Brain & Mental Health: Part 2

Unlock the secrets to nurturing your brain through the power of social connections, movement, and sunlight. 

Join me, Emily, as we uncover how these elements activate the vagus nerve, fostering a state of calm and enhancing cognitive resilience. Discover why spending time with people you love not only uplifts your mood but also boosts oxytocin levels and reduces stress, promoting a healthier mind. We'll share insights on the critical role neuroplasticity plays in our mental well-being and how to harness it through engaging activities and continuous learning.

In this eye-opening episode, we'll also explore the significance of movement—not just exercise—in keeping the brain vibrant. Get practical tips on easy movement techniques, like walking or cleaning, that improve blood flow and stimulate neuron growth, supporting lifelong adaptability. We'll discuss ways to stimulate the vagus nerve through simple acts like humming or singing, which can help you overcome stress and enhance your cognitive flexibility. Rounding out our journey, we'll shine a light on how sunlight regulates circadian rhythms and boosts serotonin, promoting better sleep and overall brain function. Whether you're looking to enhance mental clarity or simply live a healthier life, this episode is packed with empowering advice and heartfelt stories.

Chapters

• 0:01 Nurturing Brain Health Through Vagus
• 6:43 Fostering Brain Health Through Movement

Transcript

Emily : 0:01

Welcome back everyone. Today is part two of the two-part series for brain health and how it affects with the vagus nerve and goes back and forth. Last episode we talked about sleep, screen time and noise and how that affects brain health. Today we are going to be talking about social engagement, movement and sunlight.

Emily : 0:28

Welcome to It Starts at Vagus, the podcast where holistic health meets modern living. I'm Emily, your guide to unlocking the power of the vagus nerve, which is your body's ultimate key to calm, connection and overall well-being. Together, we'll explore simple ways to nourish your mind and body with natural remedies, actionable tips and empowering stories. Whether you're here to reduce stress, restore balance or take charge of your health, you're in the right place.

Emily : 0:57

Let's start with the power of social engagement. What social engagement is is just interacting with people, and when the vagus nerve is in that rest and digest state, your brain says great, let's go socialize. So it is the opposite of social isolation. So when you are in that fight or flight mode, it says let's back up, let's go isolate ourselves because we're not sure, but we want to be in that social engagement. We're like, yeah, people, let's go. And this is both for introverts and extroverts, and we all do it a little differently, but you should want to be around the people that you like to be with, and connecting with others directly leads to brain health. Not only do we get to enjoy spending time and making memories, it also creates oxytocin. It reduces our stress levels when we're around people that we like to be with and increases our cognitive function, and so you even feel that you can think clearer when you're around people that you like and trust. And, as mentioned with the vagus nerve, when it's calm, it has that social engagement activated where you can be more expressive and your voice tone is more upbeat versus melancholy. You can see people's eyes light up. It's amazing and you start feeling connected. It's all of that that embodies that good time and your brain goes yes, I like it, let's keep going. And so those social interactions can activate the vagus nerve and reduce that stress and activate the vagus nerve, as in the rest and digest state date. So the main part of that is is just prioritizing the quality of your relationships and knowing the people that really lift you up, that are there supporting you and rooting you on and helping you through troubled times and celebrating all of your wins. They're the people that you can make eye contact with that, want to listen and interact with you, while you can have empathy or they can have empathy with what's going on in your life. All of those things help support your brain and saying, okay, I trust these people, we can calm down because they are not going to attack me, which then helps that vagus nerve say okay, rest and digest time, which is perfect.

