Andrew Huberman

The veins that the lymphatic system feed into before all of that gets back to the heart are called the subclavian veins.

Okay, you have one on your right and you have one on your left.

And as the name suggests,

or sit below, sub your clavicles, okay?

So you have your clavicles, which are, you know, your collarbone, sometimes people call them.

And below those are these vessels that feed back to the heart with the oxygenated blood,

and a bunch of other stuff that needs dealing with by your cardiovascular system.

The lymphatic drainage into these subclavian veins is a major drainage site.

So these are big tubes dropping lymphatic fluid into big tubes.

So this is the end point of the lymphatic system.

Remember, it's a one-way system, up from your legs, out and in from your arms, up through the cisterna chyli, and then,

dumping all that lymphatic fluid back into your blood supply.

This is why in most practices that encourage lymphatic flow or what's often talked about lymphatic massage, whether or not it's for lymphedema or whether or not it's for cosmetic purposes, very often you hear about people encouraging some light rubbing first, followed by some gentle tapping and maybe even eventually some harder slapping of the region around the clavicles.

Very important that you start with light touch and move up towards a more forceful touch, although never particularly forceful because you don't want to collapse those lymphatic vessels.

They're very small.

You don't want to crush them.

You don't want to pinch them because then the lymphatic fluid won't move through them.

So there's kind of this progression from lighter touch and kind of gentle rubbing or shearing of the skin, very, very light, to maybe some light tapping to encourage movement of the fluid along,

some slightly more vigorous, it's not really slapping, but kind of like a padding of the skin.

That's it, a padding of the skin.