Katie Deming [00:00:00]:
What if the most powerful healing system in your body has been overlooked by modern medicine? Today, I sit down with Freddie Kimmel, a biohacker, functional health coach, and host of The Beautifully Broken podcast. After overcoming testicular cancer at age 26, Freddie has spent years studying how our lymphatic system supports healing and immunity. He shares how simple breathing, movement, and relaxation techniques can help this crucial system function better. Whether you're dealing with illness or simply want to optimize your health, stay till the end to learn what you need to know about lymphatic support during cancer treatment. You'll walk away understanding why this overlooked system deserves more attention in your wellness journey. Let's dive in. You're listening to the Born to Heal podcast, and I'm your host, doctor Katie Deming. After 2 decades of practicing as an oncologist and caring for thousands of patients, I've seen firsthand how our health care system places obstacles in your path to true healing.Katie Deming [00:01:08]:
My guests and I will bridge the worlds of Western medicine and alternative healing to help you achieve optimal health. Expect to uncover new insights, share a few laughs, and maybe even shed some tears along the way. But most of all, we'll learn how to heal from within together. So let's dive into today's episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Born to Heel podcast. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Freddie Kimmel. Freddie, thank you, and welcome.Freddie Kimmel [00:01:39]:
I'm so excited to be here. It's so weird to have the camera come on and me not to be like, welcome to the Beautifully Broken podcast.Katie Deming [00:01:46]:
I know. I know. So those of you who don't know Freddie, Freddie is from the Beautifully Broken podcast, and we previously did I the way we met was I did an interview on his podcast. So I'm super excited to have you here today and specifically wanted to talk about the lymphatic system. And, you know, I think that I'll just speak from my perspective. When I was in conventional medicine as a radiation oncologist, we talked about the lymphatic system all the time, but it was often in the context of, okay, cancer spreads through the lymphatic system. And then if we damage the lymphatic system through surgery or radiation, then dealing with the consequences of that. And so we would talk about lymphatic drainage and more of, like, okay, how are we gonna reduce the risk of causing damage to the lymphatic system or dealing with lymphedema? But Mhmm.

Katie Deming [00:02:45]:
Today, what I wanna talk about it is from a more proactive perspective, and and Freddie has so much information that he can share with us. So I wanted to just start by let's start with, like, the basics of, like, what is the lymphatic system and why should we care about it, and what is the role that it's playing in our body?

Freddie Kimmel [00:03:06]:
Yeah. I'd love to just contextualize for people that, you know, I'm certified in biological medicine, functional medicine, functional movement trainer, and, you know, I'm not practicing medicine. I came into this because I had went through metastatic cancer when I was 26 years old and did a lot of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, one known as our retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. So that is a procedure in which we go from sternum to pelvis. And, essentially, you set the intestines aside and you remove possible lymph nodes that could be infected with cancer. And I have, like, 80 surgical clips in my peritoneum. And, you know, I never knew how many were there until probably 16 months ago. 17 months ago, I had had an x-ray.

Freddie Kimmel [00:03:49]:
They were looking at my spine, and they're like, oh my god. What are all these? They're everywhere. I was like, oh my goodness. Those are all my clips. And to your point, my medical team, who was amazing, saved my life, the only time they ever referenced my lymphatic system was with a a tone of shame. How unfortunate that your, oh, your lymphatic system, it spread to your lymph. The lymph is the problem. There was never any nobody ever talked to me about why it was important, what it did.

Freddie Kimmel [00:04:18]:
We had to manage the downstream problems. So I'll be honest with you. It really wasn't until 17 months ago when I really started to explore what the system does, what the value proposition is for a regulatory system of the body, and how we can complement it. I was introduced to a lymphologist out of New Zealand, Desiree de Spong, and we started to have this conversation. And the minute I started to talk about it, like, every light in my body went, yes. You need to look at this. You need to understand this because and like so many people out there, you hear it's like a new thing, but I get passionate about it in something when I can hear, like, these like, the PowerPoints, like, the fun facts. Like, I started, when I started to do my research and learn that we have 3 times as much lymphatic fluid as we do blood, that there's no pump to drive all this fluid throughout the body.

Freddie Kimmel [00:05:09]:
It's a system that is operates under the principles of fluid dynamics, so it's a pressurized system. The idea that without lymphatic flow or management of the lymph system, we would die in one day. And I think most importantly is, like, what does it do? Right? Our lymphatic system, it optimizes fluid balance. So it manages fluid outside of the cell and inside the cell. It is our garbage collection system, really. It's managing all the cellular waste, debris, old viruses, old bacteria throughout the body. It's helping to allow our immune system to flow and access the organs, all the tissues of the body. And when we restrict that flow, we compromise immune function.

Freddie Kimmel [00:05:53]:
I had no idea that within every lymph node are born all our cancer killing cells, our dendritic cells, our b cells, which go off to develop in the bones, our t cells, which go off to develop in the thymus. And I think by the time I got to that point, I was like, why is this not front page news in the world of oncology? And again, it just comes back to, like, when we damage it. So I think I'd start, you know, if somebody's hearing this and and maybe you know a little bit about lymph. But again, it's when we have a problem. It's when we remove the lymph nodes from the axillary nodes in the armpits when there's infection. A lot of times in face, head, and neck cancer, we'll remove them from the throat. And so then we're managing a downstream dysfunction which created in this system, which is powered like the best example I have, it's like a tube of toothpaste. Right? There's a cap on the top.

Freddie Kimmel [00:06:41]:
We can just move the gel back and forth. But the really interesting thing about lymphatics is we have this low pressure point right at the base of the neck where the lymphatic all the vessels, which if you looked at a map of the vessels of the lymphatic and you laid it over the circulatory system, it's very, very similar. And depending on what medical textbook you pick up, there's like 62,000 miles of lymphatic ducts. And the lymphatics dump back into our circulatory system right at the base of the neck here into the subclavian, goes back into the circulatory system, and then it's released. The body allows all that environmental waste and cellular waste to leave the body through the primary amount of trees, so the organs of elimination. So that's the large bowel, that is the kidneys, that are the the breath. You know, the breath is a way to off gas the skin. It's really, really fascinating how the system is just again, I just think it should be front page news.