Emily : 3:54

The second part that we're talking about today includes like movement as medicine for the brain. Now, obviously it's not medicine as in prescription, but it's medicine as in. It makes it do better, feel better and there are big benefits to your brain when your body moves. First off, I do want to kind of do on a little tangent, saying exercise and movement aren't really the same. Exercise is where you focus on doing particular movements and it can kind of be interchanged with exercise and movement to that degree. But movement can just be not getting stuck on the couch all day. Movement can be raising your arms or bending over to pick something up. Movement can be wiggling through a doorway, which I really encourage a lot of people to do because it's a lot of fun. Again, it creates that creativity and movement, in my opinion, is more beneficial than exercise, because it's better to move throughout the day than just take one hour of movement exercise. So we do want to do just random different movements high, low, and kind of just like at that neutral zone, and just all different kinds of ways. So that's the difference between movement and exercise. But movement in itself does create blood flow. It creates the lymph flow for lymph drainage, it helps your mental health.

Emily : 5:30

And this next one that we're going to talk about is neuroplasticity, and neuroplasticity is a brain's ability to adapt and change with what's going on in life. Obviously it's a big deal we just need to talk about. So neuroplasticity is also called brain plasticity, and I'm sorry that's just like a tongue twister to me. It refers to the brain's ability to rewire and adapt and change to the function that's going on around you, whether you're learning something new, experiencing something new or just what's going on in your environment in general. Think of it as your brain's way to stay flexible and resilient. Resiliency is a big thing, so it's just like we want to move for our muscles and strengthen them and grow with consistent use. We need to do that with our brain also. They work together. It's your whole body we want to do best for your brain, your mental clarity, mental health and your physical health.

Emily : 6:43

So how neuroplasticity works is it helps form new connections. So every time you learn something new or have a new skill, your brain creates and it strengthens those neural pathways. So it's that connection between the brain cells or your neurons in your nervous, and the more you repeat an activity, the stronger the connections become, making that new activity easier and easier as time goes. Kind of like when you learn to ride a bike. The beginning you're like not so sure and you've got your physical body, but you also have the mental cognition and your body is learning lots of different things at the same time, and so your brain goes okay, do we have the capability of learning these new skills? And the more you teach your brain how to learn a new skill, the faster it's going to pick up on that because it's using it and the brain strengthens the connections that you use, but it also trims things that you don't.

Emily : 7:59

It's the use it or lose it type of mentality and that process is called synaptic pruning and it helps the brain work efficiently. It wants to say what are we going to use and what are we not going to use and it kind of prunes the ones that we don't but strengthens the ones that we do. So, when it comes to neuroplasticity and movement, it literally fuels for brain growth and so that movement increases blood flow to the brain, which delivers oxygen and nutrients that help build and repair all those neural connections, and it releases a protein, the brain derived neurotrophic factor. So that's a protein that supports the brain, the growth of new neurons, and it strengthens existing neurons. So it's like how, like that one, two pack punch where it's like, yay, we want to promote the release of these proteins and we want to help grow the brain, we want to promote the release of these proteins and we want to help grow the brain and we want to strengthen it all the good ones.

Emily : 9:17

But when it comes to stress, neuroplasticity becomes hindered because now it's like, oh, we're stressed out, we don't have time to prune the stuff we don't need, we don't have time to learn the new things. And if we do learn the new things, it's going to be harder to retain Because the brain goes, we're stressed out and we're in that fight or flight mode and now I don't know what to do other than protect you. So that's where that stress part hinders the brain health. So as we do a vagus nerve reset or we start humming or we start singing, that is going to lower the stress and allow your brain to increase that resilience and that cognitive resilience to where you can think clearer, you can feel better, and that neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt to new challenges. While you learn a new skill or recover from an injury or a trauma that you're trying to work through, it allows that space to happen. That also helps improve your memory and your learning and the brain becomes better at learning and retaining that new information when you stimulate it with movement. Now we have again the more blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients, and it allows for that problem solving and the social engagement that we talked about beforehand. And with that regular movement and engagement it helps maintain that neuroplasticity as we age and that reduces the risk of cognitive decline like dementia.

