The vagus nerve is the 10th of the 12 cranial nerves, and the longest. It’s technically a set of vagus nerves, extending from the lower part of the brain stem (medulla oblongata) and takingatrip down both sides of the neck, all the method to the colon. The word “vagus” is Latin for “wanderer”, which explains how the vagus nerve extends around the body, with nerve branches linking to the gut, liver, heart and lungs.
Often referred to as an “information superhighway”, the vagus nerve is one method the body and brain interact. The vagus nerve is both efferent and afferent, which indicates it sendsout indicates from the body to the brain, and vice versa, from the brain to the body. Eighty per cent of its nerve fibers interact from the body up to the brain, while just 20 per cent from the brain to the body.
The vagus nerve plays an essential function in the body as it’s the primary parasympathetic nerve, affecting breathing, fooddigestion, heart rate, stateofmind, immune function and reflex actions. The vagus nerve changes off your understanding anxious system’s battle or flight action, permitting you to relocation into a managed calm state, typically referred to as your “rest and absorb” state.
Regulating your anxious system
Your battle or flight reaction works finest when it’s triggered for brief durations of time, priorto moving rapidly back to a state of calm. The understanding and parasympathetic worried systems work together to enable you to stay safe and increase to difficulties, however to then return to a state of calm and recovery. Problems occur, nevertheless, when you are too frequently in an triggered understanding state.
With phones pinging, relentless to-do lists, household obstacles, work duedates and thousands of unread e-mails, there’s a lot in life that can produce tension and trigger your battle or flight action. In truth, numerous individuals go about their lives in a consistent state of tension and survival. Your body and brain weren’t created to be in battle or flight long-lasting, and if you wear’t control your worried system activity your health and wellness can suffer.
When your considerate anxious system is triggered, it modifications how your body functions. It triggers your blood pressure to increase, your heart rate to boost, your immune function to modification and your fooddigestion to sluggish down. I spoke with Lisa Gumieniuk, a health expert and coach who assists customers control their worried system through vagal nerve assistance. She described that when under tension the digestion system is significantly interferedwith, which is why individuals experience either irregularity or diarrhoea when stressedout, both of which effect health and dietary absorption.
These battle or flight modifications in your body are developed to keep you safe in the brief term, however over time can endupbeing inflammatory and deteriorate your immune system. With a jeopardized immune system, you can get ill more typically and take longer to recuperate. Inflammation is likewise a severe health issue, and is connected to the advancement of heart illness, diabetes, autoimmune illness and neurodegenerative illness.
The brain is likewise affected by persistent tension and directexposure to too much of the tension hormonalagent cortisol. Neuroscientist Dr John Arden describes in his book, Rewire Your Brain, “When cortisol production is extreme and extended, the hippocampus receptors themselves shut down. The hippocampus then starts to atrophy, and with it your memory capability.”
This is where the vagus nerve comes in, to use the “brakes” on the tension reaction. Gumieniuk discusses that “the vagus nerve system acts to counterbalance the battle or flight action in the body, and activates a relaxation reaction rather.” In this unwinded parasympathetic state, Gumieniuk describes, “Your body heals, your gut works well, you can absorb food and you assistance the function of your reproductive organs.”
Feeling safe
According to Dr Stephen Porges, who established Polyvagal Theory, when operating from your parasympathetic worried system you experience a sense of security. Feeling safe is an essential aspect of physical and psychological wellness. Porges discusses, “When people feel safe, their worried systems assistance the homeostatic functions of health, development, and remediation, while they atthesametime endedupbeing available to others without sensation or revealing risk and vulnerability.”
When you’re under tension, pressure or the results of injury, you feel the opposite of safe since your worried system endsupbeing hypersensitive and alert to dangers and threats. Deb Dana, a accredited medical social employee specialising in complex injury, discusses in her book Anchored that “Moving out of forward security into the energy of the understanding system, we have a sense of approaching threat and getin into battle and flight. The world feels like an risky location with risky individuals.” Arden discusses why this takesplace, stating, “The amygdala (the worry centre of your brain) endsupbeing more sensitised by an boost in cortisol. Because the amygdala can endupbeing hypersensitive, persistent tension can make you more tense and distressed.”
Knowing how to manage your anxious system assists to rewire your brain to feel calmer and moresecure and to be more open to the world. Dana states, “When we are anchored, we have a sense of being securely held so we can endeavor out without endingupbeing adrift. We are linked to a state of policy and have space to checkout the world around us.”
Working with your body
To start to do this, Dana talks about “autonomic listening”, which includes observing when you have moved into your considerate anxious system, so you can bring yourself back to a location of calm. She states, “When we findout to listen, we develop the capability to show and not just respond. As we discover to partner with our worried system, we start to experience wellness.”
She states, “The objective is not to stay in a state of policy, however rather to understand where we are, identify when we are moving out of policy and being pulled into a survival reaction, and be able to return to policy. The capability to flexibly relocation inbetween states is a indication of healthandwellbeing and durability.”
You can develop your body awareness through mindfulness practices, meditation (including body scans), breathing practices and reflective journaling. These body-based activities can aid you muchbetter comprehend and control your anxious system. Yo