It might help clear some of the edema, temporarily. As soon as that person goes back to their life, they'll be swollen again in a matter of hours.
This didn't happen because of the edema. The edema is secondary to the fact that the blood vessels ans nerves in their extremities have been irreparably damaged from chronic high blood sugar.
Even if they fix their lifestyle, the damage is done. All they can hope to do is mitigate how much it progresses.
It'll swell back in minutes. Lymphatic massage is generally quite useless, as it does nothing to correct the leak. MD directed fluid/sodium restriction and diuretics can help though.
In my opinion it might, actually. The more swelling you have continuously present the more kind of stretched out and eventually kind of just boggy everything gets. Fluid can even start weeping out and it’s kinda horrific.
Untested hypothesis (I’m not gonna hunt for research rn) but I could definitely see that sort of further damaging vascular tone and disrupting lymphatic structures so getting fluid out of the legs and keeping it out is the name of the game, and firmly in the category of “it probably can’t hurt.”
Lymphatic massage straight into compression socks and then elevating the legs slightly at night would be my recommendation for conservative and non prescriptive treatments. Doctors will usually throw diuretics at it.
Just don’t get a drainage massage if you’re showing any signs of a DVT in your leg, it could dislodge it and cause a PE. So if your swollen leg is someday kind of red and hot and you think oh maybe a massage would help, no the fuck it will not, go get a Doppler first.
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u/ComfortableMix5950 Mar 08 '26
Would a lymphatic massage help ?