The vagus nerve a key player in health with activation tips

The vagus nerve: a key player in health with activation tips

Dawn (00:01):

Hello and welcome to the Gastric Health Show. My name is Dawn Boxell and this week’s topic is the vagus nerve, a key player in health with some activation tips. So we are going to cover kind of just the foundations of why matters with the vagus nerve and why you need to incorporate it and stimulate it and how it affects your overall health. This is definitely something that I encourage my patients that I work with, especially with digestive issues, to really work on their vagal tone because this can influence a lot of factors when it comes to digestion and once we get into it, I’ll be able to share more, but I hope that you will find value in this.

Dawn (00:59):

Most people are pregnant and be like, eh, what’s the vagus nerve? Who really cares? But it truly can help influence your overall health in positive ways, but then also negative ways when say a surgery happens and it nicks the or severs the vagus nerve, and then all kinds of health complications occur once that happens.

Dawn (01:28):

this is something that you have to have some awareness around because you can’t discount its impact on your overall health because it truly can take a very healthy person having it nicked or severed during surgery. So think even gastric bypass because it is attached to your stomach. And if that surgeon doesn’t do it just right and really minimize the damage to the vagus nerve, you can come out a very different person in how your health is. So think of those patients who had surgery and never really did have the health outcomes that they anticipated. This could be a puzzle piece of why that occurred.

What is the Vagus Nerve?

Dawn (02:21):

This could be one of the reasons why now this person is battling these new problems that they never once had as an issue. So that’s why it’s important to do. But I want you to, this is I want you to start with a practice. Practicing these type of vagus nerve stimulators will seem kind of bizarre on some of them. Others you’re probably already doing so you’re probably doing some of these stimulators regularly, but adding

Dawn (02:58):

More to it is positive, is a positive way, especially if you’re still challenging, you’re still struggling with health challenges, then that might help improve speeding up a solution. So our body’s complex system requires a combination of practices to maintain optimal health. And one important factor to consider when addressing your health issues is the health of the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve regulates your parasympathetic nervous system. So rest and digest sympathetic is fight or flight, and parasympathetic is rest or digest.

Dawn (03:41):

The vagus nerve is a superhighway between the brain and the gut, and it regulates your internal organ system such as your heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion. Several studies have also linked low vagal tone to depression, anxiety, heart disease, and digestion problems. Thus understanding the vagus nerve is crucial to maintaining good health in an enhancing its function. So the more that we have some practices that we’re doing these regular regularly to stimulate the vagus nerve nerve and keep that vagal tone high, then you will have less problems with your overall health.

Dawn (03:41):

Dawn (05:05):

And of course there are many other important organs that we’re not even discussing. But interestingly, Vegas is the Latin word for wanderer, which kind of accurately describes how the nerve crosses over the body and reaches different organs. So if you think about these organs that we talked about, the heart and the lungs and the spinal cord at all, they’re in different locations, but the vagus nerve is attached to those organs, so it does clearly depict a good picture of what the vagus nerve is.

Dawn (05:43):

Several essential body functions are controlled by the vagus nerve, like digestion, heart rate, breathing, and it’s also important for the body’s rest and digest response, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. And the vagus nerve consists of both afferent and afferent fibers, which means it communicates with and from the organs. So that means it’s communicating from the brain to the gut, the gut to the brain, the heart, the lungs, the spinal cord, all of this that is the communication highway for your body to communicate the behaviors from the brain to all of these organs.

Dawn (06:31):

So that’s what makes it so important that if it is damaged or injured during a surgery, that why this could be that you have problems that maybe you’ve never experienced before. Additionally, the vagus nerve transmit infor information from the brain to the gut. It is the superhighway and allowing the communication between the two systems, and they do go both directions, brain to gut and gut to brain.

What is Vagal Tone?

