[Rising Phoenix's note: We are including brief excerpts from this open, publicly available article, and the link to the full article below, with gratitude to the NYT for carrying such an important medical breakthrough!]
It’s all connected
Excerpts from the article:
We’ve long known about two systems in the human body that circulate fluids… the lymphatic system, which removes excess fluid from tissues, …and the cardiovascular system, which pumps blood through our arteries, veins and capillaries…
Now, scientists think they may have come across a third. In 2021, after examining the skin of people with tattoos, researchers saw in their biopsies that ink particles had traveled deeper into the body than they expected, through the skin into an interstitial space beneath it — and from that space into the fascia, the connective material below…
The discovery — a hidden pathway between two layers of tissue not known to connect in this way — was a surprise. It has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the human body and for our health. Because that interstitial space doesn’t just exist between the skin and the fascia, researchers discovered. There are spaces like it throughout the body, forming pathways between organs and allowing fluids, cells and molecules to move between them before re-entering the lymphatic and cardiovascular systems.
Scientists call this large interconnected network the interstitium. It’s the subject of an incredible story in The New York Times Magazine by Avraham Z. Cooper, an associate professor of medicine at Ohio State University…
West meets East
…Traditional Chinese medicine holds that acupuncture is a way to balance the flow of energy — known as chi — through one of the body’s 12 main meridians. Acupuncturists insert thin needles into specific points along those meridians to enhance the flow of chi.
Those specific acupuncture points are within the same areas of connective tissue where fluid flows through the interstitium, researchers found. And when they injected dye into acupuncture points on the forearms of volunteers, it slowly migrated up the arm along a meridian.
“This pathway doesn’t go in the veins, it doesn’t go superficially,” one researcher said. Instead, he told Cooper, it flows through the interstitium between the muscles: “When I saw that, I said: ‘We’re onto something...’…
The future is past
… Please read the whole story here.
[Rising Phoenix's note: I encourage you all to read this article! You might have to register to read it, but you do not need a subscription. I am grateful this is an open article, everyone will benefit from what has been discovered!]