Freddie Kimmel [00:07:41]:
So I wanna turn that over to you.

Katie Deming [00:07:43]:
Yeah. No.

Freddie Kimmel [00:07:43]:
But I said a lot.

Katie Deming [00:07:44]:
Yeah. And I think this is this is what, to me, you know, as I'm stepping out into this new way of helping people heal is that there are these aspects of medicine that we're just not taught until it's a problem. Right? And exactly what you're saying is that we think about it as like a mitigation of, like, how do we deal with when we've messed up or disrupted the lymphatic flow from either surgical dissection or radiation. And but the idea that this has not been talked about as a proactive approach to optimal function of the body, you know, is just to me insane. Right? Like, once you start to learn about it, you're like, oh, wow. And then by the way, I just wanna say for those of you know, the podcast is mostly audio, but we'll have some clips on Instagram. And then also, we're on YouTube. You know, Freddie is, like, 20 years ago, he had testicular cancer, and he looks amazing.

Katie Deming [00:08:47]:
At 46, I'm like, what are you doing? He's doing all the things, but, so it's just amazing when you said only 17 months. You thought about I'm like, wow. That's like 20 years of since your cancer diagnosis that you really have dove into the lymphatic system and and how it works and all of these things that I think one of the things that I would like to have you speak to is, like you said, it doesn't have a pump. So the lymphatic system is 3 times the amount of fluid as blood in our system. And, you know, we think about it, blood in the circulatory system, people have a grasp of that. But we've got 3 times the amount of fluid in the lymphatic system. There's not a pump in the system. So talk to us about you did a little bit there, but let's talk about, you know, what are the mechanisms for the movement of the lymphatic fluid through the system.

Freddie Kimmel [00:09:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it comes down to I tend to when I speak to it, I tend to look at, you know, what does it do? We look at fluid balance. We look at the management of dietary fats, and then we look at waste removal. So it's like I'm like, garbage man. The the food we eat, getting it to the proper area so the cell or the body can use it as fuel, and then managing fluid. So if we think about how, you know, how does it do that, how does it main fluid remain fluid balanced in the proper range, the fluid in my body, the ideal ratio, roughly, again, it's 2 thirds of the the water in the body should be in the cell, 1 third should be in the interstitium. You know, it's the space around the cells.

Freddie Kimmel [00:10:33]:
Every single day, my circulatory system, which we all can understand that it's delivering it's sending blood around the body. We're delivering oxygen and nutrients so our cells can eat and breathe, and then there's this exchange. Our circulatory system leaks almost 20 liters, almost, of plasma out of the capillary branches into the body every day. The circulatory system reabsorbs 17 liters. There is this 3 liters of fluid that is left over, and that's that's your lymphatics. That's what's managed by the lymphatics. And I like to say the 3 primary ways that our lymphatic system is moving is the lymphatic system is primarily constructed of smooth muscle. So when I'm in a relaxed state, when I'm in parasympathetic, when I'm in rest and digest, the lymphatic system is almost there's a gentle movement or a pump that's moving.

Freddie Kimmel [00:11:24]:
So our lymphatic is complemented when we're in that downregulatory state. The other aspect of movement of the lymphatic system is muscle contractions, and that's just moving. So I was doing things, although I didn't know all the implications of lymph. I was doing things throughout my journey, you know, even in my greatest states of extreme, extreme fatigue. I was walking. I was moving. I was going to the gym. It's really funny.

Freddie Kimmel [00:11:48]:
I was thinking back. I don't know what it was, but I had this driver in me, chemotherapy. They were like my doctor was like, don't go to the gym. Don't go to the gym. Don't go.

Katie Deming [00:11:55]:
Stay out of there. It's like a

Freddie Kimmel [00:11:55]:
petri dish of disease. Don't go. But I just felt so it

Katie Deming [00:11:56]:
was the 1 or 2 hours a day

Freddie Kimmel [00:11:57]:
where I felt like I had a hand in my recovery. You know, I would go push weight. I looked like a the dying version of ET. I'm, like, all white, all pasty, no hair. You know, there were times when I had, like, belly wraps on because I had had had all this, extensive surgery in my body. But I just left, and I felt so good. And so every time we're doing a floor to a stand or we're sitting up out of a chair or we're walking, we're contracting all our muscles and we're pumping that lymph. We're complementing flow.

Freddie Kimmel [00:12:39]:
And the average American, we walk so few steps these days. And and I will even say this, as my last 5 or 6 years as as a podcaster and a speaker and a content creator, I spend way too much time in front of the computer. And what I found is even a really great 1 hour workout when I do all the ranges of motion, I open my hip flexors and I lay on a ball and do soft tissue work and I do breath work, that does not undo 6 to 8 hours of sitting. It just doesn't. So we've really got to think about how do I maintain movement throughout the day. I like this barometer of, like, 10 to 15000 steps, which I have a little monitor here which tracks my biorhythms, my heart rate variability. It tracks how many steps I do. It tracks my sleep quality.

Freddie Kimmel [00:13:25]:
And that's something that I'm always kinda gauging on. It's like, okay. Well, how am I doing today as far as movement? Because it's not something that I can do 2 out of 7 days of the week. I gotta think about it. That is a really high bar for me to hit every single day. The other thing I'd say is that if we think about lymph, right, we'd said if we laid over a diagram of the circulatory system and then we looked at the lymphatic system, they sort of look similar. There's there's a road map of veins and tunnels and trunks running throughout the body. The system 70% of the lymphatic system is subcutaneous in my arms, in my neck, in my face, in my legs.

Freddie Kimmel [00:14:05]:
And then we've got about 30% deep within the belly, deep within the peritoneum. And the lymph in the belly is complemented through this deep diaphragmatic breathing, when we're really doing some deep breathing. And I I quote this figure from doctor Tom. He says, you know, in in in 1910, 1912, average breast per minute was, like, 6 to 12 breasts per minute. And that is just not people are 22, 23 breasts per minute. They're shallow breathers. They're breathing up in their chest. So the lymphatic all my lymph nodes and these lymphatic ducts, there's a big structure in here, a a convergence of lymph called the cisterna chyli, which sits on the back of my spine.