Dawn (07:01):

And actually 80% of the communication comes from the gut to the brain and 20% from the brain to the gut. Previously it was thought that it only communicated from the brain to the gut and not vice versa. So now we know that there is a communication going in both directions, that information, both areas are controlling your body’s behavior. So it’s not just brain down, it is gut up to the brain, but nevertheless, you should pay attention to the tone of your vagus nerve. And a higher vagal tone promotes the parasympathetic nervous system or rest and digest and is associated with faster recovery from stress.

Dawn (07:56):

So this gets into the importance of making sure that this vagal tone is optimal. Vagal tone is a measure of the activity of the vagus nerve. It is an indicator of the strength and effectiveness of the parasympathetic nervous system, and a high vagal tone is associated with improved digestion, induced inflammation and improved cardiovascular health.

Dawn (08:23):

A low vagal tone on the other hand is associated with anxiety, depression, and digestive problems. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer are also associated with low vagal tone, which definitely contributes to chronic inflammation. In order to measure your vagal tone, you need to track certain biological processes such as your heartbeat, your breathing rate, and your heart rate variability, or what we call H R V A high heart rate variability or a high H R V correlates with a high vagal tone.

Dawn (09:03):

Each of them is correlated with the other. So there are ways that you can track your heart rate variability and there are some devices that can do that for you. If you are into doing that, that would be one way that you could kind of track and understand how your vagal tone is. So how does vagal tone influence health? Your vagus nerve regulates a wide range of bodily functions and are one of the most important nerves in the body.

How does vagal tone influence health?

Dawn (09:35):

It is crucial in regulating digestion, stress responses, and overall wellbeing and in we’ll just kind of get into the depths of each of these areas now. So number one, it’s responsible for the parasympathetic nervous system or the rest in digest, and the vagus nerve is the primary nerve responsible for your parasympathetic nervous system. As the body rests and relaxes, the parasympathetic nervous system conserves energy, slows the heart rate and stimulates digestion. Without this vagus nerve, the body would struggle to maintain this crucial balance leading to various health issues.

Responsible for the Parasympathetic Nervous System

Dawn (10:18):

So you can see that just this one nerve can truly change the behavior of your body in various ways. Studies indicate that stimulating the vagus nerve invokes the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in a decrease in blood pressure and heart rate as well as an increase in digestion. So just by stimulating the vagus nerve, you can kind of activate these responses and improving that tone, which will provide you with more optimal health.

Super Highway between Brain and Gut

Dawn (10:57):

Number two, it’s a superhighway between the brain and the gut. So in addition to regulating the parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve also serves as a critical communication pathway between the brain and the gut. A study showed that it is responsible for transmitting sensory and motor signals between the two organs, allowing them to work together in maintaining homeostasis.

Dawn (11:19):

Studies have also shown that gut brain communication through the vagus nerve can influence cognitive function, emotional state, and overall health. My brain always thinks when we talk about cognitive function, I think of Alzheimer’s dementia. So although we may not have a cure or a solution yet to Alzheimer’s and dementia, we do know that we can delay the

Dawn (11:53):

Of it and your vagus nerve is one piece of that. So if you stimulate your vagus nerve regularly with various ways, so not just one way, but you do several of the options I’ll cover in just a minute, you will find that you’ll have more optimal health and it will help maintain or help delay that onset of that cognitive decline that can occur as we age in those individuals with dementia in Alzheimer’s.

Regulates Internal Organ Systems

Dawn (12:28):

Number three, it regulates your internal organ systems. The vagus nerve also helps to regulate many of your organ systems like your heart rate, blood pressure, digestion by transmitting signals from the brain to these organs. So it’s all that signal is coming from the brain on the vagus nerve and through the vagus nerve, and it helps to maintain kind of that delicate balance of the physiological functions ensuring that they all function properly.

Influences Gut Motility

Dawn (13:05):

Studies show that the vagus nerve controls the heart rate, blood pressure, digestive enzyme production and gastrointestinal motility, and that’s the next one. Number four influences gut motility. So another key role of the vagus nerve is how it influences the motility of and the way that food moves through your digestive system. And it does this by regulating the muscles in the digestive tract and the vagus nerve helps to ensure that the food moves smoothly through the digestive system, avoiding issues with constipation or diarrhea. And studies have shown that stimulating the vagus nerve can increase gut motility in decrease symptoms of constipation.

