Health Longevity Secrets
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Health Longevity Secrets reveals the real science behind longevity, metabolic health, fasting, and disease reversal—the protocols that researchers and physicians use in their own lives, not just what they tell patients.
Robert Lufkin MD is a medical school professor, practicing physician, and New York Times bestselling author. After reversing his own chronic disease through lifestyle medicine, he's on a mission to share what actually works.
Each episode features in-depth interviews with world-class scientists, doctors, and biohackers who share their personal health strategies—no sponsored talking points, just real answers.
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Health Longevity Secrets
The Nerve in Your Ear That Controls Stress | Jane Ollis (Sona)
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What if a single nerve in your ear could shift you out of fight-or-flight in 10 minutes? Jane Ollis explains why your vagus nerve and HRV may be the most overlooked levers for stress, sleep, and longevity.
In this episode of Health Longevity Secrets, Robert Lufkin MD sits down with Jane Ollis — founder and CEO of Sona, medical biochemist with a career across NASA, Oxford, and the NHS — to unpack the science of the vagus nerve, heart rate variability (HRV), and the autonomic nervous system. Jane breaks down why HRV is one of the strongest predictors of all-cause mortality, why a tiny patch of "fish gill pipework" in your outer ear is the key to calm, and how Sona's AI-powered closed-loop vagus nerve stimulator personalizes a 10-minute daily protocol to retrain a nervous system stuck in chronic sympathetic overdrive.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 — Introduction
01:01 — Meet Jane Ollis: From NASA and Oxford to Vagus Nerve Science
03:05 — Why Chronic Stress Drives Inflammation, Insulin Resistance and Disease
05:07 — Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic: The Two Arms of Your Autonomic Nervous System
08:09 — The Hidden Benefit of Stress (And Why You Still Need Recovery)
11:13 — Cortisol, Adrenaline and How the Stress Response Actually Works
12:14 — Acetylcholine, Repair Mode and the Parasympathetic Switch
14:19 — Symptoms of Autonomic Imbalance and Sympathetic Overdrive
17:22 — Heart Rate Variability: Why It Predicts All-Cause Mortality
20:27 — HRV, Aging, Blood Pressure and the Baroreceptor Connection
23:29 — Anatomy of the Vagus Nerve: The Body's Communication Superhighway
26:33 — Free Vagus Nerve Hacks: Slow Breathing, Humming and Chanting
28:35 — How Vagus Nerve Stimulation Works (Cervical vs Auricular Branch)
30:37 — From Epilepsy to Depression: 30 Years of Implanted VNS Research
32:40 — Inside Sona: The First AI-Powered Closed-Loop Vagus Nerve Stimulator
35:44 — How to Use Sona: 10-Minute Daily Sleep Ritual and Neuroplasticity Stack
38:46 — Sleep Quality, Deep Sleep and Stroke Rehab: What the VNS Evidence Shows
40:49 — The Future: Personalized VNS for Anxiety, PTSD, Long COVID and Metabolic Disease
42:52 — The Biggest Myth About Stress, Recovery and Resilience
45:00 — Final Takeaway: One Small Action to Calm Your Nervous System Today
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Higher heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the strongest non-invasive predictors of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.
- The parasympathetic nervous system isn't about "switching off" — it switches on repair, digestion, and immune housekeeping via acetylcholine.
- 80% of vagus nerve fibers carry information from the body to the brain — it's a communication highway, not just an output.
- The auricular branch of the vagus nerve in the outer ear (cymba conchae) is a 100% afferent vagal pathway.
- Slow-paced breathing with a long nasal exhale, humming, and chanting are zero-cost vagal activation tools that raise HRV.
- Closed-loop, AI-personalized vagal stimulation may unlock applications in anxiety, depression, PTSD, long COVID, and metabolic disease.
STUDIES & SOURCES:
- Sammito et al., 2022 — HRV as a predictor of all-cause mortality: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36243195/
- Wang et al., 2023 — taVNS in depression meta-analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37230264/
- Wu et al., 2018 — taVNS for depression: Frontiers in Psychiatry
- taVNS for insomnia (PSQI):
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Why HRV Predicts Mortality
SPEAKER_03You could say though that it's a bigger, it's a very uh big predictor of mortality, and that's simply because we know with cardiac disease, actually, it drops. And as we pass out of this world, you have a heart rate variability of zero. It literally disappears.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Health Longevity Secrets Show, where we push the limits of human potential and unlock the secrets to our health and longevity with your host, Dr. Robert Lovkin.
