Sore throats and head colds – something you can do to help yourself

Ok, so you know the chicken soup, lots of fluids, vitamin C thing but here is a  technique you can do at home to help your own sore throat and cold symptoms.  It’s not magic, just simple physical manual medicine and works by helping your lymphatic system drain.

Hold up. What the hell is they lymphatic system?

“The lymphatic system is part of the circulatory system and an important part of the immune system, comprising a network of lymphatic vessels that carry a clear fluid called lymph (from Latin, lympha meaning “water”[1]) directionally towards the heart.”

(Thanks Wikipedia!)

Ok so these lymptatic thingies (vessels and nodes) can get backed up if there is an excess of fluid – like when you are fighting a cold.  It gets all congested with fluid, dead white blood cells and dead bacteria/virus corpses and then the fluid slows down and gets literally backed up like Highway 400 Northbound at 4:30 pm on a Friday of a summer long weekend. Ain’t nobody going nowhere fast.

You have a ton of these vessels and nodes in and around your head, face and neck and if you can get them to drain just a bit your sore throat can go away or get better.  Below is a chart of the head and neck lymphatic chains so you get an idea where they are:

There is a simple soft tissue technique you can do for this that will be posted on my clinic fb page under videos.  I do this to help patients all the time with their symptoms and it works great.  basically you gently stroke the areas of the lymphatic vessels from top to bottom to encourage them to drain. Don’t push too hard and rub your skin raw and like with anything else you read here check with your health care provider first as there are some contraindications to this.  Or come on in to see me and I can let you know if it is safe for you.

Here is a link to my fb clinic page to check out the video – when I figure it out I shall also post it here.  Hope this helped!

https://www.facebook.com/drkarenhudes/

I figured out how to add it here but have no idea why it is sideways – if I can fix it I will if not sorry!!! turn your screen 🙂  Click on the link below to view my sideways video:

sore throat