Best Ways to Stimulate the Vagus Nerve

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The vagus nerve is a popular topic in the health and wellness realm, and with good reason. The vagus nerve is a major part of the gut brain axis serving as a communication highway for not only the brain and gut but for almost every other organ as well. The vagus nerve allows parts of your body to communicate to the brain and also lets your organs know when they can rest and relax since it is the main component of your parasympathetic nervous system.

The vagus nerve is a key component of your health, and in this podcast episode, you'll learn about:

• What the vagus nerve is?
• How it connects your organs to your brain?
• How it's connected to your parasympathetic nervous system?
• How it's a part of the gut brain axis?
• What are simple ways to improve the health of your vagus nerve also known as vagal tone.

This is a must listen for everyone. Enjoy the episode, do everything with good intentions, and connect to your elements.

Disclaimer:

This podcast is for educational purposes only, it is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. Evan Roberts is not a medical professional and this podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Statements and views expressed on this show are not medical advice, this podcast, including Evan Roberts and any guests on the show, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained in this episode. If you think you have a medical problem please consult a medical professional.

Reference:

The Vagus Nerve Explained

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859128/

Hey, what's going on, everybody.

Welcome back to the elemental Evan show.

Thank you all very much for tuning into this wellness Wednesday episode.

As you all already know, this is a full length episode.

Uh, still pretty compact in general, compared to some other episodes and

other shows, because I like to try to give you the maximum amount of

information in a short amount of time.

Uh, so that is what the show is all about is providing you with some really

valuable knowledge that's digestible and is applicable to your life.

So you can apply it right after this episode and make some changes to

your health and wellness right away.

And today's episode is going to be no different.

This is a topic that is something I just recently started

diving in on the research on.

So it's still a relatively new topic for myself.

Although I have known about it for awhile, the specifics of it

are still relatively new to me.

So I'm happy to be sharing this with all of you finally.

And that is the Vegas nerve.

So this is not Vegas like Las Vegas, right?

No, this is Vegas V a G U S.

And, uh, it is a nerve that has also been called the wanderer

nerve, uh, just due to the amount of wandering that it does in your body.

So for example, it has a very extensive range and, uh, of signals

from the digestive system and organs

The brain and vice versa, and it extends from its origin in the

brainstem, through the neck and the thorax down to the abdomen.

So as you can see, that is why it's called the wanderer nerve.

And the Vegas nerve represents the main component of the parasympathetic

nervous system, which oversees a vast array of crucial body functions such as.

Controlling of your mood, immune response, digestion and heart rate.

It establishes one of the main connections between the brain and

gastrointestinal tract and sends information about this state of,

of the inner organs to the brain.

Uh, that is all coming from the article from the frontiers in psychiatry journal.

Uh, much of what this podcast.

Uh, the information in this podcast is going to be coming from there.

Uh, so I will try to be sure to link that in the show notes.

So you can also check that out in a read over that if you would like as well.

So, uh, as I stated, what's really cool about the vagus nerve.

It is one of it is one of the main components of the gut brain access,

or, sorry, not access axis a X I S.

What's so amazing about that is this is really kind of

new, at least to the public.

Maybe the science realm has already been, you know, on top of this for a while.

Cause I've heard something like it's around 20 years where, uh, it take, or

it takes 20 years from The science and research to actually reach the population.

So yeah, this could have been, well, I'm sure this has been well-known for awhile

in the science realm, but in terms of the general public, this is definitely some

really groundbreaking new stuff here.

This gut brain access axis, the fact that it is able to communicate with

each other, you know, and have, has this little like highway of communication.

Uh, so that is really interesting for me specifically, because I've dealt

with gastrointestinal issues and, uh, you know, I believe just like,

uh, this, the quote says, you know, like all disease begins in the gut.

I really do agree with that.

I think everything starts in our digestive system, in our gastrointestinal tract.

So.

That's why I'm really, really excited about this.

And I think there's a lot of correlation between myself and

this, uh, the, in the vagus nerve and, and my issues that I've had.

So.

Um, also, I want to apologize.

I know there might be a bit of medical terminology in here, and I do try to

make this as digestible as possible.

But sometimes there's just no getting around it, but, uh, it's not too bad.

I don't think so.

Anyways.

Okay.

So the vagus nerve connects obviously a bunch of your organs to your brain

essentially, and allows communication to happen, which is extremely important.

So.

Uh, so of the very important functions of the vagus nerve include providing the main

parasympathetic supply to the heart and stimulating a reduction in the heart rate.

Uh, in the intestines, it regulates the contraction of smooth

muscles and glandular secretion.