Freddie Kimmel [00:14:45]:
None of it's getting any massage from the organs by that deep diaphragmatic breathing. So that's absolutely massive. So it's like the moving, the deep diaphragmatic breathing, and then spending time in parasympathetic where my nervous system is working for me in which all those smooth muscles around the lymphatic ducts are kind of moving that fluid throughout the body, slowly helping to drain all that cellular waste and garbage pickup.

Katie Deming [00:15:11]:
Well, and I love what I love about that too, what you just described is, you know, these are things that we know are good for us just overall, like increasing our parasympathetic tone and being in a parasympathetic state of rest. Right? This is good for our body overall for repair. The movement I love that the movement does not need to be vigorous. Sometimes people think they needed to do these really intense workouts, but actually with lymphatic, it doesn't have to be big movements. It can be as simple as walking. And with the sitting behind a desk, most of us are that same way. And getting up every hour and just doing little movements. I've gotten to the habit of doing just bodyweight squats, just gentle, not like intense, but getting up and doing that you know, every hour or so.

Katie Deming [00:16:04]:
And after my meals, I do it to help with my, you know, to lower my glucose after eating a meal. But it's like these little movements that we can do throughout the day to be stimulating our lymph are just good for us overall, but doesn't have to be aggressive as well. And then the breathing, that's so interesting. I'm, like, 6 to 10 breaths per and doctor Tom who doctor Tom Callender

Freddie Kimmel [00:16:26]:
Doctor Dixon Tom.

Katie Deming [00:16:27]:
Dixon Tom. Oh, okay. So last name is Tom. Yeah. That's amazing. Definitely, we are not breathing that slowly or deeply nowadays. That is definitely not the case. So these and these are simple things, though.

Katie Deming [00:16:41]:
Like, even as you were talking about the breathing, I found myself, you know, taking in a deep breath. It's like, we can do these things, but you have to be aware to know that it's important. Right? And I think this is part of what I'm learning through this whole journey into more holistic healing is that we can't get away from the modern lifestyle. Right? And we have, you know, technology and all this thing. It's like we're gonna use those tools. We're gonna live a modern lifestyle, but how do you incorporate these little shifts into your day to give your body what it needs, what it would be getting if we were, you know, living outside and just having to gather our food and do the things. We were just naturally moving. Right? But our lifestyle has shifted us into this more sedentary existence where we're not doing the things that our bodies are designed to do.

Katie Deming [00:17:37]:
But if we're aware, then we can start to incorporate these shifts into our life and into our daily practices. And, actually, this is one of the things I've heard you say is that, you know, some people watching your channel or listening to your podcast are like, Freddie, I'm tired just, like, listening to you because you're doing all the things, like, all the biohacking stuff. And it is, like, I listen to you and I'm like, oh my gosh. Wow. He's doing a lot. But it's like how you're just finding those little pockets and starting to incorporate in your own routine, these little shifts makes a big difference. I mean, can you speak to that piece? Because I think that is one thing people get overwhelmed with, you know, how do I do all these things? But these things are fairly simple.

Freddie Kimmel [00:18:20]:
Yeah. And I you know, I should also just add for context, behavior change really is it's that's the game. You know, some of us are hardwired to be able to look at something and, like, they can see the target, and they say, I want that. I'm doing it tomorrow. It's a very small percentage of the population. And then there's others of us will will try, you know, will commit to, the whole 30 or the 75 hard program. I keep joking. I'm gonna make a 75 soft.

Freddie Kimmel [00:18:49]:
Yeah. 75 days of soft health hacks.

Katie Deming [00:18:53]:
I love it.

Freddie Kimmel [00:18:54]:
Yeah. You know, kind and gentle. And I think you've really gotta understand how your body and how your nervous system is open to change. There's a really famous Warren Buffett, his his right hand man, Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most wealthy human beings on the planet. And he always does this quote that says, if you show me the incentive model, I will show you the outcome. So I'd say in our society, I am programmed to do more, to overachieve. I go for the gold star. I wanna be the quarterback.

Freddie Kimmel [00:19:24]:
I wanna be the president of the class. I want my TED Talk. You know, we're we're always a little bit our society tells us that it is good to ladder climb. So in a society with more information than we've ever had access to, how do I derive, like, the embodied knowledge from that? That takes discernment and it really takes it really takes us slowing down. But there's another great quote I love. My nurse practitioner, at the end of every email, he says, if you don't know where you're going, any road will do. And I love that phrase. Always, I'm like, oh, I feel so feel judged.

Freddie Kimmel [00:20:01]:
Like, the you should know where you're going. What do you want in your life? You know, what do you want? What's important to you? Is it a rock steady, steadfast relationship? Is it to have the the house of your dreams? Is it to grocery shop when you're 95 years old? Is it to lead a company? You know, we have to pick. It's rare that we can do all those things. Something is going to be sacrificed. So for me, a really big priority really big priority is just to be able to show up with enough energy to efficiently do my work and have enough energy at the end of the day where I can pursue some joy. And I found I've had to take things off my plate. I'm continually taking things off my plate because there's so many great choices today in this world. There's just so much fun stuff to be involved in.

Freddie Kimmel [00:20:51]:
And, oh, I mean, I love tech. Right? You know? And I love all the toys and the gadgets, and they're so fun. And they're so and every time I'm like, I have enough tech. I'll never need another thing. And then, know, that I'm on a call with somebody who's like, oh, I've I've been able to charge the singlet oxygen therapy, and we can go back and actually restructure misfolded proteins after their damage. And no other I'm like, I need that. You know, I get so stoked about it. And most of the time, you know, you can even look at the people using these fancy tools and, well, like, they're tired.

Freddie Kimmel [00:21:23]:
They're still struggling. It hasn't fixed all their issues. I really think it comes down to lifestyle design. It's, like, really get clear on what you want. And the best way to do that is to set up a practice. I think today, I think you should meditate once a day. I think if you're busy, you should do it twice for 20 minutes a day. And that is something that I fight for.

