What is the Vagus Nerve?

Episode 15

This episode provides you with much more than just a scientific understanding of your vagus nerve or a list of “vagus nerve hacks.” The vagus nerve is your mind-body superhighway, sending nonstop information from your body to brain and brain to body and is the star of the show in optimizing mental and physical health. In this conversation I help you build an understanding of, and relationship with it, as part of your entire nervous system in a way that feels tangible and applicable to your healing journey. There is no one size fits all blueprint to improving vagal tone or healing things like anxiety, depression, chronic illness, and so on. But there are a number of research-supported practices that can heal in measurable and tangible ways. There are powerful ways to work with your physiology to shift and heal your psychology. I’ll share many of those with you here. Hit play to learn more!

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Disclaimer:
The Regulate & Rewire podcast and content posts by Amanda Armstrong is presented solely for general informational, education, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast of materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advices of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

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Transcript

00:00

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

00:28

If your mental and physical health has felt like a game of Whack a Mole with your symptoms, just as you get control of one symptom and another pops up, there is a good chance that your vagus nerve is a common thread. Now, if you have been consuming my content, other places you've heard about the vagus nerve, it is a really trendy like mind body wellness topic right now in the healing space and for really good reason. And I have a very, very, very, very, very exciting announcement coming so soon in regards to the topic of the vagus nerve. But for today, we're just going to focus on having a conversation here together about this mind body superhighway that is constantly sending nonstop information from your body to your brain. 

01:25

So we are going to talk about the importance of the vagus nerve and the role that it plays in your overall health and well being. Why it's helpful to learn what it is, what it does, why it matters and how it relates to your overall mental and physical health. And in this conversation, I want to provide you with so much more than just like a scientific understanding of your vagus nerve, you can get that from an anatomy book somewhere, or a list of like seven vagus nerve hacks, you can find that on some Instagram post. 

01:59

In today's conversation, I really want to help you build an understanding of and a relationship with your vagus nerve as part of your entire nervous system in a way that is that feels tangible and applicable to your healing journey that gives you something you can actually take away and apply in your life. And it's so important, I think, especially in a world where we're looking for quick fixes. And I've seen so much content out there that's like hack your vagus nerve to heal anxiety. The reality is no matter how much vagal toning work you do, if you're still living a life that is chronically stressful, if you still have unresolved or unhealed trauma, like there's no level of hacking your vagus nerve is going to do all of the work for you. 

02:43

And yet, improving vagal tone is often what gives you the capacity to do some of that deeper work. So it is still foundational, and a really powerful way to leverage again, your physiology to alter and heal your psychology. And as I talk today, there is no one size fits all blueprint to improving vagal tone, or healing things like anxiety, depression, chronic illness, and so on. But there are a number of research supported practices that we know can heal and improve the function of your vagus nerve and measurable and tangible ways. 

03:20

Just like there's no one workout plan that is the best fit for everybody. But there are a number of research supported pieces that a functional workout program should include. We know that resistance training strength training, is foundational for physical well being. We know that cardiovascular health is foundational for physical well being how you achieve those things might look a little bit different. That blueprint you put together needs to be specific to you. So it's going to be about me educating you in the research supported practices. And then your job is to put these pieces together in a way that creates your unique path to healing. And this is the exact work that we support clients in is helping them to create their unique blueprint and how to apply these specific tools and practices. 

04:09

So questions we're going to answer in today's conversation is first of all, what is the vagus nerve? What contributes to low vagal? Tone? How do you know whether you have high or low vagal tone? How do you improve your vagal tone as a way to support your overall mental and physical well being? And then really just why does it matter? What is the role that the vagus nerve plays in overall nervous system regulation dysregulation, and your journey and healing anxiety or depression? So this first part is going to be a little nerdy and sciency just answering this question of like, what is the vagus nerve? 

04:46

So your vagus nerve is the 10th and longest cranial nerve that runs from your brainstem all the way down to your colon. And as it does, it has a ton of these little branches Connecting and innervating, your heart, your lungs, your guts, almost every vital organ in your body has some branch of the vagus nerve that innervates, that, that organ. And what it does is it is constantly sending information from those organs to your brain and then your brain back to those organs from your body to your mind, in your mind to your body. 

05:26

And so this word vagus, it comes from the Latin word for wandering. And it's sometimes referred to as our wandering nerve, again, because of this long winding path that it takes through most of your body. So if you and I were to go to an anatomy lab right now, and if we were to look at a vagus nerve, like laid out on a table, what you would see is a bunch of nerves exiting the brainstem. So it's not just like one singular nerve, I want you to imagine a tree with the most intricate root system possible, being pulled out of the ground. And you would be absolutely blown away by how huge it is. When we talk about nervous system regulation, the number one nerve we're talking about is your vagus nerve. 