SPEAKER_01What if the most powerful lever in your body for stress, sleep, and longevity was a single nerve you've never been taught to use? Today's guest is Jane Olis, founder and CEO of Sona, a medical biochemist with a career spanning NASA, Oxford, and the NHS, who built the world's first AI-powered closed-loop vagus nerve stimulator that fits in your ear. Jane explains why heart rate variability predicts mortality, why a tiny patch of fish gill pipework in your ear is the key to calm and how 10 minutes a day can retrain a nervous system stuck in fight or flight. You really don't want to miss this one.
SPEAKER_00And now, please enjoy this week's episode.
Meet Jane And The Calm Lever
SPEAKER_01Hey Jane, welcome to the program.
SPEAKER_03Good evening, Rob. Lovely to meet you and of course, super excited to be here on your program tonight.
SPEAKER_01Yes, all the way from London, England. So uh thank you for making it work with your time schedule and everything. I'm so excited about hearing about the work you're doing and the autonomic nervous system in the vagus nerve and how how important and oftentimes overlooked these these are. So so what early life or career influences like like set you on this path towards nervous system science and health technology?
Stress As A Root Cause
SPEAKER_03Well, it's actually a it's not uh as in life, these things are never direct linear paths, are they? So I studied as a medical biochemist. I wasn't great at the finer details, so didn't then end up spending a lot of time in the lab and went on really to focus around environmental science and climate change. And it was really, I think during that time that just looking at um as a species, how our climate change was having this massive impact on us. And it just got me curious about our role, that how stressed we are, um, how we need to improve our resilience to stress um if we want to survive as a species, because it feels like a little bit that humanity's on the edge. That's a bit of a big problem, I know. But I just figured, well, what's the role that I could play in in helping us better cope with the stresses of life? Because you could just see the knock-on impact, not on our health, but potentially um on how we show up in the planet every day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, you you you've spent a lot of years observing this chronic stress and and burnout in real healthcare settings. So could you can you maybe share a defining moment from your career that made you realize we need new tools to deal with beyond what traditional medicine currently offers?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I've spent six years recently at a very big NHS trust here in a non-executive role, so not in a clinical role. But what that gave me the opportunity was to really observe how so many chronic conditions are not always well treated because they don't often get to the root cause of the problem. And you could see that stress really exacerbates that as well. Um, and it just it just felt like that nobody was getting to the heart of the link between stress and chronic conditions, and and the link for me between stress and chronic conditions is the nervous system. So, how do you get to look at that control layer in order to reduce the body's response, the body's response to stresses? And you know, could that mean that chronic conditions could be alleviated, the symptoms and the root cause?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, like like you say, climate change, uh thinking about climate change is very stressful. Or or you know, are other things in our lives, and we're we're probably not going to fix climate change anytime soon. So that stress is gonna be with us for a while, but but so many other things with AI and job displacement and or even things we try to do in our lifestyle. We we add stresses to us as we try to watch what we eat, watch what we you know, exercise, sleep, all these things, even worrying about those, those in themselves drive stress. And then stress itself is one of the fundamental uh lifestyle factors that that we need to we need to correct. It's a it's a driver for inflammation, insulin resistance, all the things, all the things down the line. So so let's let's go back and and sort of unpack that a little bit and see see how um stress, what is stress and maybe how it ties into the nervous system, and and we can begin talking about the vagus nerve, maybe and autonomic nervous system as well.
Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic Balance
SPEAKER_03But that's that's a happy space for me to chat about. So and and I think the starting point is to is it's sort of curious that that doesn't matter what type of stressor we have, whether it's an injury, tough day at work, an emotional problem, actually we just have one single response that the body sets off that is that that is predominantly seen through our sympathetic nervous system. That's the that's the the one of the two arms of our autonomic nervous system that control often sort of uh involuntary responses. So the sympathetic is our our fright and flight response, and then we've got the counter to that, which is our parasympathetic, which is our sort of rest, recovery, healing arm. And it's these two arms of the nervous system that we need to have a healthy tension between. But when you have a lot of stress and you keep activating this sympathetic arm of your nervous system, that's when and you don't have enough recovery time, that's when we have a problem. It's as a species, we are designed for stress, you know, we perform brilliantly under acute stress. It's when we are our most human. But we need recovery time, and we don't need to be, you know, have that activated too many times a day. And that's the challenge we have is too many activations of our stress response, not enough recovery time, which means this sympathetic arm of our nerve autonomic nervous system is always switched on.
SPEAKER_01Let me let me let me highlight a couple of things you said there that's really fascinating is that um throughout our lives, we have many different types of stress. Whether it's a lion about to eat us, it's very stressful and we run away, or it's an argument with our boss or our spouse or you know, people in our lives, the discussion, or even you know, opening up a website and seeing our Bitcoin balance plummeting or our stocks plummeting, which really is just you know pixels on a screen, but it's can be very stressful to people. And that your point was that that different types of stress have kind of a common pathway in our body. In other words, the stress response is very similar between all those different kinds of things. And then then the other point I wanted to highlight is that in the balance between stress and relaxation, it's like, well, I just need to eliminate stress, right? Well, well, actually, we need stress to survive. Maybe you could just talk why is what what how is stressful helping us survive in these situations? How does that what is specifically the stress response, I guess? And how is it beneficial and then how is it uh how is it harmful?