Freddie Kimmel [00:21:44]:
It's a struggle. I don't always do it, but man, is my day different if I start my day with a meditation. And and usually, when I feel like I don't know if you feel like this exciting thing, exciting conversation. There gets a point when I was like, it's too much dopamine. I'm like, okay, this is so fun. This is a good time for me to get off the ride, go park myself in my bedroom. I'm going to pull up a track. I'm just going to be with stillness in my breath.

Freddie Kimmel [00:22:09]:
So I can try to sort through and make make sense of some of the experiences that I have and see what ones I really wanna integrate, what things I wanna let go of. That's been paramount for me is is being able to set the terrain so I can make some really profound lifestyle changes and live a better life.

Katie Deming [00:22:27]:
Yeah. No. And I I absolutely agree. And I love the quote. If you don't know where you're going, any road will do. It's just like, pam, right in the face. You're like, oh, man. And I think that it's you're right.

Katie Deming [00:22:41]:
It's about discernment. And and also, I think this is one of the things that I talk about a lot with my clients is intuitively your body is also telling you what it needs to. So when you're hearing things tuning to that rather than, you know, like you described, the amount of information that we're exposed to. I heard this statistic from one of my other guests that in the 1700, or we're exposed to more information in one day than someone living in the 1700 was exposed to in a whole year, and we wonder why we are overwhelmed. And I was just like, yes, that makes sense to me because there's so much information and so you can't consume all of it, you can't do all of the things. It's having discernment and tuning to what feels right for you and then setting that intention of how do I incorporate that into my life and in changing those habits. I think that if you don't do that, it just feels overwhelming. And I actually was just talking to a client yesterday where she was, like, she'd taken time off work so that she could focus on her health.

Katie Deming [00:23:58]:
And then she said, I'm actually doing less now than I was doing then in terms of my wellness because I'm just, like, feel like I have so much time that I should be able to do it. But then it's just like she's not getting anything done. And so you really have to have a plan, and you have to be intentional about what it is that you wanna create in your life. Absolutely.

Freddie Kimmel [00:24:19]:
Yeah. I it's a really interesting we could take a side road on, you know, how much information you know, I had this quote from Patrick Porter. He talks about the conscious mind being able to pick up 40 bits of information per second, and the subconscious mind is processing a staggering I think it's 20,000,000 bytes of information every second. So in the intricate tapestry of existence, like, you can have 2 individuals partake in the same event, the same conversation, share an interaction, and they're gonna emerge with entirely different narratives. It's so interesting to me. And when I look at the political landscape or the health landscape and I see how people are at such odds with their belief systems, it makes total sense. Right? I'm picking up the information based on my previous 46 years of programming. So I have a bias.

Freddie Kimmel [00:25:13]:
There's things I'm looking for. There's piece of data that I'm pulling in on, and I'm I'm creating, like, a cornerstone of belief, and then I'm moving on. I'm creating reality as we as we move through this, you know, in this conversation. And I just think it's a great thing to understand how we can all create such a different reality and have a lot of humility for how somebody else can come up with a different story. And and if we start from that place when we're engaging with whether it's a your oncologist or a doctor or a practitioner or somebody else you're trying to inspire about what you believe the body can do, just bring humility to the table. And you'd be you'd be surprised how eager people really do wanna understand. I think there's a lot of, like, bandwidth to gain if we come from that place. Absolutely.

Katie Deming [00:25:58]:
So one thing that I would love to touch on, just because I know you have so much expertise, is given the important role in the lymphatic system and the way that it works within our body, and then there may be people who are dealing with issues and disruption of the lymphatic system and wanting to optimize that. I'm wondering if you can talk about some of the tools that you use in addition to diaphragmatic breathing, movement, and increasing parasympathetic tone they could be beneficial for someone who's struggling. So for example, I have one client who has lipedema, you know, of her lower extremities. She's dealing with also lymphedema of her arm, but in the lipedema as well. And so this is like a whole body issue that she's got going on, and I'm just wondering if you can speak to that.

Freddie Kimmel [00:26:53]:
Yeah. I mean, the I guess the place I would touch on, and and again, not because I'm not a lymphologist, but a big piece of the lymphatic system's role is to manage dietary fats. You know, a triglyceride, as you mentioned, what's reabsorbed through the circulatory system is far too big to be absorbed back into a capillary. It's gotta go through the lacteals in the small intestine, and then it goes all the way through the lymph, and then it's dumped back. Then it's into circulatory system up to some clavian. Then it's processed through the liver and the organs, and then it's used for fuel. So I think that's one aspect that it would be so great if people just understood. It's like my lymphatic system is paramount to how I manage my dietary fats.

Freddie Kimmel [00:27:40]:
And it can inform your dietary behaviors. It can inform lifestyle practices. You know, there's genetic components to how we are set up for this many times. Yeah. It's that's that's real as much as I can the levels of dysfunction, you know, and it's also this is a really good Google one. You can look up lymphedema and lipedema comes in stages. So it's staged out. And there's a stage I'm trying to remember.

Freddie Kimmel [00:28:05]:
There's many of the levels of dysfunction that will be alleviated with gravity. So let's say you have swelling in the in your legs and ankles at the end of the night. And and if you put your legs up at the end of the wall, which is a great pre bedtime hack, by the way, for 15 minutes, talk about stress leaving your body and you're helping with lymphatic flow in the lower extremities. That is one where a lot of times all the inflammation will go away in 15 minutes. And when we can use when we see that proof from gravity, we know we know we're at a certain level of functionality within the lymphatic system. That's something that I often tell people. That's a great little test for yourself. Yeah.

Freddie Kimmel [00:28:43]:
That's what I would add.

Katie Deming [00:28:44]:
Okay. But in terms tools. Yeah. Yeah. Tools. So okay. Wait. Wait.

Katie Deming [00:28:49]:
Wait. So just let me just to clarify for the listeners. So if they put their legs up and then the fluid moves out, that tells them what? So you said that's a great test for you. What is that that

Freddie Kimmel [00:29:01]:
I would say that that's not in a place necessarily where lymphatics your lymphatics is compromised in a chronic fashion. You know, there's and there's so many things that we don't know in its infancy of understanding. Your lymphatic system portions can be almost paralyzed by a chronic infection. That could be a chronic viral infection. That could be Lyme disease. There's over 535,000 people diagnosed every single year newly in the United States. You know, most people would say that's a low number. In the middle of my cancer journey, I had chronic Lyme.