06:14

And your vagus nerve has both sensory and motor functions. So sensory functions just means that the nerves carry signals from our sensory organs to help your brain with things like touch, taste, smell, sight, and then your senses, right, and then it has motor neurons, which also signals to your muscles or your glands to move or function in a certain way. So this nerve makes up a huge part of regulating your autonomic nervous system. So basic functions like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, hormones, digestion, all have a home in vagus nerve functions. And it makes up 75 to 80% of your parasympathetic nervous system. 

07:03

So one of the huge jobs of the vagus nerve is helping you to reset from your stress response. So regulating that fight flight or freeze response, which affects anxiety, your emotional regulation, your ability to even handle physical stressors. And something that's interesting to know is that researchers have found that the vagus nerve cells are 80% afferent, meaning that 80% of the information that they send our messages and instruction from the body to the brain. So 80% of this conversation is happening in the direction of body to brain, and then just 20% If read, which means that the communication is happening from the brain to the body. 

07:50

So when I talk about mind body connection, again, it's helpful to know that the majority of this conversation is happening from body to brain. And our physiology greatly impacts our psychology. And this is often why traditional kind of top down methods of healing, things like mindset work, talk therapy, reading a book, simply listening to podcasts and not applying what you learn from fall short for so many people who are struggling with things like chronic stress, anxiety, PTSD, or depression. Because when 80% of that conversation is coming from the body, and we don't incorporate body based practices, somatic practices, vagal toning, we are missing out on so much of the foundation of what is causing that dysregulation. 

08:38

So learning to understand and improve your vagus nerve vagal health plays an important role in rebalancing the nervous system, and decreasing a number of negative situations that are created by chronic stress. So, to summarize, a lot of those nerdy facts write the functions of the vagus nerve are vast, and they there are so many functions that neuroscientists and other researchers don't fully understand or know about yet. But again, there are so many things that we do know and that's where we're going to focus our chat today. 

09:10

So we measure the health of your vagus nerve with something called vagal tone. So high vagal tone is a good thing. And it refers to a state in which the vagus nerve is active and functioning properly. It is sending signals to the body's organs and systems in a way that promotes balance overall well being and when we have high vagal tone. This is correlated with having better emotional regulation, having stable energy levels having higher stress tolerance, which means you just don't lose your cool as easily. We know that someone with high vagal tone usually has more optimal digestion and overall improved mental and physical health and then low vagal tone refers to a state in which the vagus nerve is not very active or functioning properly. It's not sending signals to the body in an effective or an efficient way. And this can contribute to a variety of different symptoms and conditions. And when somebody measures as having low vagal tone, what we see is they have poor stress management, increased reactivity, hormone imbalances, digestion issues, anxiety, depression, and a number of other negative mental and physical health symptoms. Just like again, to help this be easier to remember right high muscle tone means that your body has an increased physical capacity to carry load and to do things. Having low muscle tone means you have a lower physical capacity to carry load and do things. 

10:48

So how do you know if you have high or low vagal tone? The most common way that vagal and the most accurate and objective way that vagal tone is measured is through something called heart rate variability, or HRV. And this heart rate variability refers to the variation in the time between your successive heartbeats. So higher vagal tone is associated with having higher heart rate variability and lower vagal tone, lower heart rate variability, and the way that you can measure heart rate variability is through things like an ECG, or PPG, sensors, and even some, just like wearable devices. 

11:29

So I think like an Apple watch, and maybe a Fitbit, I know for sure, so the wearable health device that I use is something called an aura ring. I love it. I love it, I love it. And one of the metrics that it gives me is my heart rate variability. So I'm able to look for trends and my heart rate variability based on menstrual cycle daily practices that I'm doing stress levels, etc, and adjust accordingly. And as I feel like if I see a trend in my heart variability lowering, you know, over the course of a month or two, what that likely tells me is that my stress load on my body is higher than it has been. And that informs me that it's probably time to be more intentional about incorporating some vagus nerve activating exercises in a little bit more often. 

12:20

And another way that you can assess whether you have high or low heart rate variability, and this is obviously more objective. But this is what we offer. This is when we can't get heart rate variability from clients. We look at symptom clusters. And so some signs of high vagal tone when you're looking at symptom clusters is that you are somebody who has better emotional regulation, you have stable energy throughout the day, you feel like you can handle stress, you'd like a higher stress tolerance, if your digestion is good. There are a number of other things but just in general, that could be indicative that you have high vagal tone, that you have access to that rest and digest nervous system state, your parasympathetic state is your baseline and things are optimally functioning both physically inside your body and emotionally. 

