Learn How The Vagus Nerve Influences Your Gut Health

Navaz Habib, DC

Pleasure, as always, Sinclair.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Okay. I mean, I am really excited to hear about the new research that you want to cover today that is actually coming out in your next book. If you could start by giving us a peek into what you see today that people may not be aware of in terms of the vagus nerve gut connection. Maybe we should just slow down and pause and just explain what the vagus nerve is and what that connection is for folks who are just getting started on this journey.

Navaz Habib, DC

Yeah. It is a great place to start as always is understanding that we have this thing that is helping to control a lot of the inflammation, helping to control gut function, and very heavily involved in that gut-brain axis. In fact, it is the physical manifestation of the gut-brain axis. What is the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve. We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves, meaning that these are nerves that generally come out of the brainstem and go into the head and the neck. They are doing all of their fun little tasks in helping with vision through the optic nerve or hearing with your ears. They are managing a lot of the specific functions of the head and the neck. They are located within the cranium, hence they are called the cranial nerves. One of those cranial nerves, one pair of them, does not just stay in the head and neck and that is the vagus nerve, that is cranial nerve 10. We have two of them come out on each side of the brainstem, and send a branch out to the ear which we will talk about in a bit being an important factor, it sends branches right down through the neck where it extends out and sends direct branches to the pharynx and the larynx. Those are the muscles at the back of the throat that help to maintain your airway and maintain a good, strong airway, especially when you are sleeping. There is a very strong link to sleep apnea here for those who may be suffering from that. It goes down, sends the branches to the larynx, these are the muscles around the vocal cords and they are the ones that help to pull and stretch, and tension the vocal cords to create pitch and tone within your voice. The vagus nerve is the reason you can go really low or really high with your voice, that is something that you really want to be able to do, it is a sign that you have a good vagal tone or good signaling within that vagus nerve. It is a really important area there. But that is not all. This nerve then continues on down through the neck beside the carotid artery in a jugular vein, it tells you just how important that nerve truly is into the thorax, into the chest area where it sends a branch to the heart, a very important branch that helps to slow down the heart rate who keeps you in that 50, 60, 70 beats per minute zone where you want to be. If you do not have a good function there, good singing there, you are going to have a heart rate that is elevated, not a great sign of health. Then it sends the branches to the lungs where it helps to control inflammation within the lungs, where we will talk about the specific cells that it talks to later, it continues on, imagine that, down through the esophagus and through the diaphragm to the stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, kidneys, pancreas, gallbladder, and indirectly to the spleen and extends branches to all of these areas that are considered the gut as well as all of the immune and detoxification organs that are necessary for optimal human function.

This is what is really special. The vagus nerve goes everywhere. That is literally where the named vagus came from, it came from vague or wandering because it did so many different things were connected to so many different organs that they just could not even name it a specific nerve, it was not the splenic nerve, it was not the hepatic nerve, it was vagus, it was vague and it came to be called the vagus nerve. It is not the vagus nerve, it is two nerves that intertwine together, and send branches to one another and we have this kind of double-sided support that maintains our health throughout the entire body. What is really important about this nerve, in addition to what it connects to, is what it is signaling. When it’s signaling it is managing a component of our autonomic nervous system. Think of all of the functions or all of the processes that are happening within our body that we do not consciously need to think about, we are not consciously always thinking about breathing, we are not consciously thinking about beating our heart detoxifying from our liver, cleaning out blood in our kidneys, we are not constantly thinking about digesting food, we are not consciously controlling those processes they are automatically being controlled and that is done so by what is called the autonomic nervous system. We have two branches of this system. One side is a sympathetic nervous system which often for some of these areas will shut them down because we are under threat to our survival, this is the fight or flight side of things. That is a necessary tool, it is not an evil, it is only not a great thing if you are constantly in fight or flight all the time. It is just like a car, for example, a car is useless without an accelerator, you need to have an accelerator to make the car move, but you also need to be able to slow that card down, you need to have control of that accelerator that is where the brakes come in, and that is what the vagus nerve is, it is the brakes to the autonomic nervous system putting us from a fight or flight into rest, digest, recover, restore, rebuild. That is the mode that we want to be in more often. We park our cars in our garages all the time, this is where we want to be most of the time, we do not want to be driving 17 hours a day, it is not ideal.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is a really great way to put it. That is a really awesome introduction for folks that have kind of glossed over the concept of the vagus nerve but do not really know what it means. You mentioned a really important term that I would like you to unpack a little further before we do a deep dive into the gut. You mentioned vagal tone, what does this mean? How do we know if we have a good vagal tone? Let us start there.

