In May, a sweat chloride test came back positive. The verdict: atypical cystic fibrosis.
I had already stopped being largely bedridden the month before in April. Many years of rehabilitation would follow.
Walking played a very large role in my recovery. At one point, I was homeless and my daily routine involved walking six to eight hours per day for some months.
The lymphatic system is a key part of this.
Lymphatic fluid is basically your blood stripped of red and white blood cells. While in your blood, it gets moved around by your heart.
But it doesn't stay in your blood vessels. Like water in the Earth's ecosystem, it isn't confined to the creeks and rivers of blood vessels. It seeps out into your tissues like groundwater, becoming interstitial fluid.
It carries nutrients with it to nourish your tissues as it flows out. It carries wastes with it as it flows back into your blood stream.
While out in your tissues, it is beyond the reach of your pumping heart. Its return trip is typically sluggish.
Unless you are in motion. Then your skeletal muscles fill in where your heart can't reach.
Interstitial fluid returns to your blood at several times it's normal rate when you are active. When, in a word, you exercise.
Walking helps your body take out the trash, a necessary element of the healing process largely overlooked by our current medical mental models where we think to add inputs in the form of drugs but mostly don't talk about throughputs.