Stimulating your vagus nerve can help you live longer. A top scientist shares 3 easy things he does to activate his own.

• The vagus nerve is essential for many bodily processes, including digestion and stable heart rate.

• Stimulating it can help prevent or stop chronic inflammation that is associated with the disease.

• An inflammation expert meditates and takes cold showers in the hope that they will activate the nerve.

Psychotherapists, yoga teachers and types of self -help like Mel Robins speak of stimulating the vagus nerve as a way to “reset” the nervous system and calm anxiety for years. But increasing evidence suggests that this can do much more for our health: by helping to maintain inflammation, the vagus nerve can be the key to life longer and more healthier life.

In our modern world, “inflammation replaces the infection as the biggest threat to a healthy human longevity”, Dr. Kevin Tracy, a neurosurgeon researcher and inflammation, which is the president and executive director of the Institute for Medical Studies of Faintein, writes in his new book, The Big Nervi: The New Science.

Non -infectious diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, which Tracy has identified to business interior as “inflammation diseases”, are responsible for three -quarters of death around the world in 2021, according to the World Health Organization. And this figure does not take into account that of 15 Americans affected by autoimmune diseases, which studies show production of chronic inflammation every year.

Stimulating the vagus nerve seems to reduce inflammation

The vagus nerve is made up of 200,000 nerve fibers that move from the brain stem, on each side of the neck, to the intestine – touching almost every organ in the body.

It helps to include the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for placing the body in “resting and absorption of condition” (the opposite of “battle or flight”) and is crucial for several automatic bodily processes, including digestion, reduction of blood pressure and heart rate, breathing, mood and immune function.

Neurologists are still working to reveal the role of any nerve fiber. They know that vague nervous activity, known as a vagal tone, reduces, for example, heart rate, but they do not know which of the 200,000 fibers are behind this mechanism.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a device for stimulating the vagus nerve, which is similar to a pacemaker and implanted in the patient’s neck, for the treatment of epilepsy in 1997 and depression in 2005, but is also studied as therapy in several inflammatory conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis.

In 1998, Tracy and his team at the Faintein Institute became the first to discover this relationship. When stimulating the vague nerves of mice with a manual stimulant, it reduces their inflammation, measured by levels of inflammatory biomarkers, in their blood by 75%.

Daily activities can activate the vagus nerve

There is enough content online, saying that you can stimulate your vagus nerve through things like cold showers, breathing exercises, knocking the body and applying pressure around the neck. But the reality is that science proves that one of these hacks is not there yet, Tracy said.

“It’s probably nice. But can we say for sure that we understand how everything works? No, not yet,” he added.

Still, Tracy believes in his own data and that of his colleagues, so he does most of these things just if they can help prevent chronic illnesses. “This is Pascal’s bet,” he said.

He shared three things he did regularly in the hope of stimulating his vagus nerve and reducing inflammation.

1) cold showers

Tracy turns the water temperature to cold for the last two to three minutes from her daily shower. He does this because exposure to cold triggers the reaction to the fight or fields of the body, suggesting that the evidence can suppress inflammation.

Studies suggest that after the initial shock of the cold, an increase in heart rate, the parasympathetic nervous system is then activated, slowing breathing and heart rate. This suggests that the vagus nerve is activated by cold exposure, but any role that has to reduce inflammation is still unclear, Tracy writes.

2) Thirty minutes of daily exercise

Tracy works for 30 to 45 minutes about five times a week. It makes a mixture of cardio, weight and resistance workouts, stretching and yoga.

Everyone knows that the exercise is good for you, but you may be surprised to learn that scientists do not fully understand the mechanisms behind the health benefits, Tracy said.

Take a run: We know that over time it reduces the heart rate of rest and increases heart variability (the time between heart kicks), indicating that the heart works effectively. This may be the result of an increase in the vagal tone because it is responsible for slowing the heart, but more research is needed to confirm this.

Whether it turns out to be true or not, training is regularly a non-brain investment to do in your health. “Power workouts retain muscle mass, improve metabolic function and prevent injuries. Aerobic exercises such as walking, cycling or swimming, increase cardiovascular health and endurance,” Tracy said.

3) meditation

Tracey meditates for 10 minutes most mornings, often using applications such as Headspace.

Early studies suggest that meditation can reduce inflammation, but more is needed, Tracy said. A 2022 meta-analysis, which examined 48 randomized controlled studies involving 4638 people, found that those who had meditated had fewer inflammatory biomarkers in their blood compared to those in control groups.

Meditation may increase vagus nervous activity, which in turn reduces inflammation, Tracy said, but we lack direct evidence. Nevertheless, he found that regular meditation allowed him to be more relevant and less reactive of things he could not control.

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