Dawn (13:53):

Maybe you’ve never struggled with constipation your whole life, but then you have bariatric surgery and now you now there can be a variety of causes of that, but you could question was your vagus nerve damaged more severely and that’s contributing? Like say you try all the things and they don’t ever seem to help your constipation, maybe it’s because that vagus nerve was damaged and you really need to work on your vagal tone and increasing that. So again, challenging yourself in this area with this practice of vagus nerve stimulation is really a great way to see if you can shift things in the right direction. Number five, influence stress. So the vagus nerve

Influences Stress

Dawn (14:50):

Also controls stress and signs are sent from the brain to the body via the vagus nerve to activate the parasympathetic nervous system like we’ve mentioned. And it also reduces the body’s overall response to stress. And this can help kind of reduce those feelings of anxiety and really promote relaxation. A study has shown that it is responsible for activating the relaxation response, which helps to counter the effects of stress and promote feelings of calm relaxation.

Dawn (15:26):

So again, learning how to stimulate your vagus nerve or increasing the tone of your vagus nerve can also be ways to help mitigate stress long term and make you more stress resilient. So the higher vagal tone you have, the more resilient you’ll be from stress. Because we’re not getting out of stressful events, no, that is not going to change, but we can help support our body positively. Yes, we can control how we respond to stress, but we could support our body in this kind of back way that it supports it at the vagus nerve level.

Provides Anti-Inflammatory Properties

Dawn (16:11):

So at the beginning point that we can make ourselves more stress resilient, that when things come it just kind of floats off your back like nothing. So it’s a way that you maybe haven’t thought of when it comes to stress management that just really focusing on that vagus tone and seeing if you can’t improve that to help you become more stress resilient. Number six, it provides anti-inflammatory properties. Study has also shown that the vagus nerve reduces inflammation throughout the body due to its anti-inflammatory properties. Undoubtedly, inflammation plays a significant role in the development of many chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Involved in Satiety and Appetite

Dawn (16:59):

And in I will also include obesity in this as well because that has been very well vetted in research that obesity always comes with at least a low level of inflammation that is occurring. These diseases can be prevented and overall health can be improved by reducing inflammation caused by the vagus nerve. So increasing the vagal tone is one way to help lower the inflammatory response. Number seven, it’s involved in this in satiety and your appetite. The vagus nerve regulates hunger and promotes fullness by transmitting signals

Dawn (17:48):

From the gut to the brain. And as a result, overeating can be prevented and healthy eating habits can be promoted. So I don’t think this is going to work for everyone because we have to think about that genetic piece that some people that communication is not going to be as tightly regulated and because you don’t have the genetic pathways that encourage this to occur. So again, I think it’s something that you have to keep in mind that your vagus nerve is involved in this behavior and increasing that vagal tone.

Influences on Glucose and Insulin

Dawn (18:35):

I would try it, I mean try some of these stimulator activities and see if you can’t really make that tone better and see if it influences your satiety and appetite in any way. Number eight influences on glucose and insulin as a result of transmitting signals from the gut to the brain, the vagus nerve promotes healthy blood sugar levels and helps in preventing diabetes.

Dawn (19:06):

One study found that the vagus nerve stimulation helped patients with type two diabetes control their glucose level. And then another study showed that the vagus nerve stimulation improved glucose control and insulin sensitivity in obese patients with impaired glucose tolerance. So again, this is helping with the big picture of overall health. This is the big picture of your weight because your glucose and insulin are tightly connected to the number on the scale. So again, making sure that this is something that you add as a practice. You can’t do it once or twice and expect to get results.

How Can Vagal Tone Be Improved?

Dawn (19:53):

It truly has to be a practice that you’re doing regularly. So let’s move into how can vagal tone be improved? And there are really several techniques to stimulating the vagus nerve and improving its tone. And number one is humming, singing or garling. So if we break these down, the vocal cords and the throat muscles are connected via the vagus nerve and humming singing and garling activate these muscles and stimulate the vagus nerve and this increases the heart rate variability and vagal tone.