SPEAKER_03Well, it it's beneficial from an evolutionary perspective because it's it was designed to do a couple of things. The first is to release glucose into your blood so that you could move fast. You know, this is all about an escape route, or because you're chasing something that you might need for your, you know, might need for food. So it's quite singular. But what that also does is it really narrows your focus down. So you go from sort of a very blinkered view where you can take in a lot to really having this narrow focus and on that attention to absolute attention to what you're doing, which is why when I'm under a lot of stress, I can't, you know, I can't see fast, I can only just focus on this task at hand. But so those are very powerful, or maybe not moving, but that ability to really focus and to give all your attention, all your cognitive brain into into solving something, those are what probably where we as a species have really thrived, isn't it? Because you know, we've been able to come up with great solutions to tackle problems as they as they face us.
SPEAKER_01So we yeah, so in our in our lives, like like like so many things, like well, like with inflammation, it's it's uh some inflammation is good, but inflammation all the time is bad. And and similarly with stress, some stress is good and it's beneficial, but stress all the time is bad. And so we need that we need that balance between stress and relaxation, sort of the you mentioned sympathetic is stress, SS, stress, sympathetic, and then autonomic nervous system. I mean, then the parasympathetic is the other part of the autonomic nervous system that is the relaxation response, sort of. So so how does that tie in? What are some of the regulatory mechanisms? Of we we we see what causes stress. What are some of the regulatory mechanisms that drive stress or that that our body uses to implement stress versus relaxation?
SPEAKER_03What when you say regulatory measures, that what what are you what are you looking for?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I guess I mean um, well, sort of going towards the vagus nerve or other other neurotransmitters or hormones or other things that what happens in our body when when we get stressed? And and again, maybe in some highlight how that's beneficial in some cases and harmful in other cases, I guess, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's certainly beneficial if you're getting it, you know, you're you're basically taking an energy source and and act of mobilizing that energy source. And as you say, you're also activating some of your inflammatory response as well. And these are all, you know, that's a good short-term protective measure if there is an injury that needs to be that where you need healing. And the the counter to that though is having your parasympathetic system being able to sort of balance that's that sympathetic response. And the the the great thing about the parasympathetic nervous system is it's made up 80% of your vagus nerve. So you're that's that's that's where we can sort of segue into well, what is the balance? What is the what are the levers that can help manage, stop that stress from becoming chronic when it starts to cause real real health problems?
SPEAKER_01Well, you mentioned you mentioned the vagus nerve, and we're going to talk about that in a minute as a as a as a driver of the parasympathetic nervous system. On this, on before we get into that, on the sympathetic side, uh, when we stimulate the stress or the sympathetic nervous system, is that through nerves also, or hormones, or a combination thereof?
SPEAKER_03Combination of both. So you've got cortisol, which is released through an axis that goes from the hypothalamus in the brain down to the adrenal glands. That's a slightly slower release. And then the sympathetic nervous system itself has got a whole suite of neurotransmitters. I'm thinking particularly of adrenaline, noradrenaline, or epinepinephrine, and norepinephrine, if I use the U the US terms. And uh and you know, they they again, you know, every cell is going to benefit from that in a short-term um way in terms of how it takes up and uses energy.
SPEAKER_01So the so the stress sympathetic response is is um what you're saying is largely uh chemical, neurochemical, hormonal for the most for the most part. But now the parasympathetic is different. And how is that? The the relaxation side.
SPEAKER_03It is different in that it's key neurotransmitter, or there are several in the brain, but acetylcholine, which is it's is probably the most the well well known and talked about. And this role is to turn on different systems. So a lot of people think this parasympathetic system is all about switching things off. That's absolutely not true. It's just about switching on different systems. So when you're under a parasympathetic um moment, because these two things are always intentional it's about giving the cells opportunity to switch from alert into repair mode. So this is when you're going to be doing any of your housekeeping in your cells, you'll be able to be able to repair things, build things, um, and that that's the key thing. So from a the other way to think about it is when you're very stressed, you can't digest food very easily, uh, all that gets switched off. When you're in relaxed mode, all of the all of the systems for digestion, processing, healing, recovery are all coming into play.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we we we hear buzzwords, uh things like autonomic imbalance or uh uh dysautonomia uh or or fight or flight dominance. So so scientifically, what what happens to our physiology when let's say somebody like chronic stress locks someone in a sympathetic drive?