13:17

Signs of lower vagal tone is again, poor stress management, increased reactivity. If you struggle with hormone imbalances, autoimmune conditions, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, if you have a hard time focusing, if your energy fluctuates throughout the day, or you feel chronically low energy, there is likely a component of having low vagal tone. And it's probably important here to note, I can't tell you like if your heart rate variability is x, it's high. It's why it's low vagal tone, because high and low vagal tone are relative terms. And what might be a higher score for me, maybe a lower score for you. And so there is a lot of personal nuance in assessing this. But the most important thing to know is that vagal tone is adaptable. And regardless of where you are right now, it can improve. And as you improve your vagal tone, it has profound impacts on both your mental and physical health. 

14:14

So, again, making this kind of abstract inner example and conversation more concrete. If you want to be able to pick up something heavy without it hurting you. You have to have a level of muscle tone and strength. If you want to be able to better pick up life's heavy load without it hurting you. If you want to better be able to handle stress and to be able to rebound and regulate from stressful situations more quickly. Then higher vagal tone is something that you need to support that and just like you optimally build and tone your muscles by minimizing injury and accumulating reps of strength training over time. You build capacity vagal tone the same way, by avoiding things that contribute to low vagal tone, and by accumulating reps of activation over time that you build into a daily practice. 

15:11

And so let's shift gears and talk about what contributes to low vagal tone. So some causes of low vagal tone can be vast, but some of the most common are chronic stress, and trauma. So this is by far the most common contributor to low vagal tone. Prolonged exposure to stress or traumatic events can lead to an over activation of your sympathetic nervous system. And over activation of being in that activated nervous system state and this inhibits the vagus nerve. So when you experience a threat, whether that's a real threat or a perceived threat, it changes your physiology. And you usually go into a state of fight or flight. And when you're in the state your heartbeats faster, you breathe more rapidly and shallowly. And all of this is a sympathetic nervous system response to help you flee or fight in a threatening situation. And this state and these shifts in your physiology are all facilitated by the vagus nerve. 

16:24

And so something that we see frequently in nature, right is that once a threat has passed an animal or will release the stress response through shaking, or breathing in a certain way until they reset their baseline. Humans, however, will often stay in this chronic fight flight or freeze state for extended periods of time, which result from chronic stress or trauma. And this unprocessed stress builds up in the body. And it leads to physical tension, restricted breathing patterns, posture issues, inefficient movement patterns, high level of stress, hormones, and so on. And all of these things negatively impact the functioning of our vagus nerve, which over time continues to decrease our resilience to stress. 

17:15

So, if you know that you are living a chronically stressed out life, if you have if you've got trauma, again, we're not judging, we're not getting angry. We're simply saying, Oh, this is a helpful piece of information, those things could be contributing to low vagal tone. Just like if you know that you've sprained your ankle, you lack some angle, you may lack some ankle stability. If you've experienced some of these things, you may lack a little bit of vagus nerve stability. 

17:46

Our childhood experiences also play a role in the current vagal health. This could include things like injury, illness, and even your mother's stress levels when you were in utero. So there's research that shows that maternal stress, especially during the second trimester of pregnancy, may influence physiological development of the baby's autonomic nervous system and lower vagal tone for the child. And there may not be a way of you knowing how stressed out your mom was, how good she was at regulating her stress response during the pregnancy. But maybe you do, maybe you do know that life was hard for her or that she lacked emotional regulation skills. And that could potentially have started your life off with a little bit lower vagal tone. Again, I want to emphasize, that's not a life sentence, there are things you can do today to alter that. 

18:40

Other things that lower vagal tone chronic inflammation. And this can come from consistent consumption of inflammatory foods, stress autoimmune disorders. So it's just really important to keep in mind that chronic inflammation can lower vagal tone. There are certain medical conditions or physical injuries but the number one thing to really focus on that could lower vagal tone are lifestyle factors. And I say that this is the number one thing to be aware of, because this is the thing that we have the most leverage over. There are a variety of lifestyle factors that have been associated with reducing vagal tone.

19:21

Sleep, okay, sleep deprivation or consistent low quality sleep is correlated with low vagal tone. Also, research shows that when you increase your vagal tone, you can also significantly improve your sleep quality. So as I go through these just a quick assessment, how am I sleeping? If I want higher vagal tone, how can I make that more of a priority? 

19:44

Physical activity, low levels of physical activity are correlated with low vagal tone, whereas an increase in physical activity significantly improves vagal tone. 

