Watersheds and Body Quadrant in MLD

So, in the previous post, we did start looking into what MLD and lymphatic systems are about.

Now is the time to start explaining how an MLD treatment can do what it does and how the lymphatic system is organised within the body.

Firstly, let’s explain the terms, Watersheds and Quadrants.

Watersheds are imaginary lines that divide the body into quadrants.

The Lymphatic System is divided by 4 major watersheds. The area delineated by those lines are called a quadrant.

There are horizontal watersheds that divide the body in half, Right and Left, running along the middle of the face, and down the middle of the trunk.

In addition, we have other 3 horizontal lines.

The first one, run along the clavicle on the anterior and posterior sides of the body.

The second one runs at the high of the 2nd/3rd lumbar vertebrae, and it is parallel to the ground and the clavicle’s line.

Forth one runs along the inguinal ligament, dividing the body from the upper and lower limbs.

Indeed, for quadrant, we refer to the area delineated from the above-described watersheds.

But why those quadrants and watersheds are so important?

Well, as we dig more and more within the functionality of the Lymphatic System and MLD as a Lymphatic Drainage technique, we can see that in these specific quadrants there are bundles of Lymph nodes that get loaded from the lymph vessels connected to it.

Therefore, a bundle is described as a group of lymph nodes that are connected and pass lymph obligatory load one to each other.

For lymph obligatory load we refer to the liquid that the lymph vessels collect from below the skin.

So what happened after the lymph obligatory load get transported from the bundle along the watersheds?

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Well, after the lymph obligatory load reached the upper watershed(the one running along the clavicle), gets passed to the venous system.

This happens after the lymph obligatory load travels along with the trunk collector and passes through the duct.

The duct is the last portion of the lymph trunk that connects to the venous system.

In conclusion, we want to specify that, the lower quadrants (R leg and L leg) and the upper L quadrant do drain in the L thoracic duct within the L subclavian vein.

Where the R upper quadrant does drain in the R duct connected to the R subclavian vein.

In the next blog post, we are going to look in too the benefits of MLD and where its application can be extremely important.