Speaker 1: Welcome to Healthy Ish. Thank you for joining us today
Speaker 1: on this Body and Soul podcast. I hope you are
Speaker 1: feeling healthy ish. Of course I am Felicity Harley. Is
Speaker 1: it just me or is everyone talking about the vagus
Speaker 1: nerve right now? Well, to shed some light on the
Speaker 1: crucierrole it plays in regulating our physiology and emotions, I'm
Speaker 1: joined via online studio by physiotherapist and ted X speaker
Speaker 1: Jessica Maguire Fyi. Her new book is called The Nervous
Speaker 1: System Reset. After listening to this one listening to our
Speaker 1: other sister podcast, Extra Healthy Ish, where Jessica shares how
Speaker 1: we can get better at regulating our nervous system. You
Speaker 1: can search for Extra Healthy Ish wherever you get your podcasts. Jessica,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on healthy Ish today. How are you.
Speaker 2: I'm well, Felicity, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a new book. Congratulations. How does it feel
Speaker 1: you always good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very exciting, particularly being my first book,
Speaker 2: so it's all new to me. But yes, very much
Speaker 2: enjoying the whole process.
Speaker 1: Now. When I did see, well something on the cover
Speaker 1: of your book, the vagus Nerve, I just thought I
Speaker 1: am saying this on social media. In the media, everyone's
Speaker 1: talking about it. Why we're so obsessed with the vagus nerve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting time with this coming into mainstream.
Speaker 2: So I think it's really great that this awareness is
Speaker 2: coming in because we used to just think of our
Speaker 2: nervous system, particularly this autonomic nervous system, keeping us safe.
Speaker 2: It was like a really simple two branch system of
Speaker 2: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, where you know, the sympathetic
Speaker 2: was like the accelerator and a car took us in
Speaker 2: a fight or flight, and the parasympathetic was like the break,
Speaker 2: we'll rest and digest and slowed us down. But what
Speaker 2: we now know is that it's not actually a big
Speaker 2: enough picture, so it's a little bit outdated. And we
Speaker 2: know that the power sympathetic branch, there's actually two breaks.
Speaker 2: And this has to do with the two parts of
Speaker 2: the vegas nerve. So one part of the vegas nerve
Speaker 2: that runs from our brain to our heart slows us
Speaker 2: down and regulates us. This is both our physiology and
Speaker 2: our emotions changing and the other part can take us
Speaker 2: down into a shutdown. And so what's interesting is we
Speaker 2: are bringing this into mainstream. You know, awareness that this
Speaker 2: is different. I think that's great, particularly from a trauma
Speaker 2: informed point of view, and that's why it's taken off.
Speaker 2: But we are also seeing a lot on how we
Speaker 2: hack this vegas nerve and quick things we can do
Speaker 2: for a fix, which you know, it can in some
Speaker 2: ways be really helpful, but it may also miss the
Speaker 2: complexities of the vegus nerve and all the different parts
Speaker 2: of it, because I think it's more like an ecosystem
Speaker 2: rather than just one nerve we can hack.
Speaker 1: That's a really great description because often you will see
Speaker 1: hack your vegas nerve and do this, and do that,
Speaker 1: and you can you can calm yourself in three seconds flat.
Speaker 1: In some ways, you're right, it's good because it's getting
Speaker 1: the message out there, but in other ways it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of well, there's a few falsehoods around it. Why
Speaker 1: is it important for our health talk to us about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, you know, it's interesting. When I was at
Speaker 2: university a long long time ago, we sort of compartmentalized
Speaker 2: all the systems, you know, we broke up the body
Speaker 2: and brain. And even as I worked as a physiotherapist
Speaker 2: and was really identifying myself as somebody that worked on
Speaker 2: the body, but what I now know was a lot
Speaker 2: of the things I was doing was also working on
Speaker 2: the brain indirectly from working through the body. And so
Speaker 2: the vegus nerve is this very much real connection between
Speaker 2: our brain and body, and the way that the vegus
Speaker 2: nerve is sending messages will determine the state of our
Speaker 2: nervous system that we move into. So eighty percent of
Speaker 2: its fibers are running from the body up to the brain,
Speaker 2: and it's sending information about how we are, if we're
Speaker 2: safe or not. But also these same messages are really
Speaker 2: important for keeping balance between our systems. So for instance,
Speaker 2: this is a really simple example, but let's say we
Speaker 2: feel thirsty and that message is sent up to the brain,
Speaker 2: then we might go and get a drink and we
Speaker 2: reregulate that system or our hydration. The same for hunger.
Speaker 2: But this can also be with things that we're not
Speaker 2: aware of, like blood pressure, pH balance, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But the branches of the vegas nerve that are running
Speaker 2: from the brain back down to our organs are actually
Speaker 2: regulating our health. So there's a really important role with
Speaker 2: the branches to our heart to do with cardiovascular health.