19:55

Nutrition the vagus nerve plays a huge, huge, huge Huge, huge role in our digestion. So it is no surprise that what we eat impacts our vagal tone, highly inflammatory foods like added sugar, hydrogenated oils, refined carbohydrates can impair aspects of vagal nerve signal signaling, which decreases vagal tone, improving your gut health, eating more nutritionally dense foods improves vagal tone. 

20:26

Posture especially we live in a world where so many of us are sitting at a desk. So often poor posture can impact nerve blood flow, and compress not only the vagus nerve, but also various organs that that nerve innervates decreasing activity of that nerve. 

20:43

And the final lifestyle factor I'll talk about, again, I'll mention it probably 100 times in this episode is stress. This bears mentioning again, because it's probably the leading cause of low vagal tone for most people, and a few categories of stressors to maybe reflect on in your life could be environmental stress. So this could be you know, visual, like clutter, the other humans in your environment, etc. But also things like heavy metals, mold, how safe do you feel in your environment, relational stress, work, stress, and so on. So just know that stress can play a huge role in vagal tone. 

21:19

And then some substances that there are recent and ongoing research on that may decrease vagal tone are Botox, antibiotics, alcohol, cannabis, and heavy metals. So if you do want to get serious about improving vagal tone, maybe digging into some of those a little bit deeper and doing your own research. 

21:39

So okay, we just talked a lot about things that can contribute to low vagal tone. So the real question is, how do you improve vagal tone. And if you are somebody who struggles with anxiety, depression, stress, you want to improve your vagal tone. This is some of the most foundational and a physiology that we focus on in my coaching practice. Now improving vagal tone. It is a gradual process, just like improving muscle tone. It requires regular practice and lifestyle changes. It is a balance of minimizing the things that decrease vagal tone, and increasing practices and habits that activate your vagus nerve and improve vagal tone. 

22:24

So in an attempt to simplify kind of these often overwhelming concepts of like healing, vagal toning nervous system regulation, here's another healing equation. 

22:34

Improved vagal tone equals regulating reps over time. 

22:39

So regulating reps, multiply that by time and you are going to improve your vagal tone. 

22:46

And it's really that simple the same way that you improve your muscle tone by accumulating reps of weight training exercises over time. Improving vagal tone comes as a result of accumulating consistent reps over time of intentional practices, and lifestyle changes that activate and optimize your vagus nerve, and nervous system as a whole. Every single time that you engage in a practice that moves you up that nervous system louder, even a little bit, you're activating your vagus nerve, there are certain ways that we can manually activate our vagus nerve with an ear massage or neck massage based on where the vagus nerve comes close to the skin surface. 

23:27

So remember how I said that the vagus nerve wanders through most of your body. And we have nerve fibers that innervate, the ear, the throat, your heart, the lungs, your digestive track. And we can leverage each of these different branches of the vagus nerve via different exercises that shift what's happening inside your body. And, like I said, even manually apply touch or pressure to certain areas outside of our body where the vagus nerve runs near. So what I'm going to do now is I am going to laundry list some of these practices that activate your vagus nerve. Just like I might say, Okay, if you want to strengthen your quads, you can do squats or lunges or step ups, I might give you a laundry list of different exercises that activate that particular muscle group in your body. I'm going to give you just this list of ways that you can activate your vagus nerve to improve your vagal tone. 

24:32

And I want to invite you to just pick 1 exercise that activates the vagus nerve to focus on starting with one specific practice and integrating it into your daily life is until it's something that just happens regularly is where this work starts. Choose one practice. Honestly, I would choose the practice that feels the easiest for you. Because as that becomes just a thing that you do It's gonna give you a little more capacity for the next thing that feels the easiest slowly building in more and more practices throughout your day collecting more and more reps that ultimately improve your vagal tone. So here are some ways that you can really simple ways stimulate the vagus nerve. 

25:17

Number one is cold exposure. And what this could look like is just turning on your shower cold for the last 30 seconds to three minutes, and then turning off the water and letting your body naturally heat up. You can also activate and stimulate the vagus nerve via cold exposure through a what's called a phased immersion. So get like a big giant salad bowl, fill it with some ice and water and dunk your face in it for like 15 to 30 seconds and do that you know one to three times. So some kind of cold exposure either as a full body immersion, you can take an ice bath, a cold shower or face immersion. 