Navaz Habib, DC

Yeah. Tone comes down to a concept that is best illustrated by thinking about muscle, okay? Because that is something that we can often relate to. Muscle tone is literally the measurement of how strong a muscle is or how functional a muscle is. Okay. If somebody does not work out, for example, they are relatively sedentary in their lifestyle, they sit a lot, they do not walk a lot, and they are not actively going out and lifting weights or moving things around, muscle does not tend to get used very much and that muscle can become a little bit more flaccid, a little bit more weak, a little less functional and the tone of that muscle, meaning the capacity or the ability for it to function, decreases, okay, what that is then stated to have is low muscle tone. Okay. In the same way, nerves send signals to those muscles. If we are not sending signals through a specific nerve that nerve becomes a little less functional, a little more complacent. We do not constantly send these strong signals through here. 

We know that through physiology research, that things that you use you are going to get better at using, and things that you do not use you are going to decrease the function of it. It is literally use it or lose it type of situation, maybe not to that entire zero or one type of state but somewhere in that zone your tone is going to be either really bad or really good depending on how much use it gets. When it comes to the vagus nerve, specifically for vagal tone we are looking at how well are you using that nerve, how often are you pushing the brakes, and able to utilize the brakes to slow down the car to pull you from sympathetic to parasympathetic, and how effective is the brake pads in slowing your body down? If you constantly have stressors that are pushing you into a sympathetic state and you are staying in your sympathetic state for 12 hours a day and you are doing your best to pull it back and pull it back the brake pads are going to wear down and the effectiveness of the brakes to slow a car down over time is going to decrease, that will result in lower vagal tone, and lower capacity to bring you back from sympathetic to parasympathetic. We want to have high vagal tone, we want to have the ability to come back from sympathetic to parasympathetic in a very simple, very easy way and we want resilience to stress. High resilience equals high vagal tone and high vagal tone means high resilience to all stressors and that is what we want to show as our, best way to say that we are able to handle stress and we have good vagal tone.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Wow, that is such a great overview. I think so many people skip over this piece and they do not understand, they are just like, why I have to activate the vagus nerve? I have to force it to work, and instead if you thought about it like, okay, I have temporarily for a period of time lost optimal vagal function, if I am not able to easily enter and stay in a parasympathetic dominant state so that I can heal and detox and digest, all I have to do is reclaim that and almost build it back again, but it is gentle steps, consistent steps, we are not forcing anything, we have to work with the intelligence of the body. When I finally understood that, when I was sick, I remember being. I think every one of these interviews that we do together is like a love letter to our audience because I remember exactly what it feels like to struggle with serious chronic illness and I literally felt like I had lost who I was, I have lost my sense of self. I had lost my ability to be resilient, my ability to rest, I had no energy but I could not relax. That is, I think, the perfect way to think about having lost a good vagal tone because you might be absolutely exhausted so you can not get up off the couch. I remember tears started to roll down my cheeks every time I realized, my God, I have to find the energy to get up to pee. That is an example of someone who is not resting well. Of course, you do not have enough energy but it is paradoxical because you actually have to go to the vagus nerve and learn how to rest in order to get your energy back, right?

