: All right, or more than you do now. Okay. So that's my mark of really being aware of that. Because so many people message me a doc, I get this, this, this, this, this. I mean, is that normal? Yes, it is. All right. Okay. You ready for the Big Six?

[00:42:38] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'm ready.

[00:42:40] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Now, the most important part of my work is the awareness of the Big Six.

[00:42:45] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Now, what you do to the Big Six, I honestly don't care. What do I mean by that? I'm going to show you the way that I do it, through rubbing and tapping, which is just manual stimulation. You can use Gua Sha tools. You can use cups. You can use I don't care what you use on these places. That's up to you. I just want you to make sure that you 100% have to do it in this order.

[00:43:12] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Do not mix up the order because that causes a backflow of the fluid.

[00:43:18] Christa Biegler: If someone was using cups, they really need to maybe put it on their collarbone area before

[00:43:23] Dr. Perry Nickelston: they move.

[00:43:23] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You better not be nothing anything on the body till you do the collarbone that comes 1st. Okay. Because every place that you stick a cup, you're going to increase and decrease flow.

[00:43:35] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'm always going to ask you, well, where in the world do you think that comes from and where it's got to go? You always want to open that up first. That's a huge thing to understand. Right. And most people are a hot mess at the collarbone. They don't even know it until you stick your fingers in there and it really hurts.

[00:43:52] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And my point is, it's not supposed to hurt when you stick your fingers in there. So you have a spot called above the collarbone and below the collarbone. It's called supraclavicular, supra means above, clavicular is for clavicle, and then below. So all I want you to do is you're going to start on either side first.

[00:44:09] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It doesn't matter. You're always going to do both, but I like to start on the left hand side first because one, it's closest to your heart. Two, that's where most of the lymph system drains. About 75% drains to the left side. You take your hand that's flat, right? If you're listening and you're not able to see this, you put your flat hand right on top of the collarbone and I want you to rub on the collarbone on it, above it, and below it.

[00:44:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I want you to I don't care if it's clockwise or counterclockwise. I want you to do about five circles clockwise to counterclockwise and then do another the other way. Okay. Now, you can also do just straight up and down. You don't have to do circles. I'm just giving you options, right? But circles. I like a lot after you do 10 circles.

[00:44:57] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I want you to just tap with your whole hand on above and below the collarbone. Use your whole hand. Okay. And then people say, how hard do you tap? Well, yes, is the answer. Just don't hurt yourself. All right, and then you do the other side. So you just go right over. Now we're on the right hand side. Do a couple of circles clockwise.

[00:45:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You counterclockwise. You're going to free up that tissue. Get a little bit heat in there and do your 10 taps. Now you just opened up the drain. So now the other spots are going to start draining to it because I just opened up the sink. Does that make sense? Now we're going to go to spot number two. Spot number two is going to be at the top of your neck, on the side of the neck, behind the angle of the jaw, right below the lobe of your ear, and that's the largest lymph node in the neck.

[00:45:46] Dr. Perry Nickelston: If that gets clogged, your brain's going to be a hot mess. So what I want you to do is on the left hand side, you can actually do both sides at the same time on here. If you want, you take your fingers and you put it right behind the angle of the job, go up top and you find that space behind your job. And I just want you to rub right there.

[00:46:01] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You can rub up and down. You can also do circles if you want to just get creative. I mean, honestly, you can do the hieroglyphics here. I don't care what you do. And then way I want you to slightly lightly tap with your fingers. If tapping bothers you, just rub a little longer. I don't want you to ever have pain when you do these.

[00:46:24] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Now what happens is spot number two is going to start to drain down to spot number one and everything above spot number two is going to start to come down. Now we're going to go to spot number three. Spot number three is at the shoulder joint. Right? Because the shoulder is supposed to move a lot, and so is spot number two.

[00:46:40] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Spot number two is where most of the motion should happen in your neck, and supposed to is the operative word here. So what you're going to do is put your flat hand right over where your pectoral muscle goes into your shoulder joint. Some people know it as like near your armpit and your pec. I just want you to rub that region.

