No, not talking about Las Vegas but the vagus nerve! This nerve is one of the longest pair of nerves that run from the bottom of your skull down through the neck, chest and abdomen. It innervates the lungs, heart and digestive system and controls things such as the movement of food through the digestive system, the lowering of your heart rate and swallowing sensation.
The vagus nerve is especially important since it is the direct link between the brain and the digestive system so when people talk about the gut/mind connection this is part of what they're referring to. It's not all about probiotics!
A healthy vagus nerve has been linked with lowered stress, anxiety and inflammation within the body.
Sometimes the vagus nerve can over-react in times of stress and cause a drop in blood pressure leading to fainting or vasovagal syncope. This can happen to people when having their blood drawn or standing still for very long periods of time.
In severe cases of depression and epilepsy, an electrical implant can be used to directly stimulate the vagus nerve to alleviate symptoms.
Luckily for us though there are ways we can stimulate the vagus nerve without resorting to surgery!
Due to its path through various structures of the body we can influence or 'exercise' the vagus nerve just by altering or controlling the structures it passes through.
One of the easiest ways is humming or chanting- the vibration through the throat and inner ear are key to stimulating the nerve. If you practice yoga, the "Om" chant before and after your practice is an integral part of activating the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system.
Controlling your breath is another way of stimulating the vagus nerve- slow down your breathing rate to around seven breaths a minute and use your diaphragm and abdomen in full, deep breaths.
Auricular acupuncture offers a way to directly affect the vagus nerve due to the proximity of the ear to its pathway from the base of the skull to the throat and beyond. Acupuncture points in the ear can treat a variety of issues from anxiety, insomnia and high blood pressure and more. It is an elegant and complete treatment strategy which can be used on its own or with traditional body points. Some of you have probably had ear acupuncture in the office or have had gold ear seeds applied to points. Either way, ear acupuncture is safe and very effective. Western medicine is more open than ever to the science behind acupuncture and exciting new research is now exploring the role of electrical stimulation of ear points- I've included a couple of links below.
The next time you're in the office, ask me about ear acupuncture and the vagus nerve!
Thanks for reading and feel free to pass this on to someone you think might enjoy reading this!
Lim, H. D., Kim, M. H., Lee, C. Y., & Namgung, U. (2016). Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Acupuncture Stimulation via the Vagus Nerve. PloS one, 11(3), e0151882. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151882
Liu, C. H., Yang, M. H., Zhang, G. Z., Wang, X. X., Li, B., Li, M., Woelfer, M., Walter, M., & Wang, L. (2020). Neural networks and the anti-inflammatory effect of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation in depression. Journal of neuroinflammation, 17(1), 54. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12974-020-01732-5
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