It also connects to other important organs, such as the pancreas, liver,

stomach, small intestine and esophagus, where it has receptors and sensory endings

in which it can receive information from these organs to send to the brain.

Once again, this is, you know, pretty wild and really, really interesting.

There is this it's like a communication highway.

Being able to relay information from either the organs to

the brain or vice versa.

So it is also responsible for regulation of internal organ functions, such

as digestion, which is a huge one, obviously, uh, heart rate respiratory

rate, and Bazell motor activity such as controlling the internal diameter

of blood vessels and certain reflex acts actions such as coughing,

sneezing, swallowing, and vomiting.

The Vegas nerve is the main contributor of the parasympathetic nervous system.

If you have already heard my other previous episodes on, I believe it was

like dealing with your breath and stuff.

Uh, I do dive into the parasympathetic nervous system on there.

So definitely go back and check that out.

Uh, if you have not heard that though, I will go ahead and

kind of break some of it down.

In this episode.

And, uh, so for the sake of this episode, the autonomic nervous system is.

You know, like think of it at the top here.

So you have the autonomic nervous system and it can be

broken down into three branches.

The three branches of the autonomic nervous system include the Interra nervous

system, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

For this episode, we're just going to focus on two.

We're going to be focusing on the parasympathetic nervous system and

the sympathetic nervous system.

It's such a tongue twister.

Sorry.

Um, okay.

So the sympathetic nervous You can really just think of this as the gas pedal.

I might even refer to it as the gas pedal in the rest of this episode.

But the sympathetic nervous system is your get up and go, right?

So it is activating.

It is, you know, like the release of certain hormones, like, the

release of like things like cortisol.

And really, you know, it's.

The thing that is like motivating, get you out of bed, get your mind working.

It's a little bit stressing, but a good kind of stress, right?

Uh, you need it when.

You need to respond to, uh, maybe a car merging into your lane or, um, you know,

thinking of a very complex problem, whatever it may be, this gas pedal state

is what you would want to be activated.

Then you have the other side of that, which is your parasympathetic, which

can be thought of as your brake pedal.

So this is going to be more relaxing.

This is going to activate your, um, Digestion your, uh, they literally call

it the rest and digest state, right?

Because it puts you into this state where you are much more calm.

Maybe your heartbeat goes down a little bit.

Uh, you don't have this release of cortisol.

You are now getting into a state where you're more mellow and you're able

to actually, you know, digest your food and, and take it easy, right?

Like there's no eminent threat in front of you like a tiger trying to

chase you or something like that.

So you have these two kind of different parts of the autonomic nervous system.

You have the gas pedal and the brake.

Now.

When we're talking with the Vegas nerve, this is what stimulating

your parasympathetic nervous system.

The reason this is important is because the sympathetic nervous

system, the gas pedal is activated all too often in our day and age.

Right.

We have all these crazy things to worry about, like rent, um, you know,

your job, maybe your bosses on, you know, getting on your case or, uh,

the traffic that you have to sit in.

And every single day and the, and the people cutting you off and, you know, all

these different things where, uh, back in the day, it would have You know, very

straightforward, uh, things that would activate your sympathetic nervous system.

Like for example, if you were to be attacked by an animal, like a bear.

Your sympathetic nervous system would kick in.

You would go into this mode where you are ready to react and respond,

whether that's fight or run.

But when you have things that are not.

You know, like a bear chasing you, but rather rent.

And you're constantly worried about it, even though there's nothing

in front of you that's causing it.

It is something that you were constantly worrying about.

And so we stay in this low level of stress at, you know, very, very often.

And over time, this takes its toll, right?

It can be taxing on the adrenal glands that are releasing the cortisol.

Uh, you know, and then on top of that, we're probably drinking coffee, which is

also going to stimulate more, uh, release of cortisol and tax the adrenal glands.

And just overall, it's going to create a stressful environment for your body,

which is just not good for your health.

So getting into the parasympathetic nervous system is important and it's

something we need to be doing more of.

And I will speak a little bit on how we can do so.

But.

To kind of give you an idea of what happens when the

parasympathetic, as opposed to sympathetic state is, uh, activated.

When the brake pedal parasympathetic state is activated, you have dilation of

blood vessels and bronchiole uh, sorry.

I'm probably saying this wrong bronchiole is I believe bronchial.

Uh, yeah.

Bronchiole.

And stimulation of salivary glands when sympathetic nervous system is activated,

you have constriction of blood vessels.

Dilation of bronchiole is an increase in heart rate.

And constriction of intestinal and urinary sphincters.