[00:46:59] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Okay, go all over the whole thing. So you're on your pec, you're more on your pec and your armpit, circles one way, circles the other way. And then now I want you to slap right at that joint 10 times. Now that's going to start to rush up to your collarbone. Now do the other side. So we're on the right hand side.

[00:47:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So do your circles. You can go fast, you can go slow. There's no magical speed. And then do your hits.

[00:47:32] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Now that's spot number three. Spot number four is going to be your abdomen. So I want you to put one hand on your navel and I want you to put your other hand above that. So one hand each is on your belly. So basically, yes, you're covering your entire belly with your hands and both hands together. Start to do circles, big giant circles, right?

[00:48:00] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Do clockwise. As do counterclockwise. You can even go up and down. You can go side to side. Just get in there. And now you're going to do belly bangs, right? Hit your belly, navel and above. Just like that. There you go. Hit that at least 10 times. Sometimes I'll tell people when they get good at this to hit that 50 times a day.

[00:48:24] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Change your life. Nothing should hurt. Now, spot number five. That's going to be the crease of the groin, where your pants crease when he is set. Those are called your inguinal lymph nodes, and those get tight when people sit all day. Right. So what I want you to do is put one hand on either side of the groin and do circles around the crease of the groin.

[00:48:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Inside, outside, clockwise, counterclockwise, and then rub up and down along the crease of the groin. Usually 10 times is enough, but you can stay there a little longer. And now I want you to tap the crease of the groin, just go gentle there. Now that's one of the most important places to work because that's the main blood flow to everything in your leg.

[00:49:11] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And that's tight on most people. So if you're choked there with blood flow, you're not going to get better in your foot injury. That's the message I want you to take from here. Now, we got one more left, and that's going to be a big place that gets blocked because of so much sitting. And people don't do enough movement, so they don't use the calf muscles a lot, and they don't use that to help pump the veins back up towards the collarbone.

[00:49:40] Dr. Perry Nickelston: It's behind the knees. So, you can sit down, or you can bend over at the waist, at the hips a little bit. I want you to rub behind the knees. Clockwise, counterclockwise, or up and down, that's called popliteal, behind the knee. And then I want you to hit the back of your knee ten times.

[00:50:03] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And after that, let's get you pumping a little bit. So I have people stand up, separate your feet to a comfortable distance, close your mouth, breathe in and out through your nose, put your tongue, the front, the middle, and the back, the whole thing to the roof of your mouth, and I just want you to lightly bounce up and down on the balls of your feet like you're doing mini calf raises, really quick.

[00:50:25] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Don't jump completely off the ground because most people can't tolerate that with their joints and just pivot like that for like 10 to 20 seconds and now you're getting your pump going up and down. If you do that every single day, Within 30 days, you're going to be a new person.

[00:50:46] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Tell me

[00:50:46] Christa Biegler: about some of the coolest things you've seen from that.

[00:50:48] Christa Biegler: Oh, feel free to

[00:50:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: finish it out.

[00:50:50] Dr. Perry Nickelston: The other thing this is important. If tomorrow you have a detoxification reaction, we tell you to take a break from doing the big six again until you start to feel a little bit better. So I want, it could be 1 day. It could be 2 days. It could be 3 days.

[00:51:06] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Now, why is that? Because your body's already having to deal with that detox. So, you don't want to send more to it when it's trying to catch up to the 1st 1. You follow. So, just take your time because just because you make yourself worse faster doesn't mean you're going to get better faster. It actually works the opposite way.

[00:51:27] Christa Biegler: All, let's do what are some of the coolest dramatic things that you've seen when people do the big 6

[00:51:32] Dr. Perry Nickelston: every day.

[00:51:33] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You know what? I get a message every single day from someone because this is designed for any person to be able to do it of all ages.