SPEAKER_03Well, I it shows up often first as a whole range
HRV Explained Without The Hype
SPEAKER_03of symptoms, which could be from obviously sleep disappearing, uh um just irritability, mood swings, uh tummy pains, I mean, all of the things that that are really sort of early early measures of that. Um but what that you then start to see in your physiology again could be varied. But one of the markers that we look up is within the cardiac function are called heart rate variability. Um, and that's a measure of how balanced your autonomic nervous system is. Now that might sound like quite a complex uh thing to put forward, but it is a good broad measure of how well these two arms of your nervous system are working together. So that's the first thing from a physiology perspective that I I would be looking for to see um how this what this marker is looking like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I want to I want to talk about heart rate variability, but before we get into that, I guess are there are there any other like lab markers? Or you know, we hear about C reactor protein for inflammation. And are there any blood markers that that will indicate either either sympathetic dominance or parasympathetic dominance or autonomic imbalance? Is there any any signs of that?
SPEAKER_03Certainly some of the inflammatory markers, and you you'll probably be better positioned than me to sort of describe what those might be. Um cortisol, you could also look at, but of course, cortisol changes across the day, so um that you can take cortisol samples from saliva measures, etc. But again, that will jump around um during the day, so how reliable that is. But that that's that's probably um the two that would be the most standout to look at if you want to look at any blood-based, um blood-based biomarkers.
SPEAKER_01And then as far as um as far as just symptoms, um you you mentioned many different things. Are are there is it is it is there anything specific uh that you know, oh, this symptoms, uh I should look at my autonomic nervous system, or is it just blended in with so many dysfunctional symptoms that it's hard to have specificity necessarily?
SPEAKER_03I I think it is. I think we're all it's it's incredibly complex, and the way it shows up for me might be different for you, different times of life, different women, perhaps different times of the month. Um, it it is, and and I think that's why it's it's a it's quite hidden, isn't it? This this layer of autonomic nervous control. And therefore, the way that medicine has evolved hasn't been around actually looking at that as a key control layer. Um, it's been around managing symptoms as they show up. So for me, this is the exciting part of the journey in front of us is how do we really understand how we can get more rebalance of this in a very precise way, of this control layer of the autonomic nervous system, because it shows up in all sorts of all sorts of ways.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that really represents the challenge clinically for all of us is that yes, it does have many, many symptoms, you know, all the way from you know irritable bowel disease or diarrhea to headaches to you know muscle pain, joint pain, all these things. It has so many different symptoms, but the problem is they're non-specific and they can be caused by other things as well. So it's it's you know, it's it's challenging that way. So so let's talk about heart rate variability then, because this is this is something this is this uh this biomarker, is this more specific for autonomic dysfunction?
SPEAKER_03I see it as a broad marker of of autonomic balance rather than dysfunction. And again, I say that because there's no gold standards, there's no benchmark to say if your heart rate variability is 40 milliseconds, because it's it's it's it's the measure of the interbeat intervals between the heartbeat, which is a function of the autonomic nervous system, and there is no right or wrong. Although you could say, basically higher is better, you could say though that it's a big uh it's a very uh big predictor of mortality, and that's simply because we know with cardiac disease actually it it drops, and and as we pass out of this world, you have a heart rate variability of zero, it literally disappears. But um, as a as a general, as as a general rule, I never say there's a there's a you know your good, it's good yours is good or bad, it's wherever you are at at the time that is key.
SPEAKER_01So heart rate variability then it's the it's the the space between beats, sort of, and how much that varies literally, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the bigger the better. So your heart doesn't beat like a metronome. We think of it perhaps as a metronome because you might, you know, the general view is that you might know how many heartbeats you have in a minute. So you know you might have a resting heartbeat of 60 beats, and that might be a good and that's what your G your physician might talk to you about. But actually, what we're interested in is the next layer down, which is so what's the interbeat intervals? Because your heart doesn't beat like a metronome, and that can give us a lot of rich information there for about how your nervous system is performing.
SPEAKER_01So you could have two people could have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, but one could have a high heart rate variability with that same beat because it's measured by the milliseconds between the beat, and there could be variability in there. Is that right? That's absolutely correct.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So why then I have to ask why what's the advantage? Why is one healthier than the other? Why is increased variability a healthier measurement? What is that, what is that showing or predicting, or how does that make me healthier to have variability?
SPEAKER_03It it's a measure of how well your power your vagus nerve is performing. Um, so that that that is what we're looking to see from this is again a a measure of how strong your parasympathetic system is, as indicated by the by the vagus nerve. Um, and so therefore the the the bigger the heart rate variability, the more we can say you've got a more balanced, effective vagal system operating, um, which is going to mean that you're going to have a healthier response to stress and more heads into stress.
