We’re heading to Vagus this week to alleviate stress and get some down time in order to activate our body’s own natural ability to heal.
That’s right – Vagus not Vegas.
Las Vegas is fabulous and entertaining, as well, it can be an important and influential place. On the other hand, the Vagus nerve is a very important and influential nerve in your body. The Vagus nerve is where we are going today.
To simplify things: the Vagus nerve is the main conduit of the control system that allows us to rest, recover, and digest. It functions to marshal our body’s healing power to recover from normal daily stresses as well as deeper stress such as trauma.
Survival is automatic
To explain further: a lot of the body operates without our conscious control, which for the most part is a good thing. Many mechanisms for survival do not need our conscious control. These automatic operations function through the autonomic nervous system, the ANS, with its two interrelated parts. As a whole, the ANS must balance fight/flight survival instincts with rest/recover/digest instincts. Both are important, but must balance for greatest health.
The two branches of the ANS are the sympathetic nervous system, or SNS, and the parasympathetic nervous system, or PNS. The Sympathetic NS is the fight or flight branch, and the Parasympathetic NS is the rest and digest branch. The Vagus nerve is the main signal from the body to the brain and the brain to the body of the PNS for resting, recovery and digestion.
Rest and recover
When your PNS function through the Vagus nerve is healthy, you can accomplish routine repair and healing faster and more completely. This important nerve affects functions as diverse as sleep quality, digestion, immune responses, blood sugar control, detoxification and even mood. In fact, the primary function of the Vagus nerve is to manage inflammation; and you may have heard that chronic inflammation is the basis of most chronic disease.
In today’s world, most people cannot turn off their sympathetic nervous system because of their perception of danger from stress. Short term stress functions to help us out of a dangerous situation, but when we don’t have an outlet to burn off the stress chemicals and the stress keeps coming in continually, we get stuck in the fight-or-flight mode. We may need help in switching on the PNS.
Switching on the healing power
A full eighty percent of nerve signals coursing along the Vagus nerve travel from the body to the brain. That tells us that we have a powerful way to send signals to the brain through the Vagus nerve to amplify its innate effects of recovery and healing. We can do this by consciously controlling some of the functions that are usually automatic. We can then, through these nervous system signals, help to switch on the healing power of the rest/recover/digest parasympathetic nervous system.
The parasympathetic nervous system balances the stress in recovery times, if we give it a chance. Fortunately, we can exercise the nerves that feed into the Vagus nerve and augment recovery. I am presenting here a few simple exercises you can incorporate in your daily life to strengthen your ability to rest, recover and digest through the Vagus nerve.
Breath Patterns
At birth, breathing is automatic as we take our first breath. Watch a baby breathe: the abdomen goes up and down in a full belly breath. When we get stressed, our breathing becomes tense and shallow.
How are you breathing right now?
Have you noticed that when you get upset, overwhelmed or in an argument, your breathing gets shallow and quicker? This type of breathing aggravates the stress.
Test your breath pattern by laying on your back and noticing what part of your body rises and falls the most as you breathe naturally. You can put one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly to help notice this. If you are breathing like a baby, and your belly rises more than your chest, then you are breathing naturally. If your hand on your chest rises more than your belly, then you can take the opportunity to retrain yourself to breathe naturally.
By practicing deep belly breathing, for perhaps five minutes at a time, several times a day, you can retrain your breathing pattern. For specific instructions, you may want to consult the chapter “Exercises to Activate the Vagus Nerve” in the book Activate Your Vagus Nerve, by Dr. Navaz Habib. Re-establishing deeper belly breathing patterns has a positive effect on your mood, stress levels, and overall health.
Breathing during Sleep
To take natural breathing one step further, let’s look at how you might be breathing while you sleep. If your mouth falls open and you stop breathing through your nose, you might also be snoring or stop breathing altogether. In these cases, it is far more difficult to do deep belly breathing.
People often have mild obstructions to breathing at night, and revert to mouth breathing. Unfortunately, this loss of air flow through the nose adversely affects the nasal passages and its microflora. The end result is nasal obstruction, including post-nasal drip and inflammation from allergic reactions.
Training ourselves to breath through the nose at night starts with taping the mouth shut when going to bed. By sealing the mouth with tape, you force yourself to breathe through your nose when asleep. Nose breathing naturally activates belly breathing.
Humming
There is a branch of the Vagus nerve that goes to and from your vocal cords. By humming or singing, the Vagus nerves activates signals not only for control of the vocal cords, but generalizes to other branches of the Vagus nerve. In this way, we can strengthen rest and recover function if done long enough and with sufficient strength.
If you often hum a tune like Winnie the Pooh, then you have it down. If you need a suggestion of a tune to hum, Dr. Habib recommends the ancient syllable “Om.” He claims this helps control our breath, slow down our thoughts, and center ourselves to the point of extremely deep relaxation. As well, it has been shown to improve digestion and decrease inflammation levels in the body.
I recommend vocalizing “om” deep in your throat or chanting while driving! Imagine what could happen on our highways and city streets if everyone was humming “om” during their commute or while running errands.
Gagging and Gargling
Closely related to humming, activating other muscles in the throat can be effective in strengthening Vagus nerve function, and therefore the rest and recovery ability of the body.
One suggestion is to gently stimulate each side of the roof of the mouth, far enough back to initiate the gag reflex. This can easily be incorporated after brushing your teeth, by touching the toothbrush to the places on each side of the roof of your mouth that will make you gag.
In addition, gargling after brushing your teeth, preferably with salt water, will also stimulate the Vagus nerve for its fantastic effects. Dr. Habib suggests gargling vigorously enough that your eyes start to water to be most effective.
Laughter
You have heard that “laughter is the best medicine.” The Vagus nerve may partly be why.
We naturally laugh when we are having fun with friends. When we are around others we enjoy, we tend to laugh and smile more, feeling more relaxed. This all reinforces the rest and recover functions of our bodies.
We can watch funny shows to help us laugh more. There are even laughing yoga classes. Laughter exercises the diaphragm, as we well know after an uncontrolled prolonged giggle session that leaves us sore the next day. By exercising the diaphragm, we stimulate the Vagus nerve, thereby activating our innate healing power.
More worth mentioning
Anything that helps us take the time to pay attention to what we are doing will help us maintain the PNS state of rest and recovery. This includes going about our day mindfully, sessions of meditation, and exercise such as Tai Chi or Chi gong.
In addition, all daily movement and any exercise, as well as appropriate diet and sunlight help us heal. This is basic to Naturopathic medicine.
You don’t have to go to Vegas
This goes to show that simple practices in daily life can fortify our natural healing power by stimulating the Vagus nerve. Remember, it is Vagus, not Vegas – you don’t have to leave home to unwind your tension.
Which of these practices are you already doing?
What one new thing will you start with to augment your rest and recovery functions?
Please comment below.