Freddie Kimmel [00:29:31]:
I had incredibly elevated levels of Epstein Barr, cytomegalovirus, HHV 6. So my terrain, you know, I I there's this great image I have on a one presentation I do, and it's a I actually made it through chat gpt. I was like, show me a toilet that's been clogged for 20 years. And it's literally, like, this awful toilet, and it's overflowing, and there's mold all over the walls, and the room is just full of, like, poop. And that is not far off if your lymphatic system has been compromised for 20 years, 30 years. This is not a problem we can alleviate overnight. This is not the amount of garbage and waste and build up within the cell, be it metals, be it glyphosate, be it old dead viral particles. It really does take time.

Freddie Kimmel [00:30:18]:
There's this great analogy. I can't remember who uses it. But as the lymph starts to flow and lymphatic starts to move through the lymph nodes, your immune system is almost like a little Target employee going in with a it's you know, Target would walk down the aisle.

Katie Deming [00:30:31]:
It'd be, like, with the tagger to do a stock

Freddie Kimmel [00:30:32]:
check-in the aisle. They'd say, oh, paper towel, paper towel, paper towel, garbage bag, garbage bag. Your immune system is doing a similar thing when lymphatic starts to flow through the lymph nodes. It can go through and start to tag. So we can have these immune responses once we get this flow starting to move throughout the body. It's not uncommon that you can feel flu like. You can feel extra chronic, extra fatigue, extra tired. There's an there's another system within the brain, which is the glymphatic system because every cell in your brain and my brain has waste.

Freddie Kimmel [00:31:07]:
Every cell in our body sort of poops. So if the glymphatic system for the brain is offline, you can imagine after 10 to 15 years that there's going to be cognitive dysfunction. There's going to be brain fog. There's going to be chronic headaches. We could go on and on and on. You know, there's so many conditions that in the biotoxin illness or the Lyme world that I've had people report phenomenal results from going to see a craniosacral therapist and going to manipulate the plates in the head, looking at the occipital joint, doing drainage of the lymph nodes in the face, head, and neck, which have phenomenal results as far as cognitive function. Long COVID, there's even there's a couple studies on PubMed already looking at lymphatic drainage to benefit this long hauler syndrome. So it's something that we just, again, we underestimate the role of this system to manage cellular waste and garbage.

Freddie Kimmel [00:32:02]:
And we think about that toilet that's had backed up for 20 years. I personally feel this is where the question comes in because back to your Freddie, you're doing a lot. Your Instagram is overwhelming. I can't believe we do all those things. You know, I had metastatic cancer stage 2 b. I had 5 I was 5 surgeries in. I had Lyme. I had chronic viral infections.

Freddie Kimmel [00:32:23]:
I had bought a house with floor to ceiling black mold. I was in a place where I had to use tech. I needed to use and I'll I'll say this, we use technology to get a greater yield of energy where we get a a greater output from the body just like a farmer in a field is using a plow to get a greater yield of carrots. So with great power or great disease comes great responsibility. And I think we're at that place, you know, looking at I just look at the Parkinson's since 1990. We we doubled that number. Doubled. There's no blood test for Parkinson's.

Freddie Kimmel [00:32:58]:
It's a it's a symptom set. Same look at the rates of MS. It's skyrocketing, especially in young women. You know, there's we could go on and on about how these chronic conditions are multiplying in numbers over time. And I don't think you'll boil it down. I don't think it's just that we have a bad lymphatic system. I think it's the movement. I think it's the diet.

Freddie Kimmel [00:33:18]:
I think it's information overload. So I would look to these technologies. I'm looking here in front of my in front of my computer. I have a a wand here. I have a vibrating wand, which looks just like a vibrator. There's a little button on here, turns it on. And I get this I get 3 3 stages of vibration if you're watching this. And I would just go up, and I would just hit the base of the neck.

Freddie Kimmel [00:33:38]:
I do this 2 times a day. I'll do this while I'm on a call. I'll do this in a podcast sometimes if people are fine with that. You'd be amazed how quickly your energy shifts, you know, just to complement flow with within the brain, within the lymphatic system. We have I think it's 6 to 800 lymph nodes in the body depending on what medical textbook you pick up, but we have 300 in the face, head, and neck. So think about these as little they're little almost like a counter lever or you're opening a little transfer sorting station of the garbage. And if that gets blocked up and calcified or or stiffens or restricts flow, we're gonna have an area of the body that is experiencing a symptom as a result of the lack of flow. So I'll just do this 2 or 3 times a day.

Freddie Kimmel [00:34:20]:
You know, I'll do above the eyes. I'll put this right in my eyeball. It feels so good. I need to have been staring at a screen. I'll do the base of the neck. And this is, like, you know, this is under a $100 tool. I've got an orb that I'll stick right in my armpits, a vibrational orb called Flow Orb. These are both from the company I work with called Flowpresso.

Freddie Kimmel [00:34:39]:
And these are great consumer tools. You know, I tack them behind the knee. I'll set it in my hip. I'll set it in my armpit. And this is something while I'm at a computer, I'm using vibrational therapy to affect the flow. Now if you were to I have a glass of water here. Nobody's ever gonna see it. I doubt we're gonna see this on camera.

Freddie Kimmel [00:34:57]:
I don't think we're gonna see that. If I were to set this in the water, you get, like, ripples and waves. Vibration is a great tool and a great technology to complement lymphatic flow. There may be listeners out there that say, oh, I have a vibration plate, you know, that you can stand on. You can get full body vibration. And it's affecting the cellular water. It's affecting fluid balance, and it's complementing it's a way to get movement in when we can't get up from the screen and get our steps in. So that's a really for me, that's a really low hanging fruit is to have a vibrational wand or a ball.