SPEAKER_01So that variability means that uh I'm better able to handle stressors as they come on somehow, um doing that. And I'm I'm curious why we can't get a better measure of normal versus abnormal. I mean, I think with populations, you could just, you know, at least population-wise, you could say fine, higher is better than lower, but uh there's you can't really get a cutoff, huh?
SPEAKER_03Well, there is a general rule, and that is it declines with age. So that's why maintaining heart rate variability as you enter in the more mature years of life, such as my good self here, is is is obviously better for me in terms of my resilience, but also if I've got a higher heart rate variability, it's a good um predictor that actually I've got a healthier bar receptor in my heart, which is mean that I've got a my bar receptor is my natural pacemaker. So it's a good chance that therefore I've got a better chance of of maintaining uh a healthy blood pressure. Um, and if you you'll know if you've got a healthy blood pressure, then you've you you've got a lot of other upstream health effects as well. So from a Healthy aging perspective, maintaining your heart rate variability as high as you can, as long as you can, is really good. Mine is averages still around 40 to 50. And I was with a lady today, we had a whole lot of um uh uh uh sessions with people trialing out our product, and she was about my age, but she had a heart rate variability of 90. Now that is what you might see in a young 30-year-old who's an athlete, um uh as well, as where I another lady that was with had us had a heart rate variability of 20. So I think that you can just see the stretch of the delta between a couple of individuals. But the main thing is to know that it's your baseline and there's always room to improve it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and just out of curiosity, between these two populations, let's say people with a 20 heart rate variability, which is very low and not good, and versus a very high heart rate variability, are there if you looked at them, how would they look differently? Is one an athlete, one is fit and muscular, and the other, or or what what can you see? Are there any associated findings with heart rate variability that track with them other than lifespan?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, lifespan you're gonna see. Yes, you would generally expect to see an athlete, someone who's doing a lot of exercise, who who who is able to maintain a really, really peak heart rate variability. So, yes, that would be the general general assumption, is is it exercise, as we know, has all sorts of benefits on brain health, um uh uh which are really well described. And and certainly good heart rate variability um is is going to derive, be supported by someone who's very active and keeping physically very fit.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we've got we've got the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic, the sympathetic. We need to balance them. Uh and one one indicator of this is heart rate variability, not in an absolute number, but just higher, higher is better than lower. Um, so let's let's now talk about um the vagus nerve and how how does that fit
What The Vagus Nerve Does
SPEAKER_01into the picture? Now we touched on it before with the parasympathetic nervous system. Maybe expand on that a little bit. Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_03So your vagus nerve is is your longest nerve in your body. So that's the first thing. And it's and it's and its other name is wandering nerve. It's it's it literally connects your brain to all of your organs. And I think of it a bit like as a as a as a communication superhighway. You know, its main function is to send information about the state of affairs across all of your organs to your brain. So 80% of its fibers, it's made up of bundles, is all about sending signals to the brain about how's it going? You know, it do we have a problem down here? Is how how are things looking? So it's it's it's this communication super highway. Um, and then the brain will then think about how it responds to that information. Um, so that that's that's really key. But the other key thing about the the vagus nerve is it makes up a huge percentage of your parasympathetic nervous system. So its ability to activate these systems for recovery and repair are absolutely vital for a healthy life.
SPEAKER_01So 80% of the of the nerve is due to signals from out from the peripheral body going back to the brain, right? So obviously 20% left. That's from the brain going out. And but you say it its important function is to relax. And is that does the relaxation occur from the brain telling the body to to relax, or is it the body telling the brain to relax, or both?
SPEAKER_03Or well, it's it's a obviously it's a it's a an ongoing sort of closed loop circuit, but yeah, it's signaling to the brain, are we safe? Can we activate these, you know, can we get into repair and recovery mode? Uh, is there any other problems that we need that we need to be aware of? Um so it it is it is um it is what woven all into into all of your organs. Um and the heart and that's where the heart rate variability comes from, is seeing how this nerve is therefore affecting how how the how the heart is performing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's one of the the mechanisms because the vagus nerve goes to the heart also and literally stimulates the the pacemaker and the the control of the beats and the inner inner beat variability. So there is a it makes sense that this would be happening. So now we've got this control of the parasympathetic nervous system. Now some people come along and go, hey, this is a nerve, it's the biggest nerve in the body, the longest nerve, it's exposed. Let's let's see what we can mess with it or stimulate it for health benefits. So talk about vagal nerve stimulation. What's going on there?
