Optimize Your Health | The Science Behind Vagus Nerve Stimulation

hi everyone good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you may be in the world I hope you're having a fantastic day I'm Dr Dan Nightingale your clinical dementia specialist and I'm joined here today with my clinical manager My overall um Handler and my beautiful wife Lynn hi Lynn good morning right today I want us to focus on the Vegas nerve and we spell Vegas VH G us so it's not like Vegas as in Las Veges but it's Vegas as in Vegas nerve what is it what is the Vagas nerve and what is all the hype about right now well recently I've been seeing people talking about all these different gizmos to stimulate your Vagas nerve expensive things to put on your neck and and all that kind of stuff don't need it don't need to spend a single penny on stim stimulating and increasing the vagus tone I'll I'll talk to you about the vagal tone in a minute but the vagus nerve is one of the the sets of nerves that runs from your brain all the way down through your body and branches out to various organs it's part of the parasympathetic nervous system the parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and relaxed part of your um system so belongs to that and it's really important that we keep the vagus nerve stimulated and the vagal tone elevated for good positive mental health Vegas is a Latin word that means Wanderer and that's because all the different branches of it wander out to different areas in your body so when people are experiencing trauma they they very they very often experience some physiological response in some part of their body and that's because your parasympathetic nervous system responsible for rest and relaxation is not working properly with your sympathetic nervous system which does the opposite job okay so people with uh with trauma people who are experien PTSD are often hyper Vigilant and on a hyper alert constantly and you know something like a dog barking or somebody banging a door or scratching a table can stimulate a past negative experience and the parasympathetic nervous system goes in hyper alert okay so the Vegas nerve is really important as as part of managing that and there are many ways in which we can stimulate our vagus nerve and increase the vag vagal tone now the tone is really important don't hear people talking about the vagal tone because the tone is how it responds how it reacts what's going on inside your system so we have to keep that in mind now I have nine suggestions for stimulating your vagus nerve and increasing your vagus tone your vagal tone and they are all easy to do they are all free they are all accessible well maybe some of them B free you might have to buy some omega-3 or some yogurt but here we go the first one is breathing now I use a lot of um hypnosis with my patients and in my practice so very often we will learn the vagus nerve breathing technique and this is where one will breathe through their nose nice and deep hold hold it for 5 to 6 seconds and slowly exhale through your mouth five or six times to do that so if if you're struggling to relax if you're struggling to to focus or concentrate because another part of my triadic approach is brain health therapy where people need to do different things and focus on that for about 15 minutes so if people are having difficulty with that because of cognitive decline or cognitive challenge then that breathing for five or six five or six times will help that person focus and and gr themselves again okay and bring that parasympathetic nervous system back in syn with the rest of the rest of your um your body okay now there's another one and um this one I'm not keen on CU I live in Arizona and I'm getting old and it's called cold exposure so very often people will talk about taking a cold shower to stimulate them and to get them going in the morning and things like that I'm not a fan I'm not a fan of cold exposure um I I'm I'm I'm a Brit I'm from the northwest of England originally and I live in Arizona two totally different contrasts in weathers and climates and things so I don't mind being cold but I'm not exposing myself to that I I won't take a cold shower I couldn't do that I can't handle that um tepid in W on in summer I can have it cooler but I like hot I prefer things to be hot but cold exposure is one of the other ways in which you can stimulate your Vagas nerve and increase your vagal tone if that's something that you enjoy doing and you don't mind doing um I think it's in like somewhere like uh Iceland or Sweden or Switzerland or somewhere like that where they go and jump in the cold freezing cold cold water um outside it's not for me the uh the breathing one is is my favorite one because it's easy and it's good and it works in therapy another good one is singing or humming chanting gargling those four things are really useful as well and and help stimulate the vagus nerve and increase the vagal tone so it doesn't matter what you sound like don't worry about that whether you think you're a good singer or a bad singer totally irrelevant just sing throughout the course of the day I do it I do that a lot and um sometimes I think it gets on my wife's neres but that's what I do that's only when you mess up the lyrics oh cuz she does like my singing yeah um the fourth one is probiotics so you know if you've got to be careful with your diet here but taking eating yogurt and having probiotics inside your system is a good way too meditation is the fifth one meditation is is fantastic and if you can find five or 10 minutes out of your day to self- meditate and by all you need to do for this you don't need to go on on courses to learn how to do stuff like this your body can naturally go into a state of relaxation and meditation and by relaxing somewhere and closing your eyes and just blanking out the world and focusing on your inner self and following the breathing technique is an excellent way of doing some self-meditation you might like to play some music to help meditate but not necessarily what what I like to do is Lay outside in the sun and listen to the birds around um and the nighing of the horses and the clucking of the chickens and some neighbor has donkeys so listening to them this helps me go into this meditative state so that's uh that's the fifth one omega-3 fatty acids we