Freddie Kimmel [00:35:32]:
Of course, there's other ones, like, people have used there's almost like a a smooth piece of whale bone, or people have used stainless steel. They'll do a gua sha tool, and they'll run over the face. I will tell you in my experience, I've used the gua sha. There's more technique. It's like with vibration, you can't get it wrong. All you gotta do is get the vibration over the lymph nodes, and you'd almost do, like, a water shedding. I'm constantly going down remembering that the base of the neck, the termini is where my lymph drains back into my circulatory system. So as long as I do here first and then watershed down, not gonna screw it up.

Freddie Kimmel [00:36:08]:
So you do not need to be a lymphatic guru to figure this out. It's sorta like you know, it really is like brushing your teeth. There's a way to do it. So that's an easy one that I that I love.

Katie Deming [00:36:18]:
Yeah. I love that. Well, and that's just easy. And also, you're doing this not as a treatment for any lymphatic drainage problem per se. It's literally just for improving your lymphatic flow to help aid in that process. And so let me ask you this, though. With using vibration, the movement of your body would do the same thing as well. Is that, like, if people are moving their body or, you know, because but most of us are not when I'm looking watching you do this and you're doing it, you know, over your neck kind of in this area right above the clavicle there, that's not an area that, you know, most of us are doing lots of movement.

Katie Deming [00:37:01]:
And I'm just wondering, that seems to be something that you maybe need to do to get that flow from your head. Or how does someone, if they don't have that tool, get that kind of movement out of their face and into those drainage areas?

Freddie Kimmel [00:37:16]:
Yeah. Like I said, you know, you can and it and it really depends. It all is gonna come back to the bio individuality of what's going on in your body. As you know, our teeth have nerves that run up and around. If you've ever seen our, a definitely Google this. Look at the look at where the nerve roots run from your teeth and run all the way down through your body and basically wire into your all your organs. You know, teeth almost work as like a circuit breaker. So if you have a chronic infection, if you have a dental infection, it's a really high correlation of people who have have had a infection, it's a really high correlation of people who have have had a root canal on the side that their cancer exists.

Freddie Kimmel [00:37:51]:
Again, not my area of expertise. My open root canal that I had done when I was 25, which was infected, is the side that my cancer was on, exact side of the body. And I have many friends in my inner circle that had the same experience. You know, they had dental problems that precluded their cancer. If you think about it, a root canal, which is an infection, they'll go in and they'll drill in, and they're gonna seal up that infection. So the infection can't come out through the cavity. Now it's locked in, and it's sealed into the nerve root. So if there's a very small amount of bacteria at the base of that nerve root, it has access to your whole body.

Freddie Kimmel [00:38:30]:
So that can be a low level of infection that's continuing on throughout time. You know, so that's where something like like a vibrational tool as I hold up my vibrator. It always gets me. Every single time, I'm like, can we make one that doesn't look so sexual? But it's okay. It just works, and it really does help flow. Now the first couple times I did it, I was one of those kids in the in the eighties nineties who I lived on I always had strep throat. Always. You know, we called it the pink stuff.

Freddie Kimmel [00:38:59]:
I ate penicillin, like, every month. The first time I started to do this, my throat was drained. I was like, what is that fluid running down my throat? My tonsils opened, and they've never they've never, like, filled back up again. It's been really incredible. Forgot if I said this on our other podcast. I was a professional singer in in New York. I was doing music theater, Broadway and stuff when I got sick. So that's something that's changed the quality of my voice.

Freddie Kimmel [00:39:24]:
So it's so interesting. This is a lived experience that I had after I started doing this. There's a guy online

Katie Deming [00:39:31]:
Wait. So what changed your voice? The using

Freddie Kimmel [00:39:35]:
Taking the all the fluid out of my tonsils Oh, wow. That were chronically infected. Wow. Yeah. Really changed the quality of my voice. You know, I I still sing in concerts. I still love to sing. I still pretty much vocalize every day.

Freddie Kimmel [00:39:47]:
And, yeah, it's amazing. My voice is as good and clear now as it's ever been in my life.

Katie Deming [00:39:52]:
That's amazing.

Freddie Kimmel [00:39:53]:
I'm not doing it as a professional every single day of the week, but there's certainly more room. There's more room in the palate inside my mouth. There's mobility and there's more resonant. A lot of the resonance from the voice comes in the cheekbones in this palate, and it's just a more full sound. So it's been really cool to to see that and experience that.

Katie Deming [00:40:12]:
That's so amazing. I love that. So I'm wondering, you know, you brought up Flopresso that they're the manufacturer of these tools, but this is also something that my particular client who is dealing with the lipedema was asking actually about Flopresso. And so I'm wondering if you can just speak about that just so that people understand what that is in terms of full body Flopresso as well.

Freddie Kimmel [00:40:35]:
Yeah. And so it's a Flopresso is a technology. It's basically 3 therapies in 1. It uses pneumatic pressure. It uses infrared heat, and then it has, like, this deep pressure, almost like a weighted blanket effect when you combine the 2. So the suit is basically like being buttoned into a spacesuit. You'd wrap the feet, you'd wrap the legs and sleeves, you'd wrap the belly and the arms, and then you would connect pressure cables right from the heel all the way up to the top of the arms. And there is a rolling pneumatic wave of pressure that rolls through the body as well as infrared heat.

Freddie Kimmel [00:41:11]:
So it really is like being buttoned into a spacesuit, but it's custom fit. That's the really unique thing about this technology is your foot and ankle and calf, there's no way to have a one size suit that's gonna fit firmly to everybody's body. So being able to wrap the foot, the leg, the belly, the arms, and then adjust the pressure on the screen, adjust the pneumatic pressure as well as the infrared. The infrared range goes from and it's actually thermotherapy. It goes from 86 degrees to a 104. And we don't wanna use the heat to create a sauna. We wanna use the heat to warm up that plasma protein, that sticky plasma protein. This is one more thing that, you know, talk about variables, your diet.

