Objective 38: Relate edema and lymph flow

I just used this picture as a visual aid to see the comparison of blood flow and lymph flow.  I learned from research that lymph basically moves because of a pressure gradient. When the fluid pressure outside of the lymph capillaries is higher on the outside, lymph flows in. Because there is no pump for the lymph fluid, it moves through the body very much the same way that blood returns from the distal limbs to the heart; through skeletal muscle contraction and change in pressure due to respiration. Knowing that the lymph node pictured above is basically a large filter for all of the stuff that your body has to process; its easy to understand that the nodes can sometimes become backed up.  Thus the backing up of the lymph fluid can cause edema.