[00:51:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I have people do it on their babies. They do it with their kids. I have others do it in a group setting, particularly in training or in yoga studios. They all do it together. It's like a communal thing. The biggest thing that I get is people who send me messages of how chronic pain changed. Rather significantly for them in an area that they were experiencing, and you can name the body part.

[00:52:10] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I mean, it's a lot of them and the other one that I have that people get our areas where they've had some inflammation or swelling in a region that is technically not lymphedema and they say that's the craziest thing. Because a lot of people get a little puffiness around in the ankles, And the calves and they notice that begins to go and the ones that I love the most are people who tell me that they had a change and the brain, you know, what, I have more energy, I'm less tired, I'm less fatigued, and they're actually able to sleep better, which is a big thing.

[00:52:49] Dr. Perry Nickelston: This is a huge thing, because if you're not sleeping, you're not, and nothing's going to work, right? That's that. Now, you know why, right? Because that's when your brain cleans itself. So if you can't sleep. You're going to have a dirty brain

[00:53:04] Dr. Perry Nickelston: and

[00:53:05] Christa Biegler: 1 other thing I want to ask you about this, but you kind of answered it.

[00:53:07] Christa Biegler: So I'll just we'll reiterate it here or put any notes in. I was going to ask you if you had any feelings about using brushes or using tools, but you don't really care as long as you do it right way, which is essentially. Stimulate around the clavicle 1st, technically, is that would it be there's some discussion online about doing things the right way.

[00:53:30] Christa Biegler: If you rub your face the wrong way doing, you're not really doing it. Right? I mean, what do you want to say about

[00:53:35] Dr. Perry Nickelston: that?

[00:53:36] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, I think that's ridiculous. I mean, listen, you know, the body knows where to send all this fluid. It's not stupid. It knows how to get there. You just got to free open the block.

[00:53:45] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So if you send that left, it's not going to make your world fall apart if it's supposed to go right. Fluid moves everywhere. All right. And you don't have to get so wrapped up in pressure. If you're pressing too hard, you're pressing too light because people say, what if I push too hard? I can do this sort of thing.

[00:54:00] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Listen, you know how resilient your body is to withstand pressure. On doing something, think about how much pressure you put on your legs by sitting down for 3 hours straight or carrying a purse over your shoulder for 2 hours straight or something like that. If your lymphatic system was that delicate to shut down, you'd be dead in a day.

[00:54:21] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So it's not as vulnerable as people think it is right. The most important thing that you need to realize is that I love brushing of all types. I love gua sha of all types because they all work. Those are just techniques. The most important thing you need to understand is the concept and the concept is high pressure to low pressure collarbone first.

[00:54:42] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So dry brushing for me in my world is that you 6 places first. So, you would do 6, then you brush from the feet up, then you brush from the hands up. In my world, what you don't do is just start brushing from the feet up in the shower because what you're doing is you're pushing stuff that's high pressure in your foot up to blocks that are higher up.

[00:55:19] Dr. Perry Nickelston: So, I need to do the big six first. And here's what I'm going to tell you. If you start to do that, like try the big six first and then do the other ones after that, you'll get what I'm saying. Cause you're going to say to yourself, Holy cow, that felt way different. The results were way different when you did it that way.

[00:55:42] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And I'm like, I know what it is because it's all just based on physiology and hydrodynamics or what they call hydraulics. So everything in your body moves through pressure prompts. And hydraulics and heartbeat is just one of them. The other one is your breathing and then clearing up these hydraulic waste stations of lymphatics.

[00:56:08] Dr. Perry Nickelston: And that's what I mentioned before is that I want people to understand that when you're opening up these lymph pathways, it's not just about lymph. It's about the blood flow and the nerve flow as well, because they all go together, but the lymph is the controller. Of all the other ones,

[00:56:29] Christa Biegler: I think if I was going to ask anyone to take action today, besides this would be to share it with their family.

