The vagus nerve: What is it, and why it matters when it comes to your mental health?

For years as a nutritional therapist and functional medicine practitioner, I have been talking about the mind-body connection and that this ‘connection’ is through several different means:

• Physically – through our spine and skeletal system

• Emotionally – our emotions can influence the body, especially our gut and our immune system

• Physiologically – we know that the gut and the gut microbiome can influence the brain and our moods

But one area that has been growing with interest, and research, in recent years is the connection between the body and the brain via the vagus nerve (pronounced ‘vay-gus’). In particular, the impact the vagus nerve has on our nervous system, especially our stress levels, and that there are some simple every day techniques we can do to stimulate the vagus nerve and bring calm into our nervous system.

What is the vagus nerve?

The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that connects the base of your brain to your gut and almost every single organ in the body, and its main function is to sense what is going on in the body including pain and the immune system.

Image: Medscape

How does the vagus nerve affect our health?

The vagus nerve helps to control important automatic functions such as breathing, our heart rate and digestion, and this is where this regulatory role can have a positive impact on our parasympathetic nervous system (‘rest and digest’), and our mental health.

Stress

Stimulating the vagus nerve decreases the sympathetic nervous system (‘fight and flight’) and increase the parasympathetic nervous system, helping you to lower your overall stress level

Digestion

Many of us experience digestive symptoms when we’re stressed or anxious, so stimulating the vagus nerve can bring mor relaxation to the digestive system allowing it to digest food more easily and then move food through the digestive system.

Mental Health

The more we are able to be in the parasympathetic mode, the calmer we feel and therefore the less anxious or stressed we feel.

Blood pressure

The vagus nerve directly influences our blood pressure through the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.  The higher the sympathetic nervous system (aka stress) the higher your blood pressure – especially if your stress is happening over a long period of time. 

The immune system

The vagus nerve picks up signals from the immune system and can detect inflammation or infection.  It then sends this signal to the brain, and the brain in turn tells the immune system to reduce inflammation by releasing pro-inflammatory molecules to help fight the infection.

How can you monitor vagal tone?

Heart rate variability (HRV) is known to be one of the strongest indicators of good vagal tone.  HRV is essentially the small changes between each heartbeat, and the higher your HRV where your body can easily switch between being active and resting, the better as this indicates a healthy, flexible heart and nervous system.

Good vagal tone = good parasympathetic function (i.e. the ability to relax)

Image: Unsplash

There are many devices on the market which allow you to measure your HRV, and if you have a smart watch you already have this built in, for example:

• Garmin Smartwatch includes a ‘Stress Level’ which analyses your HRV

• Apple Watch automatically tracks HRV which you can find in the Health App

• Oura ring is the probably one of the best devices out there at the moment for tracking HRV

• Whoop is another popular, and cheaper, option for HRV

I have tried several of these devices and whilst they can be good to get a base idea of where you’re at, personally I don’t like tracking my data for more than a week or two.  I find it overwhelming, and I begin to ‘obsess’ over my stats rather than just relax and go about my day, tuning into my body rather than my watch or device, hence I don’t recommend using tracking devices for anyone who has anxiety around their food or a history of an eating disorder.

Ways to improve your vagal tone

The good news is, you don’t need a device to manage your HRV and improve vagal tone!  There are many ways in which you can bring your body, and nervous system, into a more relaxed state which will improve vagal tone.  This includes:

• Stress reduction

• Slow breathing exercises

• Chanting

• Music therapy

• Listening to classical music

• Positive emotions and positive social connections

• Mindfulness practices

• Practicing forgiveness

• Laughter

• Massage

Resistance training may also improve vagal tone, another reason why we should all be building muscle no matter what age we are! This may be through:

• Reducing stress and inflammation

• Improving HRV

• Enhancing metabolic health including insulin sensitivity, body composition and sleep

Nutrition also plays a part in supporting good vagal tone too!

Omega-3 fatty acids (my favourite nutrient!) appears to support the parasympathetic nervous system which in turn can improve vagal tone by:

• Increasing HRV

• Reducing resting heart rate

• Reducing inflammation

There is also some research coming through that suggest probiotics can enhance vagal tone as well, mainly thought he gut-brain-axis, including a randomised control trial where they used a multi-strain probiotic in individuals with major depression and it improved their vagal tone!

So, when it comes to our mental health, improving vagal tone is really important!  The positive benefits include:

• Better resilience to stress

• Increased feelings of calm

• Better emotional regulation

• Improved digestion and reduced IBS-related symptoms

• Reduced inflammation

• Improved sleep

• Reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression[1][2]

Stress continues to be one of the biggest drivers of poor health as it impacts the body on every level from our hormones to our food choices, our sleep to our digestion and immune system.

If you’re ready to find ways to reduce your stress and improve your mental health, then book a free discovery call with one of the team today and let’s get you out of fight-and-flight and into rest-and digest

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98736-9?

[2] https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2023/02/09/cyclic-sighing-can-help-breathe-away-anxiety/?