Breathing And Simple Vagal Activators
SPEAKER_03Well, and and maybe as one step before stimulation is there's a is is and something that I've do every day, regardless of stimulation, is how you use your breathing to activate the vagus nerve. And I don't know if you want to pick up on that now or some point, but that is the zero-cost way to improve your heart rate variability is how you how we use our respiratory apparatus, because that's linked to the heart, to the brain. So using slow breathing, very slow paced with a long exhale, also it's an and it's a mechanical hack, it's nothing to do about thinking, it's actually physically changes the the capacity that your heart sits in within within within within your chest, and it helps therefore send signals from the heart to the brain to activate the vagus nerve. I don't know if I've explained that very well, but simply to say that slow-paced breathing with a long exhale out through your nose is a zero-cost way to improve your heart rate variability and big and strengthen the vagus nerve signaling between the heart and the brain.
SPEAKER_01And and I've heard um that uh even things like like singing or humming, where we stimulate the neck, can actually stimulate the vagus nerve in a in a beneficial way for relaxation. And even some of the old singing traditions from religion are dealing with plumbing and and chanting and and all actually have this beneficial physiologic effect as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's super interesting. I I always call those sort of activation pathways because you're just trying to activate them through uh rather than stimulating, which is to me something that's that's more um uh uh in our case involves a little bit of a little bit of technology, but it's how do we activate these vagal pathways by just taking advantage of some simple, simple, simple, and they are biohacks because they you know they are all available. So that's that's I just think good news.
SPEAKER_01So if it's not enough just to chant and hum and uh or sing, and we want to actually go in and stimulate it, talk about how do you stimulate the vagal nerve and what what kind of effects do you get from that?
Ear Based Vagus Nerve Stimulation
SPEAKER_03Well, the the the interesting thing is there's a couple of places in the body where the vagus nerve is very, very close to the skin. Um, one of them is so the nerve comes out um from around the brain and it comes down on the side of the neck. So this is this branch of the vagus nerve called the cervical branch, you can um stimulate from there. Um so that's that's one place, and that's where implanted vagus nerve stimulation started. So actually, a little implant that's wrapped a cuff that wraps around the nerve has been used for about 30 years. The other place where the vagus nerve shows up um is in the ear. So the ears are like a fascinating place. We think of it for hearing, obviously, for but actually the ear is a great place for getting physiology. We can measure heart rate variability from the ear, but also the the the the auricular um branch of the vagus nerve comes out, and I'm pointing into the this sort of if you push your finger into the side here, this cymbaconcha it's called, it's like the little bowl above your ear canal. Um, that is a hundred percent afferent vagal fibers, so that's just fibers that are going on a one-way system to the brain. It's a piece of evolutionary pipework that has no benefit to us now. It's it's literally a throwback to the days when we had fish gills, and you know, and that wasn't yesterday, was it? That's like you know, millions of years ago. It's literally that old, this auricular branch of the vagus nerve. And I think that's why traditionally it's been used in acupuncture. So the ear has always been seen as a route to access systems for calm. Um, and we've been looking interested in how do we do that in a slightly more precise way through actually trying to mimic the firing of the vagus nerve from the ear to activate the vagus nerve. So those are the two places where you can get into the vagus nerve from out, you know, from from the from the skin.
SPEAKER_01Well, before before we talk about your device and how you how you actually do it in the ear, um, you mentioned before medical indications with with uh vagal nerve implants in the neck. What sort of conditions are those for?
SPEAKER_03Well, interestingly, it started as um for epilepsy, it's still used, um, and uh uh which is of course a life-saving uh um intervention. And the discovery made after this this this this treatment had started was that those patients who are presenting with symptoms for depression saw a real uh reduction in those depressive symptoms. And that sort of opened up then, uh this is 25, 30 years ago, therefore thinking about well, what's the role of this nerve? How does it, you know, how how could we really look at how to activate it? What other benefits might it have? So that it's from that that early observation that research into the vagus nerve started off. Um and I've completely forgotten the rest of your question now. No, that was that was about it.
SPEAKER_01Some just medical things.