Emily : 11:11

So all in all, it's a really good thing to do and movement is so easy and it can be really enjoyable. That's why I like to do the wiggling stuff, because it's just simple, it's a little childish, you can kind of laugh at yourself, but all of that really helps build your emotional, mental and your brain health. So try to remember to move in ways that you enjoy doing, whether it is just a walk around the block or, like I said, even cleaning your house to pull a box out from the closet. So that's using like high movement and low movement and that's going to get lots of circulation going and lots of range of motion and that physical movement with the mental process of cleaning out a closet, it's going to help that mind-body connection because you're doing things and you can do things like Tai Chi or other movements that can pair that mind-body connection, which will help with focus and mindfulness and have a powerful impact on that neuroplasticity. I've heard that even like ping pong is a movement slash exercise that helps with brain health and physical health because you're moving while you're also using the different parts of your brain to play ping pong and you've got the hand-eye coordination. All in all, ping pong is a really good movement exercise with low impact.

Emily : 13:02

So as you incorporate movement throughout your daily life, you're not just strengthening your muscles and using your muscles, you're also helping your brain build up for better learning, adaptability and resilience. All of those things are something that we should do throughout our lifetime. We should always be learning so that we can continue growing as a person. It creates who you are and you get to self-reflect and find out what you really like doing, and that helps stress. When you know what you look forward to, you can figure out how you want to decrease that stress, increase the movement. So let's say you're in a stressful situation and you're like, okay, freaking out a little bit, and you're like, but I know movement is helpful, just do that. Breathing to stimulate your vagus nerve, to help it calm down. Simple breathing again will bring oxygen to your brain, help it feel better and calm down that tension. So breathing is also a very easy step towards vagus tone health and your brain health, and again, that oxygen is going to go throughout your entire body. So that is a win also.

Emily : 14:36

The third step that we're going to talk about well, it's not step section that we're going to talk about is sunlight. Sunlight is nature's brain booster. It helps regulate our circadian rhythm and boost serotonin, which sounds kind of counteractive, because if you get morning sun, it helps with sleep at night. So even though you're doing something in the morning, it really does help in the evening and I for one have tested and tried and used it and it is a game changer. Not only do you get the vitamin D from the sunlight, but now you're going to be able to sleep better, which is what we talked about in our last episode how sleep is a foundation to overall wellness. We need sleep, and sunlight is a powerful tool, a powerful free tool that we all can have, and it's linked to better moods and a better cognition so that we can think easier, so that natural light from the sun helps balance out your nervous system and supports your overall calmness state.

Emily : 15:59

So if you just spend like 10 minutes of sunlight in the morning, preferably before nine and I know it's kind of hard because it's winter time currently, but in the summer it's addictive Like I love the sun and I find sun like a cat in the morning, we're going to find it, we're going to sit in it and just enjoy. That's when I like to think, that's when I do that. My day just goes so much better that I do my best to include sunshine in the morning as often as I can. So daily is my favorite regimen. Obviously, there's days where you've got clouds or it's raining or something like that. There's days where you've got clouds or it's raining or something like that. But we really do need to take those sunny days and just bank them, just make them a priority and you will feel how calm that sunshine can help. And if it's a nice day outside, then you can listen to the birds and the sounds around you. And again, last episode we talked about how noise stimulation can affect our brain health, and nature has some very positive sounds. It's very calming to listen to the birds sing in the morning, so it's one of my favorite routines because I get so much out of it. So I do make it a priority when the sun is out to get some morning sun because it really is enjoyable.

Emily : 17:47

So, just as a recap for today's episode, we want the social engagement to strengthen our emotional and brain health. We want to include movement daily to fuel our mental clarity and support that vagus nerve and last that sunlight is essential for mood and the circadian rhythm which will then help our sleep at night. So hopefully you can find some ways to move throughout the day, because most likely the morning sun has gone. But if you're listening to this bright and early, go grab some sunshine and a cup of tea and just soak it up. So thank you for sharing a portion of your day with me. Remember to breathe and take those small, consistent steps for your brain health.

Emily : 18:37

Thanks for listening to. It Starts at Vagus. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you're ready to take the next step toward calm, grab my free Vagus Nerve Reset video in the show notes. It's a quick and easy way to start feeling better today. And until next time, remember, wellness starts at Vagus.