Humming, Singing, and Gargling

Dawn (20:35):

So I’m going to break down these individually. Like humming hummings humming is one of the easiest, most effective ways to stimulate the vagus nerve when you hum the vibrations stimulate the nerves in the face and the neck, which in turn activates the vagus nerve. So very cool, very simple. You could stand in the shower and hum your favorite song or just hum, do a long hum as you were deep breathing.

Humming

Dawn (21:09):

Do a hum through that and it would be a great way to stimulate your vagus nerve. Study results indicate that humming increased heart rate variability and indicator of vagal tone, if you remember, and then humming for just five minutes per day can improve vagal tone and promote relaxation and calmness. And I don’t know about you, but I always take a five minute more than a five minute shower. So I could easily add this to my regular routine.

Dawn (21:40):

I’m not great at the humming piece I will say, but I do it occasionally. So I have to work on that practice of tying it or kind of stacking it with another habit that I already do. And the shower, that’s kind of when I’m reading my affirmations and I just need to write on my affirmation sheet that hangs in my shower or on the outside of my glass shower wall is just basically a piece of paper that I’ve written affirmations.

Dawn (22:12):

And when I’m in the shower I say them no less than one time, but as many times as I can during that shower. But I just need to write on the bottom of that hum humming to kind of stimulate the vagus nerve. So again, it’s tying it with other behaviors that you’re already good at and putting it in places so that you can add or stack that habit and add small things like this.

Singing

Dawn (22:41):

I mean you’re talking five minutes, I mean think of little things like that, but that is to me a very simple one that you could do. The next is singing. Singing is you are actually deep breathing when you sing and you’re using your diaphragm. And this is what activates the vagus nerve. So singing also stimulates the release of endorphins, which is our feel-good hormones. And they are also natural painkillers in a mood booster. So you can’t go wrong with singing and you could sing in the shower.

Dawn (23:16):

So for me, I could put on their humming, sing singing and gargling after I read my affirmations. And that would be kind of a great thing to add to do any or all of those because there are many days that I like to have music playing while I’m in the shower, so I could easily do all three of those in the shower and be setting myself up for that vagus nerve stimulation early in the day.

Gargling

Dawn (23:45):

So the next one is garling. So garling with water, your vagus nerve and the muscles in your throat are activated when you gargle. And one study found that garling improved mood and heart rate variability and healthy individuals increasing your vagal tone. So again, simple, you could just put some water in your mouth and gargle for a few minutes and add to that vagal tone. And then the last one in this section is laughter. So laughter increases the oxygen flow to the brain and stimulates endorphin release which activates the vegus nerve. And also aside from reducing cortisol levels, laughter also reduces inflammation and stress.

Laughter

Dawn (24:39):

And I would say this is something that being a human being, it’s not always easy to include in your daily life. Now that sounds awful, that sounds awful that maybe we aren’t laughing every single day. But if I reflect, I would say there are days where I’m very serious and I’m very regimented in my to-dos and I’m maybe not taking that time to be as present as I should and find something to laugh about myself and be more willing to laugh at myself and outwardly would be positive.

Dawn (25:26):

It would be a positive way to improve my health. We’ve all heard that laughter is the best medicine and I would not disagree, but I think life is hard sometimes it’s easy to get stuck and not be in that mental state of where you can laugh at yourself all the time or where you find things to be funny. So again, I think that definitely has to be a practice for certain personalities and I would probably qualify myself in that personality that I would have to work at laughing more like true, laughing, like a deep belly laugh.

Dawn (26:08):

Those are the things that I need probably more work on and I need to engage with other people that can trigger that for me and not as my personality is definitely more serious. I have to tap into that side of me that can be more silly and funny and fun more regularly.

Dawn (26:35):

So if that’s you, I totally relate and I understand the complexity of that when that’s not your nature. Or maybe you know, have some past traumas and childhood experiences that life has been hard and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that that makes you who you are. And it can make you a very hard cold person if you let it. You just have to not let it and you have to step back and say, okay, this doesn’t matter and I can just move on.

