Understanding the vagus nerve is crucial for anyone seeking effective stress management and holistic wellness. This remarkable nerve, the longest of the cranial nerves, plays a pivotal role in regulating our body’s stress response, connecting the brain to critical systems including the heart, lungs, and digestive tract.
By learning how to stimulate and strengthen the vagus nerve, individuals can improve their ability to switch between fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest modes, potentially reducing the risk of stress-related health issues like anxiety, high blood pressure, and chronic inflammation.
Before we continue, please note that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, so what I share today isn’t medical advice. It’s general information on a topic I’ve researched about simple things you can try to help you live a better life. I welcome you to take what interests you, research further on your own, and check with a healthcare professional.
What is the Vagus Nerve?
The Vagus nerve is the longest of the cranial nerves. Starting at the base of your brain, it connects your throat, ear, and facial muscles and travels down both sides of the neck to the heart and lungs, then through the stomach and intestines. Interestingly, “Vagus” means “wandering” in Latin, which makes sense when you consider where this nerve travels.
The Vagus Nerve acts as a communication channel connecting the digestive system and your brain, which means it’s responsible for your “gut” feelings, so to speak, and perhaps most importantly, it helps your nervous system switch between the sympathetic mode (fight-or-flight) and the parasympathetic mode (“rest and digest”).
I’ve discussed our nervous system response and vacillation between the modes of flight or fight and rest and digest in many podcast episodes, especially the stress-specific ones. And while we do seek calm in a world that is hectic and pushes us to chronic stress response, the most important thing for us is regulation of stress for different purposes.
Sometimes we need to fight and sometimes we need to rest, and it’s essential to be able to switch back and forth between the two. We can get better at that if we know more about the special nerve that helps us do that.
When you have issues with the vagus nerve, you may experience symptoms of burnout, such as emotional exhaustion and lack of energy, which is a common experience for my fellow caregivers.
This is because when we deal with chronic stress, the vagus nerve can lose its ability to effectively switch your body back into parasympathetic mode—the ‘rest and digest’ state.
This means you might find it difficult to calm down and instead feel stuck in a state of overdrive. This condition is sometimes referred to as ‘vagal dysfunction,’ and when you’re in this state, you become more susceptible to various health issues.
These can include:
- high blood pressure
- heart disease
- type 2 diabetes
- depression
- anxiety
- gastrointestinal disorders.
If you’re interested in learning more about the specific health problems associated with stress, I delve into greater detail in episode 180, ‘What Stress Really Is and How to Manage It.
Two Tips to Strengthen the Vagus Nerve
Ready for some good news? The Vagus Nerve can be stimulated and strengthened. And when you improve its function, it will not only switch you back and forth between stress modes better, it will also help with proper digestion, and it’s been shown to be anti-inflammatory, which means it can help boost your immune system and help you feel better overall.
And, because this is the Positively Living Podcast, after all, I have more good news. Strengthening the Vagus Nerve is easier than you might think and you already know quite a few things that will help.
You’re probably doing them, so hopefully this will encourage you to keep doing them. By virtue of giving you tips to reduce stress, like in last week’s episode, you have ways to strengthen the Vagus nerve.
But for today’s episode we’ll simplify it even more.
Tip #1: Breathe Your Way Through
While I understand the urge to smack someone who says “just breathe”, I promise you it has more to do with the dismissive use of the word “just” than it does the advice, but it’s actually quite good.
There are sensory receptors in the lungs that connect to the vagus nerve and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, so deep, calming breaths are not only instinctive, they are key to helping us.
You probably know that Yoga is known for stress reduction and within Yoga there is meditation. It’s all connected in some fashion, and there are variations on the theme.
There is even an industry now dedicated to breathwork with facilitators who help you strengthen your breathing and do so in various ways depending on what you need.
In this case, we want to calm the stress response so I will give you a tip that is my all-time favorite. It’s something I receive the most feedback on because it’s so simple yet so effective: when you take that deep breath as you try to calm down, go longer on the exhale.
