Befriending the Vagus Nerve
Passive & Active "Bottom Up" Approaches to Relax, Improve Mood, Focus & Sleep, Decrease Pain & Muscle Tightness, Improve Social Communication, Lower Inflammation & More
The vagus nerve is amazing. It allows us to relax, focus, socially engage, and have a positive mood. It counters the physiologic stress response in our body, lowers inflammation, and sends and receives information from most of the organs of our digestive, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems.
The vagus also receives information from the nerves of our head and neck to help us unconsciously assess the safety of others. It influences our social communication (discussed in a recent post). When you don’t entirely trust someone you just met and don’t know why, that was your vagus - your “sixth sense” - picking up information your thinking brain didn’t.
What is also great about the vagus is that we can help it help us. If we are experiencing stress, feeling down, having problems focusing, falling or staying asleep, or having pain symptoms, we can elicit help from the vagus. If we have a psychiatric condition, headaches, autoimmune conditions, heart disease, pulmonary disease, gastrointestinal disease, or cancer, we can benefit from understanding the power of the vagus nerve.
In last week’s paid newsletter, I discussed recognizing the signs and symptoms of vagus nerve dysfunction. I also discussed reasons the vagus may not be working up to speed.
In this newsletter, I’ll discuss ways to access and “exercise the vagus nerve.” This can provide immediate benefits, such as calming. However, when done regularly, it can train our neurophysiology to be more resilient. It raises our threshold for becoming stressed and helps us achieve calm more quickly after a stressor.
Passive Approaches
These don’t require conscious awareness:
Put Your Body in a Safe Space
Meditating, praying, or engaging in other contemplative practices. This means removing yourself from things, people, and spaces that can lead to stressful thoughts that stimulate your sympathetic nervous system. Meditation may be guided or unguided. Because our eyes are closed, we don't have reminders, for example, of 'that thing we need to do.’
Be With Safe People With Whom You Have Positive Social Interactions
Using the nerves of our head and neck accesses the vagus nerve in many ways, as was discussed in a recent newsletter.
Active Approaches
These are conscious behaviors.
Simple Deep Breathing
Breathe deeply from the diaphragm so that the stomach expands out. This lowers the diaphragm, which pushes downward and influences the vagal outflow of the heart. Exhale slowly.
Even 3 deep breaths can interrupt the fight or flight response.
Singing or Chanting or Humming
Like breathing exercises, singing requires extended exhalation relative to inhalation. But here, you're also monitoring sounds. The vagus is connected to the muscles at the back of the throat and vocal cords.
You may have seen Kodi Lee, a young blind and autistic man, on American Idol a few years ago. When singing, which he does beautifully, you wouldn't know he has autism; however, when he's not singing, his social communication issues are more evident. Similarly, stuttering or tic-like behaviors can cease when someone is singing.
Humming and gargling can also access the vagus nerve.
Postural Shifts
Dance or other movement
There is a TED talk by Frederico Bitti, who had a movement disorder called cervical dystonia. He discovered that when he danced, his symptoms remitted. High muscle tone indicates excessive sympathetic activity, such as accessing the vagus counters. Dancing became his therapy. (In his talk, he shares a video of himself with his symptoms and without while dancing).
Yoga - which also incorporates attention to breathing
Contemplative practices that involve postural changes, such as kneeling, seem to access vagal tone. This happens through baroreceptors in arteries, which pick up pressure changes created by postural changes. What we assumed was a show of reverence for a higher power may have been, at least in part, a means to physiologically access another state of mind and body. (Porges)
Cold Treatment
Exposure to cold regularly can increase parasympathetic activity
This might look like:
finishing showers with cold water - I started doing this about 4 months ago, starting with 10 seconds at the end of each shower for one week, then 30 seconds for one week, then 1 minute for one week, and then 2 minutes for one week.
putting face into ice-cold water
stepping outside momentarily into the cold
you may have seen people taking this a step further by using ice baths
Interventions That May or May Not Require Assistance
Stanley Rosenberg’s book - "Accessing the Power of the Vagus Nerve: Self-Help Exercises for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Autism" - has exercises involving the cranial nerves that take about 10 minutes a day.
Massage can stimulate the vagus nerve and increase vagal tone. Foot massage has been shown to increase vagal tone, increase heart rate variability, and decrease the fight or flight sympathetic response.
Tapping / EFT /Emotional Freedom Technique - Tapping on particular parts of the face and upper body while cognitively identifying the thought creating the stress response, recognizing the feeling in the body, and changing the narrative - changing the story we are telling ourselves. This is much easier when our bodies are calm, which is what tapping and other interventions do.
Healthy Gut Bacteria
Because of the bidirectional nature of the vagus nerve, a healthy microbiome is key. While there’s growing evidence that gut bacteria improves mood and lowers anxiety by affecting vagus activity, you may notice that when you eat more sugar and carbs, you feel more stressed and irritable (even if you immediately feel good). This is likely due to problematic microbes thriving on sugar and carbs. The more there are, the more toxins our body perceives as a threat, and the more our sympathetic (fight or flight) system is working, and our parasympathetic (vagus) is not.
Devices - Many tools and devices are available, such as implanted devices and vagal nerve stimulators. The tool that I have the most experience with is Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM), which has the potential to access the vagus nerve directly. It has also been used to address structural issues impacting the vagus, such as adhesions and many downstream effects of vagal nerve dysfunction. The Apollo Neuro and Dophin vagal nerve stimulator are two other examples on the market. With any device, there is the potential for increased EMF exposure. The Apollo settings, for example, are controlled by a phone app that communicates with the device via Bluetooth. However, once the setting is chosen, the phone can be put in airplane mode or turned off.
And, last but not least…..Address Sources of Dysfunction, such as structural, microbial, toxic, and traumatic insults.
Though more and more devices are coming on the market, and some are very helpful for some people, the purist in me believes we were made to move, sing, and dance - to use our bodies as instruments of expression and healing.
Wishing you and your vagus nerve moments of joy and peace this week.
CourtneySnyderMD.com
Medical Disclaimer:
This newsletter is for educational purposes and is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment for yourself or others, including but not limited to patients you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your physician for any medical issues that you may be having.