Dawn (27:13):

And it doesn’t. It’s not going to impact anything or anybody and just laugh about it or challenge yourself to get out in the community, connect with other people so that you can find those people that can truly make you laugh, that you can have fun with and just be silly. And as an adult, we just aren’t silly and crazy all the time.

Dawn (27:37):

I’m not going to say we’re not. But regularly when you are an adult adulting and have lots of responsibilities and maybe children that you are taking care of, especially young children, that’s always a lot of physical and mental work. And then maybe as your kids’ age, kind of where I’m at, it’s different, but man, I’m just busy and it’s kind of like, oh my gosh, how do I fit it all in? So it’s just all seasons of life. We have to get better at finding ways to be fun, funny, and connect with people in a way that brings us joy and happiness.

Deep Breathing

Dawn (28:22):

So now we’ve gone through all of those with number one on improving your vagal tone with humming singing and garling. So we made it through all of those. The next one is deep breathing. In deep breathing can stimulate your vagus nerve in a very powerful way and it reduces anxiety, increases your parasympathetic activity as well

Dawn (28:47):

In general, most people breathe about 10 to 14 times in one minute and by switching this to taking only six breaths in one minute can help you relieve stress. So I talk about deep breathing a lot and I’ve utilized this with many patients and encourage them to do even box breathing or just a meditation, a two minute meditation where it takes you through a deep breathing exercise but inhaling deeply through your diaphragm like you really get all of it in, you breathe it all in and then you breathe it all out.

Dawn (29:30):

And a longer exhale actually can help lower the stress level. So you want that to be longer. So say maybe you inhale for a count of four, but you exhale for a count of eight. That longer exhale will help reduce that stress level and help in stimulating that vagal tone. But six breaths in one minute I would challenge you to time this.

Additional Techniques

Dawn (30:01):

So put a stopwatch on for 60 seconds and then just count the breaths that you do in that one minute. Then set the stopwatch and do short, do the long deep breaths and only do six of them in one minute and then evaluate how you feel. You should feel your stomach expand outward when you do the inhale and then you exhale slowly and deeply. And again, like I said, this would be you would do a longer count of exhale and this will help you reach a state of relaxation that will stimulate the vagus nerve. Number three is your religious and spiritual practices.

Religious and Spiritual Practices

Dawn (30:49):

So this is something that research does show that engaging in some type of belief system can increase your vagal tone, benefiting your overall wellbeing. And there is a possibility that this is due to the fact that these practices often involve techniques involving meditation, deep breathing and prayer, all of which will stimulate the vagus nerve. Not to mention that many religious and spiritual practices involve social support, so community, a community aspect which can also benefit your vagal tone. So being part of a community and feeling connected with others can and has been shown to improve your vagal tone and reduce your stress level.

Dawn (31:45):

And it also can is involved with positive emotions such as gratitude, compassion, love, which again are all linked to improved fatal tone. And these emotions help kind of regulate your nervous system and promote relaxation and a feeling of wellbeing. So again, whatever your belief system is, I would encourage you to tap into it and connect with it more. And that is a great way to improve your overall health because it will stimulate your vagus nerve. Number four is cold exposure,

Cold Exposure

Dawn (32:26):

and it has been shown that acute cold exposure activities can activate the vagus nerve and stimulate the cholinergic neurons and researchers have discovered that cold exposure regularly lowers the sympathetic or the fight or flight activity that and increases the parasympathetic or rest and digest activity. So the next time you take a shower, try finishing the shower with 30 seconds of cold water and then you can eventually work your way up for longer periods of time.

Dawn (33:03):

I think this is kind of a trend on social media where people are taking ice baths and you’re in there for a couple of minutes or working up to two minutes and it has been shown that that dopamine boost occurs for hours after this cold immersion and can be super helpful. Part of that is it is improving that vagal tone. So again, it’s a piece that can work for some people. I don’t mind making my shower cold at the end sometimes.

