Heal Yourself – the Vagus Nerve

One of the most fascinating niches that some life coaches choose to work in is that of health and wellness.

There is a great contribution to be made purely through improving clients’ levels of self awareness about how brilliant our bodies are at healing themselves … with a little understanding and application on our parts.

One of the downsides of the frenetic lives that we live in today’s world is the impact on our health.

Ironically, while the treatment of various medical conditions is improving in leaps and bounds, more and more of us are succumbing to common problems that relate directly to the high stress, low activity lives that we live.

Chronic inflammation is likely the root cause or many of the ills that we experience, ranging from hay fever, eczema, migraines and arthritis to depression, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke – and a lot more in between.

[box type=\”shadow\”]“Before healing others, heal yourself.”

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Heal yourself – the vagus nerve (continued)

 

Red and swollen

To most of us the word inflammation conjures up a vision of red and swollen joints or parts of the skin that have been damaged in sports injuries or falls or perhaps through insect bites and infection. We typically associate inflammation with that rather painful but temporary period we endure while the body is repairing the damage done to it.

Overburdening the immune system

However, chronic inflammation is something different. White blood cells, normally mobilised by the body to attack and repair infection that can result from injury, get mobilised for no obvious reason and stick around for prolonged periods often overburdening the immune system and resulting in damage to the nerves, internal organs, muscles and joints.

Good health begins in the gut

It is generally believed that the statement “Good health begins in the gut” was first promoted by Hippocrates, the originator of the Hippocratic Oath that medical practitioners are bound by and who some would refer to as the father of modern medicine.

Problems in the gut are more often than not the source of chronic inflammation. Stress and anxiety can serve to make the gut more permeable (or ‘leaky’) than normal, allowing bacteria and toxins to pass through into the blood stream. The presence of these foreign agents fools the body into sending out armies of white blood cells and bringing on inflammation to subdue the apparent ‘attack’ on it.

Unfortunately the symptoms of the long term inflammation that is caused by problems that originate in the gut, generally do not point to problems in the gut but to problems in, for example, the organs and muscles that take the brunt of the cell damage.

So we tend to react by treating the symptoms … and not the cause.

Maintaining good gut health should be promoted as an area of paramount importance to all as a means to prevent chronic inflammation in the first place. But in dealing with inflammation that has already set in, the big player is the brain and a particular nerve that most people have probably never heard of.

The wandering nerve

The vagus nerve (meaning ‘wandering nerve’) is, believe it or not, the longest nerve in the body.

It extends from the brainstem all the way to the small intestine via a number of key organs including the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys, and performs vital roles such as maintaining a constant heart rate and controlling digestion.

Most of us have heard of the ‘flight or fight’ nervous system reaction that results from adrenalin release when we sense danger. But there is an opposite nervous system reaction called ‘rest and digest’ in which the vagus nerve plays a major role.

People who faint at the sight of blood experience a form of involuntary stimulation of the vagus nerve that causes a loss of blood pressure and loss of consciousness.

Vagal tone

Excitingly, deliberate stimulation of the vagus nerve through electrical and other means has been found to have profoundly positive effects on reducing chronic inflammation. In fact the ‘tone’ of the vagus nerve has been found to be key to activating the ‘rest and digest’ nervous system mentioned above.

The higher your ‘vagal tone’ the faster your body can relax after stress.

Not only that, but high vagal tone has been found to be correlated with lower anxiety, being less prone to stress and having overall better moods whereas low vagal tone can be associated with increased exposure to inflammatory conditions.

How to stimulate the vagus nerve

So the sixty-four thousand dollar question for those with inflammatory conditions is how to stimulate the vagus nerve to improve its tone?

The great news is that there are many, fairly simple ways to achieve this, for example:

• Practising yoga and/or meditation.
• Breathing deeply and slowly from the diaphragm.
• Laughing, singing, chanting, humming and even speaking (the nerve is connected to the vocal chords).
• Washing the face or the entire body in cold water.
• Exercise.
• Massage.
• Taking probiotics to increase healthy bacteria in the gut.

There are many very excellent medical drugs that will ease the symptoms of conditions caused by chronic inflammation but with a bit of research and some mild, well directed activity you can not only ease the symptoms but bring about self healing.

Isn’t it wonderful to know that you have everything you need to heal yourself?

 

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