Freddie Kimmel [00:41:54]:
You know, we talk about the circulatory system leaking 20 liters of plasma. What's your quality of plasma protein versus mine? Well, that's gonna be impacted by the protein you eat, how hydrated you are, how many what the space is between your meals, if you take breaks from eating, how your movement is, and how long the lack of movement and standard American diet has been at play. Lymph can be very, very sticky. And and it can even with all these other things, a good lymphatic therapist, a a lymphologist, manual drainage therapist will tell you. They'll tell you again and again. Certain people, it's just so easy to get incredible results. Other people, it takes a long time. So this is a really unique add in on Flopressa where this infrared, which is not gonna heat the surface temp of the skin, it's gonna heat the interior interstitium.

Freddie Kimmel [00:42:47]:
So it's gonna complement that flow. So we do the heat with the pneumatic pressure. And, again, it's just like squeezing a body like a tube of toothpaste. Imagine a wave that's gonna go through every 2 to 3 minutes and ends at the top of the body, right, with warmth. And, eventually, that wave lulls the nervous system to sleep. So we get deep, deep parasympathetic rebound in the body. I should mention that is a, you know, that's that's a technology that is a class 2 medical device. It's a practitioner device, so this is not a home device.

Freddie Kimmel [00:43:20]:
This is a this is a naturopath, medical doctor, plastic surgeon, chiropractor, acupuncturist, a PT. What else is there? Oh oh, occupational therapy. There's quite a list of people that can facilitate this. Right? But it's it's because you're buttoned in, because the cables are all connected, it's quite an experience. And so with that, they'll put an eye mask on and essential oils and headphones with frequency tracks. I really like to do womb sounds. So it's like, the amniotic fluid in a heartbeat. And you sit in this thing for 40 minutes, and it you melt.

Freddie Kimmel [00:43:58]:
You just melt. And over the next 3 days, you know, that flow is complemented. People their urination increases. They've got some really, really great case studies coming out looking at at inflammatory proteins, interleukin 6. One thing that's really fun to measure is the fluid balance. So intracellular, extracellular fluid ratio, we've meant ideally 2 thirds is in the cell, 1 third is in the extracellular matrix. We can see that move into a favorable range, sometimes in 1 or 2 sessions. And then after the the system has started to move, it can maintain that flow.

Freddie Kimmel [00:44:36]:
So this is a once a week therapy, 40 minutes in the soup. Think about it's like an hour an about an hour ride. And it's something that I've used since last March, and my nervous system is so different than a year ago. So different. It's just a, yeah, lovely therapy.

Katie Deming [00:44:57]:
And so let me ask you this. Like, someone who you know, most of my listeners or many of my listeners have active cancer or healing, is that something that someone can use when they have cancer or they're undergoing active therapy? I'm just thinking about, like, so that people would know, you know, who might use something like this. And, obviously, the other tools and the simple things that we talked about in terms of movement and increasing parasympathetic tone and breathing, that's all something that all of us can do regardless, but I'm just wondering about this for the full body.

Freddie Kimmel [00:45:34]:
You know, I would I would really because our founder, Desiree Despong, and the inventor of this tool, she is a lymphologist for 20 years, but she's also worked in oncology. I would I would let her answer that. It's not a counterindication, but you're gonna find many people are right on the fence. And kind of where we started was don't promote lymphatic flow because we don't want your cancer to spread. And then there's another camp that says, well, all your NK killer cells and all your immune system and your dendritic cells And the, you know, the the memory immune system of your body is it it needs to move. We can't stop a portion of it just because we're treating disease or a malady. Now we're choosing to treat disease or the malady in a very specific way. It's like we tend to go to war against cancer.

Freddie Kimmel [00:46:23]:
We identify tumor. We label tumor. We label cell type. We come up with therapy, and we're focusing on that. I'm I'm a believer. Again, I'm not a medical doctor, but this is just my belief system so far because I've had a lived experience with it, is that you know what? I'll do it this way. It's like I am I am essentially a fishbowl. I'm a saltwater fishbowl.

Freddie Kimmel [00:46:43]:
And if you were to leave a fishbowl alone and put a put a blanket over it and take away the sunlight and take away the bubbling oxygen, you would pull that cloth away in 2 weeks, the fish would all be dead. The water would be moldy. Nobody came along with a with a syringe and injected disease into that fishbowl. It was all in that terrain, but it was in balance because we had elements of sunlight and water. And so my working theory is that we're like a fishbowl. So I wanna maintain flow. I want sunlight. I want joy.

Freddie Kimmel [00:47:17]:
I want oxygen. I want good nutrients. I tend to resonate with the camp of, yes, complement lymphatics. You know, that's that's my thought on it, not a treatment guideline. I do know that that people do use these and while they're in therapy. I think it's a really good idea. If you're ever if you're ever on the fence or you have a question about it, it's it's good to get the permission of your guiding physician or oncologist or your team and say, look. Is it okay for me to do this therapy? Is that against your protocol? Can we have a conversation about this? Again, I I tend to see that it looks beneficial.

Freddie Kimmel [00:47:54]:
There are some types of if you had a physical tumor that you were worried about moving around or was on the top of the skin, Again, there would be nuance in that, and I would I would consult a professional before I made a call either way.

Katie Deming [00:48:07]:
Yeah. Well, that's why I wanted to ask the question just to bring this up so that this is an area that you definitely would want to ask your physician if this is something that given whatever the status of your cancer or whatever treatment that you're having that you would want to check about that. And that all of these, it's a class 2 medical device, so it's being done by practitioners, but not in a traditional medical doctor's office. Most of them, you know, this is not happening in those offices, but I just wanted to bring attention to that. But it may be something that during a specific portion of your treatment, maybe they're saying that they don't want you to do this, but you could do this afterwards or that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I just think that it's you wanna make sure that you're talking to your doctor if you're going through conventional therapy before you would pursue something like this.

Freddie Kimmel [00:49:01]:
Yeah. And, you know, it's it's a great conversation with all these. And and I'm so aware of how amazing and exciting and at the

Katie Deming [00:49:08]:
same time, it's problematic some of these questions could be.

Freddie Kimmel [00:49:08]:
I was just listening to Tyler commenting on this selective antioxidant hydrogen possibly not being a great idea to do while you're doing a chemotherapy or radiation agent that you kinda wanna let this met this because we'll say chemotherapy is a medicine. Let that do its thing, not interfere. Not because you know it would be bad, but you're like, you know what? I don't know, so I will always wanna on the side of caution. Always.