Dawn (33:41):

Sometimes I have no interest in doing that. I am in need of the heat and don’t want to add cold at the end. But another one is you can just splash your face with ice cold water or submerge your face into a bowl of ice water and that can also stimulate your vagus nerve as well and has also been correlated to boost your dopamine additionally.

Probiotics

Dawn (34:11):

So number five is probiotics. And researchers increasingly believe gut bacteria affect your vagus nerve to improve your brain function. And kind of like I said earlier, 80% of the communication along the vagus nerve is coming from the gut to the brain. So that means that your gut microbiome is influencing that communication that in end in the end influences your body’s behavior. Researchers found that animals given lactobacillus rosis showed positive changes in the GABA receptors in their brain, a reduction in stress hormones and less depression and anxiety like behavior.

Dawn (34:59):

And you have to remember, yes, these are animal studies that I’m talking about, but right now these are the best ones because they’re more controlled. There are so many things that can influence that gut microbiome that it’s hard to do it in a human study and really do it well because there’s so many factors that you would have to tie in that are hard to like.

Dawn (35:27):

There’s no, there’s no gauge, there’s no thermostat, there’s no any way to actually say this means that. So again, right now the animal studies are fine and it’s not bad to glean wisdom from them. What I would say is utilizing probiotics or bacterial species to help support vagus your vagus nerve stimulation or just overall body health, this is where it may or may not work for some people because I think there’s so many factors that I don’t think that just one specific strain and you popping that lactobacillus ram is going to fix all your problems. I think it depends on the person and you want to encompass the whole body and you want to say, okay, what are all the things I can do that will support my overall health?

Dawn (36:31):

And that’s where you have to focus. Let’s see here. It’s also been discovered that the bifido bacterium longum normalizes anxiety like behavior in mice by acting on the vagus nerve. So this is where I think you, again, not one probiotic with this one bacterial species and strain is the solution. I think it is part of the puzzle and I think it’s a way to support. But do I think in any means that just taking a probiotic with this bacterial species in it is going to do everything you need for your vagus nerve? No, I really don’t. So utilize it for the other properties that it provides and that in combination is what provides optimal health.

Meditation

Dawn (37:33):

Number six is meditation. Meditation stimulates a vagus nerve, increases vagal tone and relaxes the body. Studies have shown that medi meditation increases vagal tone and positive emotions and promotes feelings of self goodwill. In one study meditation reduce sympathetic fight or flight activity and increased VA regulation. Number seven is omega-3 fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids cannot be produced by your body, so you have to consume these and fish is, or seafood are the best ways to get these compounds.

Dawn (38:17):

And actually they are very vital in normal functioning of your brain and nervous system. And additionally, omega-3 fatty acids are found to increase vagal tone and activity. According to studies, they lower heart rate, increase your heart rate variability, which means they stimulate your vagus nerve in the vagal activity. And parasympathetic dominance are also enhanced with high fish consumption. So the more that you can include seafood, wild caught seafood more sustainably, so more sustainably caught.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Dawn (38:56):

So think of the skip jack tuna or the lion and pole that are listed on the different canned seafood. Those are going to be great sources. Additionally, like sardines, mackerel, all those small fish trout, even the small trout in a can are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Number eight is exercise. We all know exercise has many health benefits, but you may not have realized that it also improves your VA tone. A study found that endurance athletes had higher vagal tone than sedentary individuals.

Exercise

Dawn (39:35):

The exercise options are really diverse. I mean walking, weightlifting, swimming, but you must choose something that you enjoy so that you can stay motivated. So it, it’s definitely something that you just need to test and have fun with it. Don’t make this drudgery like, Ugh, I don’t want to do it. Find active ways that you can move your body that doesn’t feel like it’s exercise.

