The Facial Massage That Keeps Dementia At Bay

That’s a bold claim for a title, but it has to do with lymphatic drainage and brain waste clearance, such as beta-amyloid and alpha-synuclein clearance, to avoid Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, respectively.

We’ve written about the lymphatic system before:

The Lymphatic System Against Cancer & More

Everything in its place

Because of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) that keeps the astonishingly sensitive brain as safe as it can from unwanted things, there are many aspects of our physiology that only happen inside the brain, or only happen outside of it, as the compounds in question may be too large to get through the BBB.

The lymphatic system is, in and of itself, an entirely outside-of-the-brain affair. So, how does stuff get cleaned out from the brain? That’s the job of the glymphatic system (a portmanteau of glial cells doing the job of the lymphatic system), which is the brain’s own cleanup crew, and we wrote about it here:

How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)

However! There is no drainage port directly from the brain to the outside world, so once the glymphatic system has got the detritus out of the brain, it’s the job of the lymphatic system, and then the general circulation, to take it the rest of the way for eventual detoxification and/or excretion.

We wrote more about that, here:

Take Care Of Your Lymphatic System To Beat Cognitive Decline

In that article, after our explanations, we concluded that the practical things to do are:

• For the lymphatic system: do lymphatic massage, exercise with a focus on maximizing movement, and eat an anti-inflammatory diet
• For the glymphatic system: do vagal massage (Vagal! Not vaginal, which will not help! Or rather: it won’t help the glymphatic system, anyway), exercise and/but also rest well (good quality sleep, ideally on the right-hand side, but at the very least side-sleeping, not on your back*), and eat omega-3 fatty acids

*See: Goodnight, Glymphatic System: How Your Sleep Position Changes Dementia Risk

So… How about that massage?

First, some backstory:

Last year, a South Korean research team (Dr. Jin-Hui Yoon et al.) identified a distinct lymphatic network at the back of the nose—the nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus (NPLP)—which plays a key role in draining cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the brain to the deep cervical lymph nodes.

This is important, because as we made a nod to up top today, efficient CSF drainage is critical for removing waste from the brain. In contrast, poor clearance typically leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Especially noteworthy was that these lymphatics remained functional in aging mice*, suggesting they could be targeted to treat impaired CSF outflow in neurodegenerative diseases.

*This was a transgenic mouse study, by the way. If you remember when Donald Trump said that scientists were spending millions to make transgender mice, well, that’s not a thing scientists are actually doing, but transgenic mice are a real thing often-used in a lot of important studies like this one (transgenic = “we changed their genes”). In this case, transgenic mice with fluorescent lymphatics allowing for the use of advanced imaging to map these lymphatic pathways. The NPLP showed distinct anatomical features such as unique valves and short lymphangions, as well as three major drainage routes:

• Near the pituitary and cavernous sinus,
• Along the basolateral dura near the middle meningeal artery,
• Near the cribriform plate into the olfactory mucosa—all converging at the NPLP.

We’re aware that’s a lot of big words, but fear not, the paper itself has pictures/diagrams: Nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus is a hub for cerebrospinal fluid drainage

More recently (published today, at time of writing; let it never be said we don’t give you hot-off-the-press science news), a larger team of researchers, many of whom from the first group, investigated how well this knowledge could be used to improve drainage, first in mice as per the first study, and then in monkeys.

They found, by the way, that the mapped lymphatics also continued to work in aging monkeys, despite other drainage routes often failing, the ones near the skin of the face were still functional—which means they almost certainly will be still functional in aging humans, too.

A handheld massage device applying controlled light pressure to the facial skin of aged mice significantly restored CSF drainage to youthful levels without disrupting natural lymphatic rhythms.

Of course, this technique offers a safer alternative to drugs or surgery. As such, the researchers are now exploring clinical applications, such as wearable devices, and studying the method’s effectiveness in diseases like Alzheimer’s.

You can read the paper in its entirety (again, with images and diagrams, which may be more useful than the previous ones, as this time there are monkeys, not just mice), here:

Increased CSF drainage by non-invasive manipulation of cervical lymphatics

Want to learn more?

You might like this book we reviewed a little while ago:

The Book of Lymph – by Lisa Levitt Gainsely ← includes how to manually do lymphatic massage of the sort done by the handheld massage device in the study we talked about today

Take care!