should all be having omega-3 fatty acids in our diet salmon eating fish good fish there are some fish that aren't very high in in omega3 fatty acids um but you know salmon is is a really good one tuna things like that so make sure your your diet and if you're following the Mind diet which we've talked about in previous videos the Mind diet is a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet if you're following that diet then you will be getting sufficient omega-3 uh fatty acids from your diet some people may need to take supplements but it's better if you can get it from the source okay number seven exercise I'm always promoting exercise that is something that I tell all my patients to do it's part of their uh brain therapy brain health therapy it's part of what we do part of our treatment plan is to make sure you get plenty of exercise and of course as we know and we learn more and more the best form of exercise is weight training okay massage who enjoys a massage most people do uh Lyn and I make it a point to go and have reflexology and massage every two weeks we fit that into our kind of lifestyle and it's really good it's very beneficial it's helpful and when it comes to being able to stimulate your nervous system it's good for that and then the ninth one we've talked about this a lot as well socializing making sure you're engaging with others socialize get out and about do stuff and laugh laughter they say that laughter is the best medicine laugh a lot it's really good and a good Belly Laugh releases so many different hormones and happy chemicals and makes you feel good um as many people know I used to be a standup comedian and what I think about that is that many many people especially today live lives that are stressful there's a lot of anxiety there's a lot of stuff going on in the world um people have problems challenges issues if you can go into a comedy room with the doors closed and the comedian making you you have this really good belly laugh for 60 90 minutes you forget about what's going on in your world and you you release all these happy chemicals which are you know they're they're brilliant absolutely fantastic for you and of course you're stimulating the vagus nerve and raising your vagal tone so really think about those think about what you can incorporate into your lifestyle think about what works for you and I think this is why there are nine different ones because different Strokes for different folks so think about them think about what works for you in introduce it incorporate it into your daily lifestyle and don't worry about spending hundreds of dollars on gizmos you don't need them okay our body has everything we need to both heal itself and to improve its overall well-being okay that's um that's for me Lyn do you have any questions on that topic just what are some other um conditions that one might does one need to have Dementia or PTSD to be able to stimulate the Vagas nerve what other scenarios absolutely everybody should do this on a regular basis if you feel a point where you can't relax if you feel a point where you're just lary you're on edge you're feeling stressed you're feeling anxious and this impacts on many many people right across the world because you know anxiety levels stress levels depression always on the increase it's it's continually growing so anybody and everybody can do these exercises and incorporate them into their into their daily lifestyle you don't have to have dementia you don't have to have PT um people who have stressful jobs um School teachers for example doctors nurses surgeons just so you could do it together as a family or as a couple yes you can yeah and like I was saying you and I both go for reflexology and massage every two weeks and we we do that together so I were Vegas nervous system our Paras sympath parasympathetic nervous system and there veal T is raised and kept in a healthy State because of that and the other things that we do on a regular basis would this be good if you're having trouble falling asleep yeah absolutely any kind of relaxation strategy and um internal meditation can help with that yeah very good particularly you know when you do it when you use it in a therapy set setting you're really thinking about that par parasympathetic nervous system um we've talked about trauma before in other videos so your hippocampus and your amydala and your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system all all involved in those traumatic experiences those responses and reactions so working with your vagus nerve training your Vagas nerve ner to remain in a good healthy place is good for everyone so it's kind of a way of taking back control over your body's response to a situation right is that a way to look at it right exactly that's a really good way of looking at it yeah because you know when people experience PTSD or any other traumatic experience psychological trauma we're not not sure is it the present moment is it the past moment is it am I living in the past am I living in the present they Clash those two things Clash when people are experiencing severe PTSD symptoms so by ensuring that that doesn't happen is one of the ways in which we can manage trauma and work with I have a program that aims to extinguish trauma not manage it not live with it but extinguish it all together and as you know ly a lot of my patients when they get to a certain point in their journey of neurocognitive change a neuro degenerative uh disease developmental trauma which is trauma that was experienced as a child that has never been addressed and may have been kept in the subconscious mind all these years begins to seep through it begins to present itself and and that's because you know there's certain parts of the brain that damaged prevent that stuff from staying where we would like it to stay so absolutely so stimulate your vagus nerve every day raise your vagal tone and you're going to be in a much um stable let me just rephrase that your mental health is going to be much healthier thank you very much enjoy please share this video the more people we educate the better please share my Instagram profile please share the YouTube channel follow me on Facebook any questions you have please ask either on this channel or Dr D Dr dale.com and have a fantastic week and I'll see you next week