Lymphoedema - lymphedema

Lymphedema can have many causes. The affected area and the severity of symptoms can vary, but the outcome is usually the same: it “accompanies” you for life. For most patients, reducing the swelling is a daily struggle. I recommend structuring your daily activities so that lymphedema treatment has its place. If you ignore it, over time it will make your life harder. However, if you pay attention to exercise, nutrition, and use symptomatic treatments, it will cause you little trouble.

To avoid misunderstandings!

In this article you’ll discover the solutions, tools, and methods suitable for reducing lymphedema.

Not just one, but more than a dozen different options.

It’s very important to understand that each method helps alleviate the symptoms of lymphedema to a certain degree and improves your well-being.

• If you only use bandaging, you’ll get about a 5% improvement.
• If you diet and lose weight, that adds another 10%.
• If you do daily lymphatic exercises, that’s another 10%.
• If you visit a masseur every two weeks, it’s worthless. But if you go every other day, it’s +20%.
• A lymphatic massage machine adds 50–60%.

NONE OF THEM IS ENOUGH ON ITS OWN!!!! Not even the lymphatic massage machine.

The individual treatments don’t replace each other; they complement and strengthen one another. Therefore,

The more treatment options you apply together, the more you can reduce your lymphedema

Treating lymphedema

Most patients receive incorrect or no information. Thus, the majority think that lymphedema must be treated in a hospital or clinic, and that’s all there is to it.

This is a huge misconception! Lymphedema doesn’t wait for an annual hospital appointment. It doesn’t wait for you to get a slot. Lymphedema develops and worsens constantly, without pause.

Treatment of lymphedema should take place under the guidance of a doctor or lymphedema therapist (they decide which treatments you should use). However, they cannot apply bandages for you, perform lymphatic drainage for you, or do the exercises for you. You have to do those yourself.

Lymphedema is a disease that continually and inexorably worsens. Every treatment aims to slow and reduce fluid accumulation and direct any remaining fluid toward healthy circulation.

There are two “locations” for lymphedema treatment

1. Medical treatment in a lymphedema clinic or hospital department. This is a short, intensive course lasting a few days, designed to bring you out of severe swelling, quickly reduce edema, and send you home.
2. Home-based, maintenance treatment. This covers the other 360 days of the year. It is much more important for you than the hospital treatment. IT’S UP TO YOU to maintain your condition! Only you can prevent your condition from deteriorating and needing repeated hospital treatments.

Why is the edema unstoppable?

Even in healthy people, lymph is produced with every heartbeat. Your heart and arteries deliver blood to the tissues every second. Veins and lymphatic vessels are responsible for collecting this fluid and returning it to circulation.

Lymphedema occurs when your lymphatic vessels and/or veins cannot perform their function properly—they can’t collect blood and lymph effectively. Lymphedema develops where veins and lymphatic vessels do not work well.

Because lymph is continuously produced and its collection is chronically impaired, your life revolves around reducing the edema. If you treat it, the swelling retreats. The moment you stop treatment, refill begins immediately, and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes visible and noticeable.

Watch my video on general information about lymphedema. Click the play button!

Lymphedema lifestyle

From the previous section, you can see that life with lymphedema revolves around the disease. Whatever you do can affect your symptoms.

Therefore, your lifestyle and the tasks related to the disease have a strong influence.

First, I’ll mention the options that can slow fluid buildup or speed up its removal. They won’t completely solve your problem, but if you follow them, you’ll face fewer issues than if you ignore them.

Watch my video on the lymphedema lifestyle. Click the play button!

Rest with elevated limbs

You may have noticed that your swelling decreases by morning. This is because in a lying position, the lymph simply “flows out” of your limb and spreads throughout your body.

Once you sit or stand, gravity causes the lymph to sink back into your legs and hands.

Use this to your advantage: rest for 15–20 minutes during the day with your limbs elevated.

Exercise regularly

The natural driver of lymphatic (and venous) circulation is the rhythmic contraction of muscles. Muscle activity “pumps” lymph and venous blood from the extremities back toward the heart.

Lack of exercise by itself increases swelling.

Daily exercise is the most natural and cost-effective way to reduce lymphedema.

You don’t need to think of competitive sports. Walking, Nordic walking, and cycling are excellent. The key is to start gradually and spend at least 50–60 minutes on it each day.

In this video, yoga instructor Gergely Megvegy demonstrates an excellent exercise routine that can be performed as lymphedema exercises, even multiple times a day.

Maintain a healthy weight

Obesity and lymphedema go hand in hand! Obesity increases lymph production because fat tissue has a rich vascular network, retains a lot of water, and thus produces more lymph.

By shedding excess weight, you can also improve your symptoms.

Eat a varied diet

Limit your intake of fats and proteins. Lymph transports large amounts of fats and protein molecules, which increase its concentration and, when deposited between tissues, worsen circulatory issues.

Vegetables and fruits should make up the majority of your diet.

However, there is no specific diet that applies to all lymphedema patients.

Avoid diuretics!

The majority of doctors “like” to prescribe diuretics when edema appears. Diuretics influence kidney function and, through it, fluid retention.

For this to work, the fluid has to reach blood circulation and the kidneys. Lymph, however, is not in the vessels. This is precisely the problem with lymph—it does not enter the vessels and circulation.