When I work with clients, we often take a few seconds to do this in a session and I will start them simply with an inhale count to 3 and an exhale count to 6.
Want to try it? I’ll count for you. And, when you do it, inhale through your nose and exhale out of your mouth.
Ready? Inhale 1-2-3, and exhale 1-2-3-4-5-6.
How does that feel? It was a quick thing to do that you can do just about anywhere, right?
Try it as you go throughout your day, whether in response to feeling stressed, or simply as a matter of transitioning to focus on the next thing. Bonus tip: You can use or pretend to use a straw to blow out your air.
Or pretend you’re blowing out the candles on your birthday cake. Sometimes that focus can help you exhale more. My personal favorite is blowing into a soda bottle to get a sound.
I suspect that being a musician, especially playing trombone and being a singer, has helped me do this naturally. I used to train myself in diaphragmatic breathing–the deep belly breathing instead of the more shallow shoulder breathing we often do normally.
I’d do this by lying down and placing books on my stomach. I would watch them rise and fall as a way to know I was breathing deeply and it was a bit of a core workout to boost.
Today I probably use the “long exhale” technique the most in everyday life and it’s a habit to purse my lips and blow out. On extra stressful days, I can be dangerous in a room full of candles!
Tip #2: Use Sound to Support You
The vagus nerve passes through the inner ear, so you can stimulate it by engaging in active listening to soothing sounds. Soothing music, like you’d find in guided meditation or a George Winston album are great examples. But you could also find this in an audiobook or podcast.
If someone has a soothing voice to you, it can have a similar effect. I know my youngest listens to a podcast and the narrator has a wonderfully soothing voice (in a British accent, which is a plus in my book) and even the production of the sound–which mimics an old tape recorder–adds to the soothing quality.
If you want to take this up a notch, it’s even better when you create the sound. Whether you hum to yourself, or sing loudly in the shower, you are actually tapping into the Vagus nerve as it passes through your larynx and pharynx in the throat, so you get even more benefit. As a bonus, when you sing you often exhale longer as a result.
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably know my love of music and performing. I find music to be multi-functional and absolutely essential for our mental wellbeing. It can be engaging and energizing, soothing, and a way to help you focus. And while I have been doing this for awhile in a more professional setting, I highly encourage casual, fun approaches to this.
Remember that singing on key isn’t essential to stimulate the Vagus nerve and that a crazy night of karaoke has the benefit of social support and laughter too. That’s my kind of stress management!
There are many other potential ways to stimulate, and therefore strengthen, the Vagus Nerve. Some common ones include cold exposure, massage, and other classic stress response activities like Yoga.
If any interest you, I encourage you to research them and talk to your health practitioner about what makes the most sense for you. Create a habit and protect yourself from stress.
Pick a Suggestion that Works for You
As a reminder, I have many suggestions and resources for doing fun things that help. On the PODCAST page of the PositivelyProductive.com website you’ll find a Stress Management Playlist of episodes and on Spotify at Positively_Lisa (same handle as Instagram) you’ll find lots of music playlists. One in particular you might appreciate is a playlist I made of my favorite George Winston songs. He’s a piano player and I often request his music when I’m getting a massage. I’ll link to that playlist in the show notes.
Whichever you choose, the idea behind each practice is that they are repeated as a habit to help you increase your “vagal tone,” which is the measure of Vagus Nerve activity. You want this because higher vagal tone is generally associated with better health and resilience to stress. As I said in last week’s episode, stress isn’t going anywhere, so it’s up to us to figure out how to handle it. In the list of 10 things I gave you, you’ll find so much connection to the Vagus Nerve. I’m curious which ones you noticed right away?
What reduces stress response often strengthens the nerve and that is a win for us all around. If you’d like a list of the 10 tips to reduce stress, go to www.positivelyproductive.com/stress to request a printout and a graphic with summaries. You can find that and other freebies on the RESOURCES page of the PositivelyProductive.com website as well.
As you can see, what happens in the Vagus Nerve does *not* stay there and that’s a good thing! Which way are you going to activate your Vagus Nerve and help your body destress today?
