Yes, I said vagus. No, there isn't a typo :)
Side note: I have been to the city of Vegas once and I don't ever plan on going back! But in this blog we're not talking about the city, we're talking about the nerve, specifically the vagus nerve!
While the title says what happens in vagus stays there, it actually doesn't! The vagus nerve is a key player in your autonomic nervous system, which is basically your automatic nervous system. This nerve brings communication to organs that function automatically without your conscious direction, like your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and your food digesting. The lungs are slightly an exception because we can consciously interrupt our breathing pattern but most of the time we are breathing without our direction.
Under times of higher stress, your vagus nerve will be communicating to those organs to respond to the stress accordingly. Your heart will beat faster, your blood pressure will increase, your breathing will become shallower, and your digestion will slow down. Your body will go into protective mode until the stress has resolved. Alternatively, in times of decreased stress, your heart will beat more slowly, your blood pressure will decrease, your breath will deepen, and your digestion will pick back up.
What happens if the stress doesn't resolve though? In today's society, we experience what is called chronic stress. No longer are we worried about a saber tooth tiger suddenly appearing on our village, but instead we have jobs, mortgages, bills, relationships, the general state of society weighing on our minds and your brain perceives this as stressful. In the primitive portion of your brain it will not differentiate between the saber tooth tiger and your mortgage. Both require a nervous system response. When the stress never goes away (generally the tiger was taken care of), your brain remains in a constant state of hypervigilance or what is known as fight-or-flight mode. Staying under this chronic stress load will eventually deplete your body and lead to exhaustion and burn out.
What can you do to prevent the exhaustion and burn out? Recognize your stressors. Address, remove, delegate whatever stress you can. Improve your body's resiliency to your stress. This is where chiropractic care comes in! At every initial appointment in my office we do a scan called heart rate variability. How well is your body dealing with your stress? The scan will tell us. When we do reassessments we can track any improvement in how your body is responding to the stress i.e. your resiliency to your stressors. Adjustments specifically in your upper neck will affect the nerve tone and tension in your spinal cord and where the vagus nerve is traveling.
Another thing you can do is vagus nerve exercises! Activities like singing, humming, gargling water, and chanting all utilize the organs that surround the vagus nerve where is travels through your neck down into your chest. The tone of the nerve (also known as how tense the nerve is) can be affected in a positive way from these activities or exercises.
Breathwork, like the 4-7-8 breath, can also influence the vagus nerve. You are directly using the lungs, once of the communicators along the vagus nerve, to influence the tone of the nerve too. Cold water exposure, like splashing water on your face, neck, and hands, or taking a cold shower, will also cause the nerve to receive an abrupt message and interrupt the pattern of stress and anxiety.
We're in not Vegas actually, but we do have a vagus and you can utilize this knowledge in a positive way to improve your body's response to stress! Don't forget the chiropractic care either. Click the Book Now link once you're done reading this to address the other crucial part of your vagus nerve's health too ;)
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