Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system. This means that your immune system health is tied directly to your brain health.
The new discovery of lymphatic vessels within the central nervous system means that every neurological disease may very well have an immune component to it. This means that the central nervous system’s immune system and subsequent brain health may have implications for everything from Autism to Alzheimers and even Multiple Sclerosis.
Just like when you have a cold or an infection, your lymph nodes may swell. The lymph node lump the size of a pea on the back of your neck, at the base of your skull behind your ear, or on your neck for example, indicate that your immune system is being attacked by something and it is doing its job to fight back. Since now it is known that there is a lymphatic system within your central nervous system, having an infection shows the possibility of it leading to a neurological condition. This opens up a whole new understanding for various diseases like autism, alzheimers or multiple sclerosis which could be tied directly to brain health as your brain responds to the immune system.
For example, with Alzheimer’s, large pieces of protein have been found to accumulate in the brain. Scientists now think that it happens because these newly found lymphatic vessels are unable, for some reason, to remove the abundance of protein that should not be in the brain. This lymphatic failure is tied to the immune system response which they are now finding may have a direct result on brain health and brain function.
Do to the new findings, scientists are declaring that the textbooks will have to be changed since this is information that they never knew before. It had never been discovered, let alone mapped out, that the central nervous system has it’s own lymphatic system. They said that they had perceived a connection between the immune system and brain health, but never had anything solid to go on in studying the idea further. This discovery of a specific lymphatic vessel immune system in the brain changes everything in the way that the central nervous system and subsequent neurological conditions will be looked at.