[00:56:35] Christa Biegler: Right? Because as you talked about vascular systems, I think when we talk about just taking the big 6 home, it could have such a profound impact possibly for people that have. Really significant things going on, right? Which often impacts the vascular system. You're talking about a lot of those things earlier, but I was like, oh, vascular, vascular, vascular, which is your other system that you love

[00:56:56] Dr. Perry Nickelston: so much.

[00:56:58] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah, it can be an absolute life changer for many, many people, but it's not just for people that are in pain and sick. It's to keep you a resilient monster hashtag beast mode monster. I tell people to do this as well before you do athletic physical activity. Because, one, you would like to have increased blood flow before you start to train, and when you hit and rub and slap these joints, it's what's called proprioceptive awareness of your joints, because your brain knows where your joints are, because you just slapped them.

[00:57:32] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You follow? So now, you're going to have better awareness of your body, so you're going to move better, which means you're going to be faster. That's what I'm telling you. So you're preparing yourself. So I tell people, do the big six and then do your typical warm up, whatever it is. Now, also, when you train, what do you do when you train?

[00:57:53] Dr. Perry Nickelston: You purposely break down cells and create inflammation and create weight, which is a good thing because If, here's the caveat, if you can get rid of the waste and then make new cells afterwards, stronger ones, my bicep grows bigger because I'm making more bicep cells and bigger cells. So well, think about this logically.

[00:58:18] Dr. Perry Nickelston: If you're creating waste while you're training, wouldn't you want to get that waste out? So you do the big six after you train. So now I'm going to flush the toilet, which means the next day. Maybe I'm not as sore as I was. I have and I can go harder, faster, stronger, longer of what I love to do and do it for a longer period of time.

[00:58:43] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Okay. That's why a lot of people feel worse when they begin to exercise when they're told to move when they're not feeling well, because they got clogged toilets and they're putting waste metabolic waste on top of metabolic waste.

[00:58:56] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Yeah,

[00:58:57] Christa Biegler: look at you giving us immediate gratification on not being a sore the next day.

[00:59:02] Christa Biegler: Maybe

[00:59:05] Dr. Perry Nickelston: you help those domes delayed onset muscle soreness. You know, that's a good thing. Just still make sure you don't over train. Which most people do. Because that's going to tax your immune system, so don't over try it.

[00:59:19] Christa Biegler: Yeah, we covered a lot today. We did the big 6, which was 1 of my goals to talk about.

[00:59:24] Christa Biegler: We dispelled whether the cisternocyclic was the important part of the clavicle. So thank you for going over that. You talked about how there are, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you mentioned 6 or 700 lymph nodes, but 1 3rd of them are from the neck up. Telling us how the head and neck are, we talked about how everything gets cleared out through the limb system.

[00:59:46] Christa Biegler: Bacteria viruses, toxins, cancer cell, waste cells, the waste of all of these things and just in neuro inflammation, all of that draining. And we talked about your story, which is an important piece of how all of this works and how you find purpose in life and the motivation to teach this all the time.

[01:00:05] Christa Biegler: We talked about train theory, which is 1 of my favorite things to be asking people as well, which I think we did answered really. Really well, overall, like, a free thing you can do to improve your toxic burden and improve your train. So things aren't finding you so hospitable and making you sick.

[01:00:20] Christa Biegler: I feel like that's a win win win all the way around. can people

[01:00:23] Dr. Perry Nickelston: find you online?

[01:00:25] Dr. Perry Nickelston: First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. It was so enjoyable. Very lovely experience. Very easy to find me. You can just type in my brand name, Stop Chasing Pain, and stuff's going to show up. I've been doing this for a long time.

[01:00:41] Dr. Perry Nickelston: I'm pretty much on every social media platform you can think of. My website will you. Be the best one to kind of launch you out to everything from there. And then you can follow me, whatever format that you enjoy the most.

[01:00:56] Christa Biegler: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on today.

[01:00:59] Dr. Perry Nickelston: Thank you for having me.

[01:01:00] Christa Biegler: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.

[01:01:22] Christa Biegler: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.