Massage

Dawn (40:09):

I would say that’s why my husband and I love skiing and hiking and biking and just being active outdoors. We also enjoy doing indoor actual workouts, but I would say the outdoor stuff is our preferred and it doesn’t feel like exercise. So for me those are great ways to add to what I’m doing and a great way to keep my body healthy overall. Number nine is massage. And if you’ve ever gotten a massage, I think most people are super happy after because you feel fabulous and wish it would be something you could do every day because

Dawn (40:58):

it’s so relaxing and so wonderful and works out knots and tight muscles. So it’s a great thing to consider. But research actually indicates that massage stimulates the vagus nerve and increases vagal activity. A massage can stimulate the vagus nerve in several specific body areas. So that’s even a bigger bonus because you’re doing in multiple areas.

Dawn (41:28):

So if you think about that, kind of like if you’re gargling or singing, it’s all up in your neck and throat area, whereas a massage could be all over your body that could be stimulating it. Research indicates that a foot massage or what is also called reflexology, reduces sympathetic responses and increases vagal modulation. Additionally, stimulating the vagus nerve by massaging the carted sinus area near the right side of the throat can reduce seizures. Very interesting. And then accu pressure and abdominal massage has also been found to stimulate the vagus nerve and increase its tone.

Use of technology

Dawn (42:09):

So just massaging or manipulating different areas of your body is a positive. Number 10 use of technology. There has been an increase. Increase. There has been an increase interest in stimulating the vagus nerve with technology in recent years. And one of these apps is called the Nerva app, N E R V A, which can stimulate the vagus nerve and it is especially useful for those with digestive issues.

Dawn (42:42):

So if I have somebody that’s really having complex digestive issues and we’re not getting resolution, I will encourage them to start working on their vagus nerve. And the nerve app is one. Now, it is not a free app. I don’t think it’s super expensive, but it’s not super cheap either. It’s not like a $5 app. I think it’s something that you pay 80 bucks for the year. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s definitely an option that if we really need to stimulate your vagus nerve, this would be a way to do it with guidance.

Socializing

Dawn (43:19):

This could kind of walk you through doing that so that you could improve it. So it’s an option. Number 11 is socializing. So we kind of already talked about this in your religious and spiritual practices and the importance of community and socialization and laughter when you combine those can reduce your stress hormones and researchers have found that reflecting on positive social connections improved fatal tone and increased positive emotions.

Dawn (43:54):

Thus, I recommend spending as much time as possible with your friends and laughing with them. So this is why, again, challenging yourself in this area of maybe tapping into some new friends, maybe exploring new hobbies or trying new things are good. I mean, find things in your community, one that really don’t cost a lot of money so that you don’t have that as a reason why you can’t participate. There are many places that would provide great ways to move your body and connect with people at the same level that you totally can get this socialization.

Dawn (44:43):

or this community aspect that can provide so many beneficial aspects that it’s, it’s definitely something that you have to challenge yourself on. So let’s wrap this up. So don’t let your mind and body control you. You have the power to direct them. Your mood, wellbeing and resilience can be improved by stimulating the vagus nerve, which tells your body it’s time to relax and de-stress.

Conclusion:-

Dawn (45:15):

You can overcome. You can overcome anxiety, depression, gut problems, and overall health by increasing your vagal tone. Overall, I hope that you’ll be able to implement some of these steps into your daily life and live more optimally as a result. So I really do hope this has made sense and that you do find that you do some of these already and that you could easily add some of these into your already established habits and practices. And this could help just optimize your health even further and get you into kind of that state that you’re seeking. So check out our Gastro Health membership. It is a great place to get resources.

Dawn (46:08):

That is something that I’m working on within the gastric health membership right now. I do not have a lot of group programs going on. It’s more one-on-one individuals and I’m trying to create these group programs and connections that we can build a community and have that environment that gives you the space and the support and the guidance that we all need for all these different areas of life that maybe you struggle with blood sugar balance or maybe you struggle with hormones or maybe you struggle with cravings and appetite regulations or stress, all of these areas.

Dawn (46:53):

We want to have a community aspect so that you have the ability to connect with other people who are in that same space or season of life that they are needing to work on these same areas. So check us out. I’d love for you to join our membership. It’s a great place to be, a great place to get started with your health if you’re looking to shift it in the right direction. So you guys have a great week. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Listen, Learn, Enjoy…

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