25:56

Diaphragmatic breathing. So, deep, slow belly breaths activate the vagus nerve, breathing in through your nose, filling your belly with air and then slowly exhaling out your nose. Also taking note here, if you are a mouth breather, which I was for over a decade, I still am actively retraining the way that I breathe on a consistent basis, you may want to consider using something like mouth tape and just making the way that you breathe throughout your day more optimal diaphragmatic breathing is basically just slow, deep breath stimulate the vagus nerve and other practices 

26:35

something called the VU breath. And so just sounds like this. You're gonna take a breath in. And as you exhale, I'm making kind of a low Vu sound maybe like a lawnmower with sound. So again, our vagus nerve innervates our throat area near our voice box so that Vu provides vibration, just like a bicep curl activates your biceps, that Vu and that vibration in your throat activate your vagus nerve. 

27:02

Another habit is gargling singing or humming for the same reasons. So maybe you're like yeah, I already brush my teeth once a day, I'm just gonna start gargling for 30 seconds. Humming singing, 

27:13

one of my personal favorites is an ear or neck massage. And there are kind of specific ways to do that. You can just look up on the internet find on YouTube, I'll maybe post a link in the show notes as well, on how and where to gently massage your ear, and then your neck as well kind of squeezing down. Because again, the vagus nerve has branches that innervate the ear and the neck. 

27:39

Maybe you make one small change to improve gut health. Is there something that you want to cut out or something you want to add in fermented foods or probiotics, exercise and then morning sunlight. 

27:51

So I will leave a list of these suggested practices to help you stimulate your vagus nerve in the show notes with also some links to different videos or other content that I've created around the vagus nerve. But again, these practices are called exposure diaphragmatic breathing, the VU breath, either gurgling, humming or singing that ear neck massage, making a small change to improve gut health exercise or morning sunlight. 

28:17

These are all daily reps that you can take to activate your vagus nerve. This has to happen on the back of also stress management and other lifestyle practices. Remember, you cannot hack your vagus nerve, but you can just like multiple bicep curls repeated over time is going to give you stronger biceps. multiple repetitions of these different exercises repeated over time is going to give you higher vagal tone which is going to give you higher capacity for stress, which is going to give you more capacity to then incorporate even more practices to do the deeper work in your healing journey. 

28:55

So in summary, the vagus nerve is one of the most vital nerves in the human body. It not only connects multiple organs, but it also facilitates vital processes that take place in our body. And it is it is the secret weapon for fighting stress. So that is your tangible TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE that high vagal tone is the key ingredient to stress management, decreased reactivity and overall mental and physical health and 

29:26

tangible takeaway number two is that vagal toning is not a hack. You cannot hack your way to healing. But it is a powerful place to start and a tangible foundation to lay vagal toning is real. It is tangible. It is a measurable way to support your healing journey. And it happens through decreasing stress and increasing your capacity to carry that stress through daily read elation reps have a particular practice. 

30:03

Which leads me to tangible takeaway number three, which is my invitation for you to pick one. Like I said, I'm in the list of these out in the show notes, you can reference them there. And I'll give you a lot of other content and things to dig into. Choose one, choose the practice that feels the easiest to integrate into your daily life. Start doing it start doing it consistently, is gargling for 30 seconds after you brush your teeth gonna cure your depression? No, ma'am. No, sir, it is not. But every single time that you gargle for 30 seconds, after you brush your teeth, you are activating your vagus nerve, you are, at least in some way, increasing your capacity over time to better modulate and control your stress response, which over time will have an impact on your overall healing journey. 

30:55

As I have prioritized better understanding the vagus nerve, minimizing things that lower tone and intentionally building in practices that improve vagal tone, my overall well being and capacity has increased. Because my reality is, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a coach. I'm a business owner, and I'm a real life, human, and all of the countless things that come with that. And so being more resilient towards stress, being able to make decisions quicker, having improved immunity, and all of these things that we've talked about in this conversation today. Moving through my daily life, and balancing, all of those things are so much more manageable. I have better emotional regulation, I bounce back from stressful situations more quickly, my digestive issues have almost entirely cleared up I have more energy, it's created healthy, a much more healthy physiological baseline, decreasing my overall stress response, which has supported me immensely in doing a lot of my deeper trauma healing work. 

31:58

So let me be clear, one more time. Improving your vagal tone is not a magic ticket to solving all of your life's problems. My personal healing journey and the work that we do with clients is integrative. It's multifaceted. It involves multiple different healing modalities, but what lies as the foundation to and at the center of all of them is the nervous system. And your vagal tone is central to the overall functioning of that system. So hopefully, you're walking away from this episode, which is a little bit more of a comprehensive understanding of your vagus nerve, the role that it can play in your healing, and something that you can commit to start doing today to take you at least one step closer to improving vagal tone and therefore supporting yourself in a measurable and tangible way in your healing. 

32:55

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.