Navaz Habib, DC

Exactly. That is exactly what I hear from patients all the time that they are suffering, that they have this inability to get themselves in a state of calm, of relaxed, of being able to shift their state into one that is calming and restful and feeling like it is rejuvenating to their health. They just have not been able to do that for such a long time, it is like there is extra weights and stuff that are sitting on an accelerator that you have not actively put there and the car is just going and you have no way to control it because the brake pads have worn out completely.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that is really beautifully said. Okay. How does this relate specifically to gut function, especially for folks that have been unwell digestively for a very long time?

Navaz Habib, DC

Yeah. This is an area that is near and dear to my heart. As a functional medicine practitioner, the gut is key. We know that we get all of our nutrients from our gut, we get the vast majority of toxins from our gut if we are not doing so well from there. We need to have an optimal gut function. This is where the majority of our interaction with our environment happens is within the gut. Where the vagus nerve plays its role here is that when we are in rest and digest state and it literally has digestive that kind of, classification I guess is the best way to put it, the digestion piece can not function at a high level. Okay. If we have low vagal tone, if we do not have good brake pad function, if the brake fluid is leaking, or if something is causing the vagus nerve to not be functioning at a high vagal tone type of zone then digestion is not going to be something that we can actively do effectively and we are not going to be able to relay a lot of the signals that are coming in when we are eating food or when our microbiome is trying to tell us something. Okay. We have about 250,000 fibers between both of our vagus nerve that are going down to various organs, but the vast majority of them are going to the gut. The vast majority of those that are going to the gut are actually sending signals from the gut up to the brain, it literally is the gut-to-brain axis, it is literally sending the signal up from the microbiome. We have got all these bacteria, parasites, viruses, yeast, worms, ideally not all of them, ideally, just bacteria that are sending signals that are actually symbiotic for us. We should be getting good levels of serotonin. That is where the majority of our serotonin is produced is within the gut. Dopamine even as produced majority within the gut as well. We are getting these signals in saying, “Hey, we have good levels of serotonin or we do not, hey, we have great levels of these nutrients of essential fatty acids, of good proteins coming in.” And we are sending these signals through the vagus nerve to the brain to say, we have access, we have abundance, we have nutrients that are required for our optimal function. If we do not have a good vagal tone then that signals not getting up effectively and our body goes into a state, a literal state of scarcity, we go from abundance to scarcity. What happens when we go into scarcity? We become sympathetically driven, we become in a state of fight or flight, we become worried, we become concerned, and our body tries to either hold on to every resource that it possibly can and it helps to increase our weight or it does almost the exact opposite and it starts to burn everything and it puts us into a state where we become frail and weak. That is not optimal, obviously, that is not allowing us to thrive. We need to have this interaction at the gut to under the gut level interface functioning really well. 

That gut barrier that we know is made up of these epithelial cells, a very thin layer of cells that are present between the opening of the gut and where all of the nerves and all of the immune cells are present we need to have that good, strong interface. That interface is built up by the immune cells that are present within that lining of the gut. The immune cells there are macrophages as the majority. Macrophages play the role of when they are signaling effectively to stop the gut from becoming leaky to ensure or prevent the leakiness of that gut from occurring in the first place. We have all heard of leaky gut syndrome by this point, we do not know what it is, it is literally when the cells start to open up and their space for nutrients and toxins and things that should not be coming through to start coming through. Macrophages do the job of maintaining that barrier, strengthening that barrier, and preventing ultra-structure injury. Guess what signals to those macrophages to say we are in a happy state? The guess is, it is the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve sends acetylcholine through this new pathway that is been discovered over the last 20 years called the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway to these macrophages to say, macrophage, we are not in a stressed state, we are not in a worried state, we should be functioning in a rest digest and recovery state, let us rebuild this gut lining. That signal is there to help maintain that gut barrier so that we have a positive symbiotic relationship with the bacteria and stuff that should be there. But we do not have a negative relationship with the things that should not be there, we are protected from the things that can come through that should not be there.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. I think that is beautifully said. Because what so many people skip over with the phenomenon of leaky gut which I would argue is affecting the vast majority of us, given what is in our food today, is the response that it requires from the body once these exquisite rules of what get in and what gets out of the gut into the rest of the body or broken then you are in this inflammatory overreacted state of like, wait, this is not supposed to be here, something is gone deeply wrong. That is fun for the nervous system, huh?