Right?

So obviously.

Just by reading that you can tell whoever is in that state,

they're in a, uh, like a tight.

Uptight state, right?

Like you are literally not able to use the restroom.

Your heart rate is increased.

Like you are just ready to react.

So in the gastrointestinal tract, when you have your parasympathetic

nervous system activated, you have an increase in bowel motility, bowel

motility, and glandular secretion.

In contrast, when the sympathetic nervous system is activated,

you have reduction of intestinal activity and reduction of blood.

Flow to the gut.

Allowing a higher flow to the heart and muscles when the individual faces.

Existential stress.

Pretty much what I had already explained by a little bit more medical there.

Um, more specific.

So essentially what it's saying is when you are in your sympathetic

nervous system, Your body is prepared to react and respond to whatever

might be right in front of you.

Um, which, like I said, back in the day might have been a very

threatening animal or warring tribe or whatever it might've been.

Uh, but nowadays we don't really have that as often, yet we still end

up staying in our parasympathetic nervous system or, sorry.

Our sympathetic nervous system too often.

And it doesn't allow for our body to properly digest A really good way to

think about this is if you have ever been in a fight or an argument with

someone, right, as you're about to eat food, or even if the table next to you

is having a wild argument and fight.

It is very difficult to want to eat food right after that, if you actually sat

right down after being in that argument and try to eat food, a lot of times,

you're just not in the mood anymore.

Like you just don't feel like eating.

And what has happened is your body is now in that sympathetic nervous system state.

And it does not want to eat and digest food.

It is not in the proper state for it.

We need to make sure that we are in the proper state for digesting food when

we're eating, you know, a lot of the times people have trouble digesting

food properly, but it's probably because they are not in a relaxed enough state.

Okay.

Gonna move on a little bit now.

Uh, Uh, but still going to come back to this and that is how to activate your

vagus nerve or even parasympathetic nervous system, uh, for health purposes.

So it's very important to note that aside from all of these specific physiological

functions, that the biggest nerve does.

We also need to note that the vagus nerve has been recognized to benefit your

stress levels, your PTSD, depression, digestion, anxiety, and even sleep.

It's a lot of really, really key, important things here.

So.

To start, you have the term vagal tone, V a G a L tone, which essentially tells us

how well the vagus nerve is functioning.

Hi, vagal tone is good and low is It's measured indirectly

by heart rate variability.

So if you have high heart rate variability, that's good and low would

be bad by the way, HRV or heart rate.

Variability is a measurement of the amount of time between heartbeats.

Typically when you inhale, you have a slight increase in.

Your heartbeat.

And when you exhale, you have a slight decrease in your heartbeat.

Now, if you want to stimulate the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous

system and improve your vagal tone, you can do so in a few different ways.

So once again, now we're getting, get into how we can make the biggest

nerve or vagal tone, more healthy, which is in turn, going to help with

our parasympathetic state as well.

So number one is going to be exercise.

So high intensity exercise has been shown to improve vagal tone, better

than moderate or low intensity.

But nonetheless, any exercise is going to definitely be of,

of benefit for your vagal tone.

So definitely, definitely get out and exercise, exercise

and movement is medicine.

Number two.

Breath work and breath control or pranayama, whatever the

heck you want to call it.

Is very, very beneficial for the vagal tone.

So.

I have been on the breathing game for a while now.

Uh, obviously I learned it through my yoga practice.

It was taught to me in my, uh, yoga.

Sorry in my yoga teacher training.

In which we would do breath work every single day for at least an hour.

And it was incredible.

The benefits were very, very tangible.

You could feel them right away.

Uh,

You know, it's not like something you would feel down the road, but

literally right after doing the breath work, you can feel altered states.

You can feel being relaxed or being activated.

And for the purpose of this.

Obviously, we want to focus, focus on the parasympathetic,

which is more of a calming.

Uh, type of breath.

So we want to do types of slower breathing, like.

Breathing in for five seconds and then exhaling for five seconds

or maybe doing an inhale of.

Uh, five and then exhale to the count of eight.

So kind of increasing the exhale to really stimulate the vagus nerve and the

parasympathetic nervous system, which is going to, uh, stimulate relaxation

and decrease stress and anxiety.

There is also a breath work.

Uh, where you hum during your exhale.

And this is also really good for the vagus nerve.

And honestly, all of these breath works that I've pretty much just

mentioned are in my breathwork course.

So I will have those linked, if you want to go ahead and learn these five

different breath, uh, breath works.

Go ahead and check that out.

Most of them are.

For, uh, you know, the parasympathetic state.