Speaker 2: There's branches to our gut that helped to regulate the
Speaker 2: digestive system, and the vegus nerve plays a really important
Speaker 2: role in the immune system with inflammation too. So we
Speaker 2: can't necessarily separate the brain and body. We can't separate
Speaker 2: our emotions from our physiology. And this is where physical
Speaker 2: and emotional health really intersect. And I think this is
Speaker 2: a really exciting time because we've heard for so long, well,
Speaker 2: stress is bad, but what we're really seeing is it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily that stress is bad. You know, if we
Speaker 2: mobilize energy to face a demand and we recover from it,
Speaker 2: that's fantastic. We can do that, We can meet challenges.
Speaker 2: But it's the way our vagus nerve releases and then
Speaker 2: re engages to change our physiology to meet what's happening
Speaker 2: in front of us accurately and from what's happened in
Speaker 2: our past. We might respond with too much energy or
Speaker 2: mobilization in our system, which I've talked about in the
Speaker 2: book as being in the too hot state, or we
Speaker 2: might find ourselves responding with not enough and a little
Speaker 2: bit more of a collapse and an apathy, which I
Speaker 2: wrote as being in the too cold state in the book.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just think when you're talking about you
Speaker 1: actually described it so well. It's so good to look
Speaker 1: at a visual of it as well, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: always come back to the visual of the vagus nerve
Speaker 1: because it just helps you get your head around well,
Speaker 1: how it affects every as you say, organ and every
Speaker 1: body part and filters back into the brain. So how
Speaker 1: do you describe it? Do you describe it controlling it,
Speaker 1: balancing it, tuning in like how can we get better
Speaker 1: at toning it? So to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think when you
Speaker 2: talked about before, are we hearing a lot about hacking it.
Speaker 2: We can't really hack it if we want to look
Speaker 2: at building more regulation in our nervous system, or what
Speaker 2: we might say is building vaguel tone. So you know,
Speaker 2: we can say, well, just like a muscle that's healthy
Speaker 2: and strong has good tone, we say that the vegus
Speaker 2: nerve has good vaguel tone. And this is particularly the
Speaker 2: branch that we look at. It runs from the brain stem.
Speaker 2: So if you put your hand on the back of
Speaker 2: your head, run it down to where that bony ridges,
Speaker 2: and you went in from there, that's your brain stem
Speaker 2: and then it goes down to the heart this particular branch.
Speaker 2: So that connection there of the vegus nerve acts like
Speaker 2: a break. So if you were riding a bicycle down
Speaker 2: a hill, you keep a little bit of that break,
Speaker 2: engage with your fingertips so you didn't go too fast,
Speaker 2: And that is technically what the vegus nerve is always
Speaker 2: doing to us. So if that wasn't there, our heart
Speaker 2: rate at rest would be about ninety beats per minute,
Speaker 2: but for most adults, because of that, yep, it's like
Speaker 2: around seventy. So when we want to meet a challenge,
Speaker 2: if we've got healthy vagel tone, well actually just relax
Speaker 2: the break a little bit. So imagine we're like riding downhill.
Speaker 2: We relax the break a little bit, we go a
Speaker 2: bit faster, and this might be now while we're talking,
Speaker 2: because I love talking about this so much, I get
Speaker 2: so passionate, and I feel the excitement and mobilizing energy.
Speaker 2: But then afterwards that break would re engage and I
Speaker 2: would slow my physiog back down. That's what happens when
Speaker 2: we've got healthy vaguel tone. But what happens if we
Speaker 2: don't necessarily have healthy vaguel tone because of periods of
Speaker 2: chronic and traumatic stress. Instead of just relaxing that break
Speaker 2: a little bit, it comes off completely and it's like
Speaker 2: we find ourselves barreling downhill too fast. And this is
Speaker 2: really what anxiety is. This is where we move into
Speaker 2: fight or flight. We might have anger, rage, reactivity, and
Speaker 2: we feel that like energy come up and we respond
Speaker 2: in a way where we say, I wish I didn't
Speaker 2: say that, do that. You know, we have that regret
Speaker 2: later on. So the good news is we can actually
Speaker 2: fine tune or build this vaguel tone through what we do.
Speaker 2: And that's not necessarily through hacks. It's more like we
Speaker 2: can do daily things that help, but it's actually more
Speaker 2: what we do in the heat of the moment, and
Speaker 2: we teach our brain and our nervous system how to
Speaker 2: respond in a new way because we think like they're
Speaker 2: passive taking in information, but they're actually reshaping themselves through
Speaker 2: everything we experience. So that's where we lean into neuroplasticity,
Speaker 2: or how the brain and nervous system change.
Speaker 1: Jessica, thank you for coming on healthy.
Speaker 2: Ish, thank you for liciting.
Speaker 1: Well go by Jessica's excellent advice and toning your vagus
Speaker 1: nerve cannot be done in three easy hacks from TikTok No.
Speaker 1: It is a continuous journey throughout your life and if
Speaker 1: you want to read some more expert information on it,
Speaker 1: grab it Jessica's new book. It is called The Nervous
Speaker 1: System Reset and it is out now. If you did
Speaker 1: enjoy this chat, tell us, rate and review this podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also subscribe anything else said to body andsoul
Speaker 1: dot com DOTU for US and socials orb Our print
Speaker 1: edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and
Speaker 1: until tomorrow. Stay healthy ish