What is the vagus nerve, and why is it so important?

The vagus nerve is one of our favourite subjects when talking about stress - it's absolutely vital to controlling the stress response and improving stress resilience. Vagus means 'wandering' in Latin - it's the longest nerve in the body!!

Our vagus nerve starts at our brain, and connects with all the vital organs in our body- gut, heart, lungs, liver, bladder, eyes, and sexual organs. This means it controls a huge number of bodily functions.

The vagus nerve works as the 'brake pedal' for our nervous system, its what counteracts the stress response produced by the sympathetic system (fight, flight or freeze) and tells our body to go into rest, digest, repair and reproduce mode.

It:

✔️slows our heart rate

✔️stimulates digestion

✔️lowers blood pressure

✔️slows and deepens breathing

✔️triggers the storage of energy in our liver

✔️increases filtration of the blood in our kidneys (which ‘clean’our blood)

✔️creates sexual arousal

✔️controls release of cortisol, helping our body to recover from stress, injury, or illness

✔️reduces inflammation (as it modulates our immune response - see post on how stress affects our immunity)

Interestingly the vagus nerve is bidirectional - meaning more signals go from our body back to our brain than the other way!!

Its at the absolute root of the mind body connection.

Vagal nerve function is also called vagal tone, and can be measured by resting heart rate, and heart rate variability ie how much the heart rate varies with breathing.

Higher vagal tone (ie better vagus nerve function) is linked with

✔️improved stress resilience

✔️improved executive brain function (reasoning, memory, decision making, complex tasks, attention)

✔️improved self control

✔️better social engagement (ability to connect and bond with other people)

✔️more positive emotions

✔️improved physical and mental health, especially heart health

✔️better emotional regulation (ability to control our emotions, helping us to get less angry, upset, stressed, fearful, or tense)

The coolest thing about vagal tone though, is that you can help to control it - ie your mind can literally change your body!!

Vagal nerve tone can be improved by a variety of different strategies - you don't necessarily have to do them all, the key is finding one or two that work for you, and practicing them regularly, like you'd exercise a muscle. These include:

✔️Exercise

✔️Meditation and mindfulness

✔️Controlled deep breathing /breathwork

✔️Yoga

✔️Controlled cold exposure ie cold water swimming or cold showers

✔️Flow state (activities where we ‘turn off’ our thinking mind, and become totally absorbed in what we're doing)

✔️Playing wind instruments

 ✔️Singing/chanting /humming

✔️Volunteering and connecting with others

✔️Improving our gut microbiome (see posts on gut health for more details)

✔️Massage and physical touch

✔️Laughter

So if you suffer from stress, why not try introducing some vagal stimulation, it's free and easy - most of can be done anywhere at any time!!