So trying to get us into a calm state, because I feel that we

are obviously way too activated.

There is a activating breath work in there called the breath of fire.

But nonetheless, the other ones are all for the parasympathetic nervous system.

And if you wanna check that out, that is in the show notes and

it is a awesome, awesome course.

Really was.

Happy to put that together.

And I think there's a ton of benefit in it.

So be sure to check that out.

And also along with breath work, we have meditation.

So number three is going to be the meditation.

Which much like breath work is going to stimulate your vagus

nerve through calming the mind, calming the body becoming present.

And also during meditation, a major part of it is connecting to your breath.

Obviously, you know, following the breath.

Uh, becoming aware of it.

This can also help to increase your vagal And then we have

number four, which is your diet.

So.

Pretty much anything that is good for the gut or brain is going to be good

for the Vegas nerve since it's obviously the connection of the two, right?

So you want to focus on things like probiotics, prebiotics postbiotics.

Uh, nutrient dense foods, such as, you know, very like whole

foods like fruits and vegetables.

And, um, healthy meats like grassfed beef and lamb and bison and things like that.

Right.

And on top of that, obviously you want to avoid the inflammatory foods such

as fried foods, which is a huge one.

Huge, huge one.

Uh, definitely avoid fried foods.

You want to avoid bad oils, which typically are in the fried foods, right.

Which are canola oil, soybean.

Uh, corn vegetable, all of those oils are terrible.

Uh, Grains can often be inflammatory causing as well.

So we do want to be careful with those.

And on top of that, a lot of grains are heavily sprayed with

pesticides, which are also not good.

Uh, definitely flour is a heavily sprayed one.

So being careful with that.

Sugar and heavily processed Those are the foods that you definitely want to avoid.

They are the ones that are causing inflammation and

messing with your vagal tone.

Now, one more thing I want to throw in here.

And I thought this was really cool that this was part of

it, and that is cold water.

So something that is, you know, everyone has a shower

that can get pretty dang cold.

Uh, so pretty much everyone has access to this.

And it has been proven that cold showers or ice bats have

been proven to improve your HRV.

So heart rate variability.

So this isn't just a trend or anything like that.

You know, obviously you see a lot of people kind of getting into it.

Um, but there is some definite benefit to it.

Uh, you know, along with increased, uh, improving your HRV, it also

helps with muscle recovery.

And also what I think is kind of the most important portion of it is your

mental fortitude or your mental strength.

Being able to get into that cold water, doing something that you don't want

to do, but you make yourself do it has a lot of benefit for the brain.

So.

That is pretty much going to do it in terms for the Vegas nerve.

Um, I think this is a topic I will definitely be revisiting, going deeper

on, uh, tying in other parts of it.

And, you know, it's just really interesting to see this connection

between the gut and the brain.

Um, it makes me, like I said, it really does make me think of my

childhood a lot when I would have this.

You know, for example, I would get nervous or something like that.

And my stomach would immediately start hurting and it kind of is really

making me reflect now on this vehicle.

Uh, this Vegas nerve connection between the gut and the brain right there.

There's truly a connection there with the nervousness that might

be happening up in my brain, but it's being felt all throughout my

body and specifically in my gut.

Uh, it just really was like an epiphany moment for me.

And so I definitely am excited to dive more in on this and see kind of what

connections might be But nonetheless, I think it's just very important that

we understand that the vagus nerve is extremely important and trying to

improve our vagal tone is going to be.

You know, key and just something that we all should definitely be,

uh, trying to improve and work on.

So, Literally most of the ways that I provided in which you can

improve your vagal tone are free.

Uh, they cost you nothing and you can do them at any time.

You can hop in cold water, you can breathe.

Anytime of the day.

I hope you're breathing anytime that.

All times of Uh, you can meditate and you know, you can easily switch up your

diet Uh, accommodate, uh, these healthier foods and it doesn't have to cost you

a ton of money, especially, you know, getting rid of a lot of the bad stuff.

Uh, cost you nothing.

It just get it out of there.

So.

Anyways.

I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode.

Um, Yeah, connect with me on any of the, any of the platforms that I'm on,

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also helps to benefit those around you.

So.

Anyways.

I hope you all really enjoy today's episode.

I absolutely loved it.

I can't wait to do more research on the vagus nerve and just dive deeper.

And yeah, that is going to do it for today's show.

So anyways, uh, hope you guys can implement some of these practices

into your lives today, and you already know the motto of the show.

It's do everything with good intentions, connect to your elements,

and I appreciate you all, so very much, much love to everybody.

Have a great rest of your week.