Katie Deming [00:49:44]:
No. And I actually, I say the same thing. I tell people that I think if you're doing radiation or cytotoxic chemotherapy some of the immunotherapies have different mechanisms that are not creating free radicals to damage the cancer cells. But if you're doing conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy or conventional radiation, the mechanism of action is that you're creating free radicals to kill the cancer cells. This is you know? So giving a antioxidant, which if hydrogen is a powerful antioxidant, it potentially interferes with it. So it's just better to just say, okay. Let's not do it during this treatment, and then you can just start up afterwards. But I I I agree with that because I think this is one thing that is theoretical.

Katie Deming [00:50:29]:
We don't know this, but it's like, why would you if you're gonna do that treatment and go through all the side effects and everything, it's, like, better just to be safe until we know the answer. So, actually, like, I I'm glad to hear that he says that too because that's what I tell my patients as well. So

Freddie Kimmel [00:50:46]:
Yeah. And it it is. It's such an interesting time. You know, we have access to some really, really powerful tools in in the wellness slash medical space. I I would just echo that to everybody. Just be over cautious. Really ask, you know, ask the deep questions. See what's right for your body.

Freddie Kimmel [00:51:03]:
I I certainly think after surgery or after your treatment's done, you know, there's great research to show the benefits of lymphatic drainage after surgery. You know, that's one thing, you know, surgical recovery is is something that that we look at. And it was under our our filing for Flopresso is to look at, you know, surgical recovery because we're removing those inflammatory mediators. When they're hanging out a really long time, you're gonna farm you're gonna form worse scar tissue. So that's something where we know moving the drainage system along, it's gonna help even with with growing new lymph nodes. Again, Desiree talks about doing dissections and seeing where the body has grown back areas that have been dissected. So that's it's also possible that the body's gonna work some magic in there that we don't yet know about.

Katie Deming [00:51:52]:
Yeah. Well and, also, it would be, I mean, reasonable. I'm making, like, logical connections here, but that it would be okay after surgery since most of the surgeons put SCDs on patients' legs, which compress their legs to prevent blood clots. So if that's okay, then, you know, having compression with this kind of thing if after just surgery alone, I think, obviously, asking your surgeon, but would be very beneficial for helping with the recovery and the immune mediators after the surgery would just improve all of that. That makes sense to me. Absolutely.

Freddie Kimmel [00:52:29]:
There's a doctor. There's a clinic, doctor Rob Whitfield, who's does very, very large number of explant surgeries in Austin, Texas. And they're just they're starting their wing, and they have 3 flopressos. They have 2 hard shell hyperbarics. And so they before surgery, they're prepping the body. They're readying the lymphatic system. You know, they're going to complement all those drainage pathways and then after the procedure. So and they obviously, that's a medical staff with the nurses and the team, and they're overseeing with incredible care.

Freddie Kimmel [00:52:59]:
But what Rob's able to do is because he understands the body so well, he's even able to do a lot of these procedures without drains in because he understands the value of lymphatics. It's really cool to see some of the stuff he's doing.

Katie Deming [00:53:12]:
That's so cool. Mhmm. Well, Freddie, thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your knowledge on the lymphatic system and the importance of supporting it. Please tell us where people can find you. And I have to say, just shout out, your podcast is just incredible. I love it. I love the content that you put out. And tell people how they can find you.

Freddie Kimmel [00:53:35]:
Yeah. It's it's just the Beautifully Broken podcast on Apple, Spotify. We got a YouTube channel, Beautifully Broken World. And then the website is Beautifully Broken dot World. And all the episodes are listed there. You can search. There's tons of articles. There's a lot of the tech that I talk about.

Freddie Kimmel [00:53:52]:
There's a link there. A lot of times, there's a code for a discount code. But, you know, we're going 200 episodes strong, so we're we're just getting ready to do season 8 now. And it's it's really fun. You know, I had doctor Joseph Pinzon this morning. We we talked about hyperthermia, spot treatment hyperthermia in conjunction with radiation chemotherapy. And and some of the numbers I feel like I have it here. Some of the numbers were incredible.

Freddie Kimmel [00:54:17]:
You know, 44% improvement, 59% improvement, 83% improvement on a lot of these solid tumors just by using an ultrasound device. And this is something that nobody knows about. There's very few centers doing this in the US. This has been medically approved by the FDA since 1986. If this is a great example of, like, because I have these conversations, I get to open doors to these doctors who are doing this. And there's little to no adverse reactions on a lot of these things. I mean, almost when we talk about, you know, lymphatic drainage, when we talk about ultrasound, when we talk about cold therapy, when we talk about fasting, I understand you wanna be responsible, but these are things that are incredibly kind to the body. You know, if if somebody feels tired or has, like, a little extra headache or a little fatigue, that's kind of as bad as it goes.

Freddie Kimmel [00:55:12]:
They're really wonderful therapies, and they do add they do add to outcomes and improvement. And most of the things I just mentioned, all they're doing is they're complementing a regulatory system that already exists in the body. And I think that's really something we need to, you know, just address to get better better stats going on what we're doing now.

Katie Deming [00:55:33]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, it's interesting because in my residency at Duke, we did have hyperthermia. We were one of the sites that was doing clinical trials, and this was, like, in the early 2000. So hyperthermia has been around a long time and actually FDA approved. There aren't very many centers that combine it with radiation, but I love that. I'll have to listen to that episode. Okay.

Katie Deming [00:55:56]:
Thank you so much. It was so great having you on the show, Freddie.

Freddie Kimmel [00:55:59]:
Such a treat. Anytime.

Katie Deming [00:56:04]:
Thank you for joining me on Born to Heal. It's been a privilege to share this time with you, and I hope that today's episode has offered you valuable insights on your journey toward optimal health. Please consider subscribing, sharing this podcast with your friends, and leaving us a review. To learn more about how you can work with me, please visit katydemming.com. You can find additional resources in the episode show notes linked below, and remember to join us next week as we continue to explore more holistic approaches to healing. Until then, this is doctor Katie Deming reminding you that just like me, you were born to heal.