Navaz Habib, DC

A hundred percent.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Okay. Let us dive further into the newer research that you were excited to share today. Do you want to talk about the inflammatory response or where do you want to head next?

Navaz Habib, DC

We can talk a little bit about stimulation and tools that help to improve vagus nerve function overall. What are the practices? What are the foundational stuff? And what are the cool potential new ways to do that and into that as well? Our autonomic state is literally determined primarily by one thing and that is our breath. How are we breathing? Alright. This would be a great time, if you are sitting here listening to me talk about this and you are a little bit stressed or a little bit worried, let us check in on your breath. I like to get my patients to put one hand on their chest and one hand on their belly and have them sit while they do this, it is a comfortable state to be in and standing while I am doing this but that is secondary and what I have them do is take three deep breaths. I want you to kind of, as you are doing this very calmly carefully check to see which hand is moving, is it the hand that is on your chest that is moving forward or is it the hand that is on your belly that is moving forward? While you inhale, ideally, through your nose. If your hand that is on your belly is moving that is a sign that you are in a parasympathetic state. But if it is the hand that is on your chest, and I will say for probably about 50 to 60% of people that are listening right now they will notice that it is your chest that is moving, that is a sign that you are sending a signal through your breath to your brain that you are in a sympathetic state, that you are in a state of fight or flight. The simple act of breathing through your mouth or breathing into your chest only and not using your diaphragm to breathe will send a signal to your brain that you are too stressed to be in a rest and digest state, that there is a stressor that is going to drive this pattern that is pushing you towards I can not handle it or I need to handle something major that is coming up and you are not setting yourself up to be in a rest and digest state. 

What happens when this breath is shifted into our chest? Well, we trigger our blood flow to not go to our prefrontal cortex, it goes to our hindbrain, it goes to the area that is focused on our survival, our eyes, and pupils will open up too wide, we will be able to look at and assess all the threats around us, we are not able to focus on a particular task at hand, for example, if we are working on something that our work productivity-wise, we are going to actually shunt blood flow away from our prefrontal cortex. We can not even think clearly when we are in the state, literally, we can not have a strong executive decision made when we are in that state, we are going to shut off our gut function. While we are under threat who cares what nutrients are coming and I do not care, I am not worried about digesting while there is a saber tooth tiger running after me or when somebody cuts me off in traffic. We are sending signals to all of these organs that are essential for thriving but not essential for surviving in that moment that they do not need to be on.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think that is a really important thing that you just said right there. When we are stressed we shut off the ability to digest, that is actually a decision that the body makes at the autonomic nervous system level so that we are unable to actually build and receive and use the building blocks of life that we must have in order to thrive because we can only survive. If we do that often enough, for long enough, we lose vagal tone and we lose the ability to come into that rest digest repair state easily because we are so habituated to the other.

Navaz Habib, DC

That is exactly it. The habituation of being in that sympathetic state is driven through our breath and we can use that. Here is where you get your agency back being able to say I can handle this is by shifting our breath to our belly, by shifting our breath to our nose, and slowing down the exhale, especially. Is it inhale and exhale, how do I do this breathing pattern to improve my vagus nerve to put me in a state of parasympathetic more than sympathetic? The easiest way to do it is short inhales and long exhales. When we inhale our heart rate actually goes up because inhaling is a sympathetic activity. When something stresses you out, for example, you hear a loud noise, what is the first thing we all do? We gasp.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah.

