WTF is the Vagus Nerve?
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body. It comes from the Latin word, vagus, for “wandering.” That’s because it wanders throughout your body, with wide distribution connecting the brainstem to the body. Only mammals have this nerve. It helps the immune system and inflammation response to disease. It has four main functions: sensory, special sensory, motor and parasympathetic. It has the dorsal and ventral parts to itself. The dorsal is the back and the ventral is in the front. During neuroception, both parts may be activated as you analyze environment cues of safety or danger. Safety cues activates the ventral, and danger cues activate the dorsal. There are three states of being: mobilization, immobilization or social engagement in response to your environment. A healthy vagal nerve leads you to respond mindfully.
what exactly does it control?
- Digestion
- Heart rate
- Sweating
- Speech
- Taste
- Breathing
- Immune response
- Mood regulation
- Reflexes like sneezing, swallowing, and coughing
a powerful healer
- Turn on neurogenesis, helping our brains sprout new brain cells.
- Rapidly turn off the stress, hyper-arousal, and fight/flight via the relaxation response.
- Sharpen our memories.
- Fight inflammatory disease.
- Help you resist high blood pressure.
- Block the hormone cortisol and other oxidizing agents that age and deteriorate the brain and body
- Block systemic (body-wide) inflammation - a major factor behind aging and poor health.
- Help us overcome depression and anxiety.
- Help us sleep better.
- Raise levels of human growth hormone.
- Help us overcome insulin resistance.
- Turn down allergic responses.
- Lower chances of getting stress and tension headaches.
- Help spare and grow our mitochondria- this is a key to maintaining optimal energy levels and not harming our DNA and RNA.
- Affect our overall ability to live longer, healthier, and more energetic lives.
the <3 nerve
The vagus nerve is activated when you are feeling compassion and empathy. A person with a strong vagal nerve profile is more altruistic. Dacher Kelter says it’s the kid most likely to intervene with the bully or give up recess time to help someone with homework. Kelter says that in a lab, participants showed images of suffering, and that activated their vagus nerve. When shown images of pride, it diminished. It fosters common humanity in your compassion for different groups of people, however diverse or different. Stephen Porges calls it the “love nerve” because when activated, you are loving. It is caretaking in nature.
a gut feeling
The vagus nerve sends information from the gut to the brain, which is linked to dealing with stress, anxiety, and fear–hence the saying, ‘gut feeling.’ These signals help a person to recover from stressful and scary situations.
emotional un-dysregulation
Any time your brain perceives a threat, due to the sympathetic nervous system, it triggers the fight or flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system does the opposite–it calms you. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated when a danger is over, such as being pulled out of harm’s way from ongoing traffic while crossing the street. You are no longer distressed, you are at rest. However, sometimes, the brain remains in panic mode, as if you are still in danger.
“rest and digest”
The vagus nerve helps you to remain calm when you are stressed and to know when you are no longer in danger. It helps you to “rest and digest.” This is low tone dorsal activity. The parasympathetic though has high tone dorsal activity when you get into freeze mode. Typically, if you aren’t healthy emotionally, you are either in sympathetic (fight or flight becoming hypervigilant) or parasympathetic (freeze). Parasympathetic has two other states though- the rest and digest and according to the Polyvagal Theory, the ventral vagal branch of the parasympathetic which is social engagement. According to Irene Lyon, the ventral vagal allows you to be less guarded.