Sona Closed Loop Biofeedback Device
SPEAKER_01Yeah, before we we before we dive in, because I want to talk about you're the you're obviously the you're you're the founder and CEO of a company that makes a a Sona uh device. Um and it's um it's interesting because it it's it stimulates the the vagus nerve, but it's different than other other vagal nerve stimulators, even other consumer vagal nerve stimulators, because it um it it it has a biofeedback loop in it. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how it works, what yeah, what what what's going on there with that? Yeah, do you want me to show you one or just to? Sure, yeah. I have mine here. I just can't put it on because my uh I have my earplugs in, but I have my this is about how big it is, but you you can demo it if you want. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Just to show, so this this so this is Sona, and um my I I didn't start off as wanting to build a vagus nerve device either. I I was curious about how we decode stress, and then a very eminent professor who I talked to, he was the one who told me and and and did all my teaching around vagus nerve in the ear. So he's he was uh so so that this bit sort of nearly came second. But this is um, you can see I've got my finger here. So this is a PPG sensor on the back. So a PPG sensor, don't ask me to pronounce the full name, it always escapes me, but it's the same little sensors you have on most wearable, um, your your your garments, your Fitbits, your Apple Watches, and it's shining a light, a very um bright light to measure the the um the blood volume underneath of it, and that gives us a measure of of so we can measure heart rate, heart rate variability from there. And this bit sits in the cymbocontia, and what we've got is two electrodes here. Um, and what we're trying to do is pass a tiny, tiny little current that's activated, that's literally trying to mimic natural firing of the of the of the nerve. Um, and we're placing them in the in the cymbocontia and on the tragus. This is that flappy bit on the front, and the intention is to maximize these areas and to be able to to to to pass a small current that travels along the base of your ear canal into the brainstem at the back. Um, and so we wanted a really nice simple weight form factor that was easy. Um, and this was this was the result of many years and many ears. We've realized that everyone's ears are very different, and everyone would say, Jane, I've got such, you know, my ears are really weird. I'm sure this won't fit. Um, and uh, I say everyone's ears are weird, they are truly weird things. Um, so this is designed to fit everyone's ears.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a it's a great concept. And just to be clear, it's different from the wearables like the the smart rings we wear, or the Fitbits, or even the Apple Watches, in that not only does it monitor uh biometric signals, but then it it takes the next step as it intervenes and actually gives therapy, if you will, or at least it it stimulates the vagus nerve. So it's a it's a complete feedback loop. It just doesn't tell you how you're doing, it actually does something in an effort to to uh modulate the vagal nerve function and then does a feedback loop. That's fascinating with that. How does how does that work? Or what is what does a typical session look like? How do you wear it all day long? Do you just wear it for a session? How long is a session? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_03Well, it is all up to you at the at the because you because you are in control and driving. But um I recommend 10 to 20 minutes a day. Um, for me, this is about how does it fit into the world that I live in, rather than saying you've got to sit for an hour. And um what we observed in heart rate variability is you generally see a quite quick rise and then a little bit of a generally a little bit of a peak down. So 10 minutes is good because we're trying to adjust an autonomic nervous system that might have been, you know, my case in a mid-50s year old um woman that that you know who's who's done a lot in life, that's quite set in its ways. And and I think that nervous system deal, you know, trying to trying to budge that is not a go hard fast, it's a like a gentle retuning, a gentle retuning. And uh so so small, consistent training is is key to success rather than you know hard and fast. Um I also, I mean, for me, I was particularly wanting to improve my sleep, which um was a symptom which had which uh for for various reasons was was not good. So I do a 10 10 minute sleep ritual, which is which is to just help me really get into that uh relaxation space before I go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01So that's the that's your preferred time just before bed, uh put it on while you read or just meditate or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it comes with beautiful soundtracks and meditation, so you can pair it. And I think that's the other key thing about the vagus nerve stimulation is that when you are stimulating, we're also the brain's more open to learning things. We we we've you we've got this effect called neuroplasticity where the brain is like, ooh, you know, I could be persuaded here to take in some new information about you know how safe I'm feeling, or uh and so pairing stimulation, layering it with some nice audio and meditation. And clinically, as an example, it's been used for um stroke rehabilitation where they're pairing stimulation with physiotherapy. And you might say, well, why are they doing that? And actually, the hypothesis is you the brain is more open to learning things when you're stimulating. So if you're helping people relearn upper limb movements, for an example, that you're pairing stimulation in that case with you with physiotherapy, and this is shown to increase the speed of relearning those um upper limb movements. So the reason I mentioned that, yeah, is is is just to is is yes, we're getting this relaxation response, but also whilst we were there, the brain's more open to retaining new information.
SPEAKER_01So the so the bio the biohacker in me has to ask. So we so I get the heart rate variability, there's no absolute number, higher is better than lower. So for me, I'll have my own number, whatever it is. It's you know, over time. If I begin using this, do you would I be able to see my heart rate variability go up over time as I use it more and more? Have you seen those kind of results or anything?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh, yeah, in our in our testers, definitely um you can see it in session. Not always. Again, sometimes it's just it's it's it's very stubborn and it won't move. Um, and but what we've seen in pairing the stimulation with the slow breathing, doing those as a as a sort of a little mini stack is the heart rate variability will stay higher for longer. So there's something quite powerful about how you how you you can just put it on and wear it, and that's fine. But if you want to sort of really look at experiment about how to really amplify the effects, then layering it with some slow breathing, some music. I mean, music is one of our most powerful neuromodulators.
SPEAKER_01Well, so what does the current evidence
Sleep Gains Evidence And Future Uses
SPEAKER_01show? Both either for Sona's own user data or other published data uh about the facts. We've talked about heart rate variability. How about any effects on sleep quality, stress reactivity, cognition, anything like that?