Consequently, diuretics cannot reduce lymphedema—in fact, they can worsen it. Forced diuresis worsens lymphedema because removing water from the vessels increases the osmotic pressure of the lymph, making the lymph fluid denser and harder to move. From this thick lymph, fats and proteins deposit more easily, making lymphedema fibrotic, hard, and untreatable.

There may be cases where you must take physician-prescribed diuretics, such as if you have high blood pressure, heart, or kidney disease in addition to lymphedema. In those cases, diuretics may be necessary.

If you “only” have lymphedema, do not take diuretics. They won’t help; by flushing out minerals, they cause general weakness and fatigue.

Incidentally, this can also serve as a diagnostic test. If your leg has just begun to swell and doesn’t improve on diuretics, it’s almost certainly lymphedema.

Certain (medicinal) drugs increase edema

Some antihypertensives (calcium channel blockers), hormones (contraceptives), steroids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and antidiabetic medications increase edema formation.

Replace or discontinue “suspicious” drugs. Seek your doctor’s advice on this.

Heat increases edema

From spring through autumn, lymphedema worsens. Heat dilates skin vessels, allowing more blood in and producing more lymph.

Wear light, breathable clothing. Avoid sunbathing and staying in hot environments.

A hot bath or pool, any form of sauna, and vacuum body treatments should all be avoided.

Pay close attention to skin care

Edematous and taut skin is fragile, and its poor circulation makes healing difficult. Protect your legs from any injury, insect bites, or wounds. Pay special attention when caring for your nails.

Bandaging is excellent for this purpose. Its role in edema reduction is minimal. The goal is to protect the vulnerable folds between the toes and prevent injuries. In cases of lymph leakage or ulcers, bandaging is also necessary to protect the wound and prevent infection.

However, the measures listed above only contribute to treatments aimed at reducing edema.

Treating lymphedema

Watch my video on lymphedema treatment options. Click the play button!

Bandaging

Recommended for those who move relatively little.

Use a low-elasticity bandage with a foam pressure pad underneath. It quickly expels the edema, which then loosens and breaks down. You need to remove and reapply it regularly.

Bandage the hand or foot more tightly than the upper part so the lymph moves more easily.

On a thick, fatty thigh, the bandage slips off quickly, gathers in the crease, and digs in. Adjust it! Remove and reapply it properly.

Compression stockings (gloves)

Recommended for active individuals, as they enhance the edema-reducing effect of muscle movement.

Less tight than bandages but more elastic. They are not easy to put on, especially for obese and mobility-impaired people. Ask a relative for help.

Always use compression garments during exercise, as movement + compression is much more effective than either alone.

Manual lymphatic drainage

This is a massage with gentle movements, guiding edema toward healthy circulation.

Manual lymphatic drainage was developed in the 1930s. There is no convincing evidence of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it is widely used because it is the “traditional” method, practiced for a century. In the West, its rationale is increasingly questioned.

The required number of sessions is unaffordable for most. Another issue is that patients receive treatment not when they need it most, but when the therapist has time.

Electrotherapy lymphatic drainage

Muscle contractions triggered by electrical impulses, similar to walking (the most natural motor for lymphatic circulation), improve circulation and reduce edema.

Muscle stimulators have more versatile uses than lymphatic massage machines. They can help reduce swelling in all stages of lymphedema and offer many other applications, including muscle pain relief, stiffness reduction, preventing atrophy, aiding strength recovery, and treating joint and tendon inflammation with microcurrent (MENS).

In mild edema, an EMS device can replace a lymphatic massage machine. In moderate and severe cases, they enhance each other’s effects.

Bemer therapy

Bemer is a unique procedure. There is no substitute or even a device with similar effects.

Bemer treatment = physical vascular therapy. It very effectively improves blood circulation, thereby also enhancing lymphatic circulation. Its anti-swelling effect is proven.

Improving blood flow has many benefits for general health, including immune boosting and anti-inflammatory effects.

Click here to learn more about Bemer therapy.

Machine lymphatic drainage

Studies have shown this to be the most effective method of reducing edema. It uses compression, inflating a cuff on the limb to compress the skin and underlying soft tissues, “squeezing out” lymph from the tissues and lymphatic vessels, and even venous blood from veins. The cuff chambers inflate sequentially (from bottom to top), directing lymph and blood upward toward healthy tissue.

Watch my video about lymphatic massage machines. Click the play button!

Machine lymphatic drainage supports arterial, venous, and lymphatic circulation and reduces thrombosis risk. It will gradually take the place of other methods in home-based maintenance treatment.

Self-lymphatic drainage

A lymphatic drainage technique that patients can perform themselves, with movements that can be learned in a few hours of practice.

In the video below, I demonstrate the self-lymphatic drainage technique step by step. The footage comes from an informational film by the MD Anderson Cancer Center (a university hospital in Texas).

Watch my video on self-massage for edema reduction. Click the play button!

Self-treatment of the arm is suitable for everyone; for leg treatment, it’s excellent for thin, flexible, mobile individuals. Larger, obese, or mobility-impaired people generally cannot bend down to reach their legs.

A massage stick can also help them.