Nourish With Intent: The Vagus Nerve And Digestion

Good morning, Cadre. Happy Saturday. Happy March 15th. I hope everyone's doing well. I've got my coffee. If it looks like I just woke up, I didn't. I just looked tired today for some reason, and that's okay. Good morning, Speak Wonder. Happy Saturday. Happy to have you pop in. Pop in here. Hopefully I can. My words will work today. What are you up to this weekend, Speak Wonder. Anything fun, exciting. Is the weather decent for you? We had a bomb, bomb cyclone come through Colorado yesterday. Very windy.

Trying to maybe get out and do some outdoor things today. Good morning, Jules. Welcome, welcome. I wanted to talk about the vagus nerve today. If you saw I threw that on my. Where you click to pop into the live. So it's not gonna be too long. I could probably talk for a very long time about this, but I just kind of want to throw out the basics because I think it can be helpful. So I guess I'll just pop in. It might just be the three of us this morning. Favorite coffee shop. Ooh, that's the. That's my favorite way to spend a weekend morning, going to your favorite coffee shop.

I love it. I love it. I'm so excited. Okay, so let's jump in and talk about the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve is your 10th cranial nerve, and it is a major player in your autonomic nervous system. So it is. Connects your brain to, among other things, right, heart, lungs, and what I want to talk about is stomach and intestines. Also connects to your spleen. Plays a lot of. A lot of roles. As I said, it's a critical component to your autonomic nervous system. And so right, autonomic nervous system is broken into your fight or flight or your sympathetic nervous system, and then parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest.

And it does have that name for a reason. When you are in fight or flight, your body directs blood away from some of these organs into muscles, and it will release stress hormones. And then conversely, your rest digest, promotes relaxation, promotes digestion, brings the blood flow back in, and you can digest your food. So a lot of times, I guess I'll give you a little background about why this is interesting to me. I did not really pay a lot of attention to this. Obviously learned what it was in school.

But in my work in working with clients, specifically with eating disorders, who pretty much consistently live in this anxious fight or flight state, just physiologically because the body's not getting enough food, the vagus nerve plays a really big role. And so that was something that the psychiatrists I worked with, the therapists I worked with, what would kind of emphasize in their work with clients just to help increase and improve vagal tone, which vagal tone just means how active the vagus nerve is.

The vagus nerve, when stimulated, regulates your digestive enzymes, stomach acid, bile, which is required to digest fats and controls the contractions of both your stomach and your intestines. So that movement that pushes everything through your system. And when that function is impaired, we start to see things like acid reflux, IBS and even gastroparesis. Because right blood flow moves away. When you're in fight or flight, things just kind of slow down and stop up. So it's something I see a lot.

Anytime I'm working with someone who has IBS or at least has been given a diagnosis of ibs and I'm seeing it more especially with acid reflux as well. Working on improving stress management and stimulating the vagus nerve shows improvement, which is great because it kind of unfortunately you have this positive feedback loop where when you're anxious and you have these digestive concerns, those digestive concerns will probably make you a little concerned and anxious. And then you just have this kind of back and forth loop.

So we have to interrupt the loop in some way. So in addition to just digestion, the gut brain access, so our vagus nerve connects to our. We also have an enteric nervous system plays a significant role in mood regulation, stress response and cognitive function. Your daughter just got diagnosed with IBS with acid reflux. Perhaps maybe introducing some consistent. If she's not already, maybe she is. Ways to improve vagal tone and be able to spend more time in rest and digest for versus fight or flight could be helpful.

Low vagal tone or low activity of the vagus nerve. Meaning spending more time in fight or flight is associated with chronic stress, fatigue, poor sleep and those GI issues that I mentioned earlier. So what are some ways to improve your vagal tone? Spend more time in rest and digest. My favorite, because it doesn't require having any things you can do it pretty much anywhere you are is diaphragmatic breathing or deep belly breathing. When you are breathing properly. If you've ever like taken a choir class or had a, I don't know, vocal coach, properly using your diaphragm stimulates your vagus nerve.

So we're gonna kick on that rest and digest system. There's a couple different methods. There's one that's like single nostril breathing and then you alternate. There's box breathing where you inhale for three counts, hold for three counts, breathe out for three counts. Just kind of do that cyclically. Another one is meditation and mindfulness, specifically strategies that encourage present moment awareness. So it's almost like grounding could fall in there. Potentially regular physical activity.

Because from the physical side of things, when we're active, that will also get our digestive system moving, which can in turn kind of kick on that parasynthetic nervous system. So specifically, aerobic exercise is what the research shows. Another one of my favorites that I've seen be very effective for people is like, a brief exposure to cold. So that could be, you know, the cold plunge. But even something we used in treatment, our treatment center a lot, was frozen citrus fruit, because you can put it back in the freezer multiple times, pull it out, hold the frozen citrus, splashing cold water in your face.

And then one that I actually just learned about more recently was like singing and humming. Because of the movement of your vocal cords in relation to your vagus nerve can help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. I thought that one was pretty cool. Maybe we all just need to sing more and hum more. But yeah, that's my very brief intro to the vagus nerve for you guys today. Like I said, kind of quick, but it's something I've been talking about this week, and I just think that it's really cool.

There's obviously a lot more anything with the gut. We're just like, just at the tip of the iceberg in our knowledge and understanding and how we can utilize it to improve health and different aspects of health, including mental health and prolonged anxiety and all of those things that I just mentioned. So it's really interesting to me. Hopefully it was a little bit interesting for you guys. I appreciate you being here. Hopefully you learned something I would love, if you guys are interested at all.

Maybe I'll do like a GI series or something similar to my Intuitive meeting series. And I know I've touched a little bit on GI within that because it's related, but maybe like GI myths or something. I don't know. I don't know. Let me know if there's anything that really interests you guys. I think you guys are always here, so I want to be able to make sure that you listen to something interesting. I'll leave you with that today. I hope you all. Hey, both of you. I hope you both have a wonderful weekend.

Jules, enjoy your hotel. Coffee on your bed. I love that we're all having coffee together. That's my goal. Part of why I did it at this time in the morning is because I want to be able to collectively share a cup of coffee so speak wonder. Stay warm. I'll see you guys Both I apologize I did miss last week I was traveling and I it was in a time change and forgot so that one's on me but I will be here next week at 8:30 mountain. There's one more live today Dan is at 2:30 mountain time so if you're interested in that, stick around but other than that, today's JC's birthday.

Go wish him a happy birthday when you're doing Miz. That'll be so fun. I've only ever seen it done at my high school. I've never seen like an official production but it's probably gonna be wonderful. Have so much fun. Okay, I will see you guys next week. It was good to talk to you both even if just through a screen until next time.