SPEAKER_03So sleep quality we've seen in our testers. Um, deep sleep is the particular metric that seems to get a nice shift. And deep sleep is obviously the part of your sleep where your brain's doing all its housekeeping and consolidating memories. We haven't done any of our own clinical studies yet, but the data that I've looked at from published evidence around uh vagus nerve stimulation and sleep against a control group does show improvement in efficiency in the length and the quality of sleep. And that's measured objectively through, I can't remember what the score is called, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. You know, it's a global standard for measuring sleep quality. So there is good evidence around vagus nerve stimulation for for sleep. Um, and that that that is that is well established and a growing growing field of research.
SPEAKER_01Well, could could this technology one day be prescribed clinically for things like anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic fatigue? Or is it I know now it's for wellness strictly, but will do you see that changing?
SPEAKER_03Um absolutely. And I think the reason why it hasn't moved faster um as a as an intervention is because you need to know how to personalize the stimulation. You know, in a lot of clinical studies, as you would know, you have to fix the protocol that you want to use and then compare that against a control group. That's how we do clinical studies and we work out whether there's an effect that you could say is measurable. But I think in in this area of nerve stimulation, you have to be able to optimize it for a user and then compare that. And that hasn't happened. So that ability to personalize, which is what we're focused on, I hope will make a difference, not just for us, but for the field, to be able to learn how to advance this technology and to make it available across a number of those indications. Certainly anxiety, depression, PTSD. Uh, I'd love to focus around chronic fatigue and long COVID. That's because I just see we've had a lot of people come and talk to us about that. But it it it has been slow, I think, in gaining that clinical credibility for the for the reason that I've just stated.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and this feedback loop that you have that allows the system essentially to think for itself, to deliver an optimized treatment session personalized for that patient based on their own heart rate variability. That's really, I mean, I think it's pretty much unique in the consumer space for these types of devices, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03It definitely is the first that's that's you know, got a sort of a thinking layer and that ability to have a closed loop system. Um, and you know, we will work hard to not only have this, but to add other, you know, we'd love to add other other sensors, other markers, other ways to, you know, really even notch up another layer of precision so that we've got something that's really accessible and uh you know affordable and you know it's a valuable tool that can help you know so many different people.
Biggest Myth And Practical Takeaways
SPEAKER_01What what's the biggest myth about stress recovery and and resilience that you wish everybody would unlearn if they could?
SPEAKER_03Uh I think the the biggest myth um I think we push ourselves too much, and you know, going harder and faster is uh and thinking that you'll just push your way through it is is set to fail. That that is set to fail.
SPEAKER_01What's the what's the future going to hold for Sona and similar products? Where do you see this in five to ten years and that that may be that may be too long and the way science is accelerating with AI around us, uh the world may be completely different in five years. But what what does the future hold? What are you excited about down the road for this type of technology?
SPEAKER_03So I'm excited about this this this field of precision recovery. And that recovery could mean a whole different things. It could be around um, it could be around an inflammatory condition, it could be around a mental health condition, it could be around diabetes and metabolic control. I just think there's a bright future to look at how by using this lens. Of precision couldn't control, it could have a benefit on a whole range of chronic conditions. And that would be my my dream.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we didn't, we didn't get, we talked a little bit about it uh offline, but we didn't get the chance to dive into uh metabolic disease and how how autonomic dysfunction stress really drives metabolic dysfunction and how they're really related. So maybe maybe when you come back again on the podcast, we could talk, we could talk more about that. But before before we go, is there anything we haven't covered today, or is there is there any final thought you'd like to leave our audience with?
SPEAKER_03Uh just to know that whatever what however stressed you know you you you think you're feeling, there is a way out of it. And the first most powerful thing to do when you're feeling stressed is to take one action because i i it immediately will dial down your amygdala. That's the little bit of brain in your brain that's your threat detector, just purely by the fact you've decided to do one thing today that's going to be better, and that could just be because you're gonna go for a walk, you're gonna get outside, you're going to move, you're gonna do some slow breathing. One small thing will have a big it's lots of small big things take one step today.
SPEAKER_01That's great advice. I love it. Well, well, thank you so much, Jane, for for talking with us today. The device is called Sona, and we'll have some links and maybe a discount in our in our show notes for those of you who are interested in trying out. It's available, it's available in the UK and also in the US and and other places as well. We can go to your website, we'll have it in the show notes. Maybe you could just tell us your website for those who are listening. Only uh tell them how to find you. You can't find us at Sona.help H E L P. I love it. Thanks again, Jane. Uh look forward to chatting with you again soon. I really love this. Thank you so much.
Where To Find Sona And Subscribe
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SPEAKER_02Oh, sorry. This is for general information and educational purposes only. It is non-turning to a constitute or substitute for medical advice or council. The practice of medicine and the healthcare dynamic or the creation of the patient.