Navaz Habib, DC

What is happening? That is a sympathetic response whether it is the actual activation from the external source, we hear a loud noise, we see a loud bang or a loud flash of light, or something that causes us to do that, it is the breath that signals that we have to go into a sympathetic state. Our breath is the controlling piece here. The shorter time in an inhale that we can use and the longer time in exhale, as we exhale, our heart rate goes down. If we can spend more time in an exhale, ideally double the time in the exhale that we do in the inhale that will build up the time that we spend in parasympathetic and that over time with lots of practice and time spent focussing on this will increase your vagal tone, that will increase the time you spend in rest and digest, recover, repair zone and it will help to shift the immune cells that are being signaled to by the vagus nerve to say we can shift from a state where we are worried and stressed and surviving to being able to literally thrive. This is a branch of the immune system, neuroimmune activation that occurs where we literally see a shift in the shape of macrophages from being more globular to being more differentiated. You go from a state of being M1 where they are literally just firefighters and being M2 where they can be more housekeepers, repairmen, and support staff security, etc. It is a big shift between being a firefighter and being a support staff and vagus nerve is going to shift that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think this is so important to slow down and really explore this topic for people. Because we get so many people into our practice and I am sure you do too in your community where they come into our courses or into the practice itself and say, okay, I have done all the things, I have been to last year’s summits, I have listened to your podcast episodes, I know all the speakers in the space, I know more than my doctor does about my symptoms, my conditions, I have been sick with these various labels for years, I have done it all, I see these supplements, I have used these supplements before, what else you got for me? What they do not want to hear and what I certainly did not want to hear and I understand it and because it feels trivial, it really does. 

But you do not want to hear, hey, we have got to give you some tools to manage your stress because whatever life stress you had that was a component of helping you get sick probably was not resolved, and then the additional medical trauma stress of not literally not having the energy to meet life for an extended period of time. The more we can slow down and have a really nuanced conversation about this instead of somebody at the end of a podcast saying, “Oh, yeah, and by the way, remember to breathe.” Like, yeah, but let us really get into the nitty-gritty. How would somebody go about retraining their body to do this when they are already not feeling well?

Navaz Habib, DC

Yeah. We have to start with shifting that breath and taking time out of our day, multiple times a day for five minutes at a time to be able to make this shift occur. The practice is very simple. Once you put it in practice and you do it repetitively you will see the change and it needs to be something that you do over and over. The compound effect of this is real. For those who understand the compound effect, if you utilize this it will actually make a big shift. It is known as the four, seven, eight breath method. Okay. four seconds on the inhale, you are counting to four, you can use an app that does breath timing, and there is a bunch of free stuff out there you can utilize, it is 4 seconds on the inhale, seven seconds hold, you are holding your breath inhaled for seven seconds and then you are very slowly, either through your mouth or through your nose, ideally, through your nose but it does not really matter so much for the exhale, you are going to exhale for eight seconds, four seconds inhale, seven seconds hold, eight seconds exhale. What you are doing is you are doubling the amount of time that is spent in the exhale versus the inhale so eight seconds versus four seconds and that hold is calming and slowing everything down. Something you will find very commonly is people that who are in a sympathetic state are more often than not breathing through their mouth and breathing very rapidly, their breathe rate is getting up in the 15, 17, 20, and 25 breaths per minute zone which is crazy, that is one second in and out, that is kind of insane. What we are doing is we are breathing in and we can not handle any carbon dioxide building up within our body, we are trying to exhale as quickly as we possibly can, we are not spending that time in the exhale, we are not allowing our body to be comfortable with a little bit of carbon dioxide built up.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

This is a really important point that you just mentioned here. Okay. If you are somebody who has not enough energy to heal, and you are in a state of chronic fatigue, and you have bloating and gut dysfunction, and you are uncomfortable in your body, and you have been under a lot of life of stress, and if you are anything like our students, you also have an enlarged liver, fatty liver, you got a lot of stones and cholesterol built up, you literally do not have a lax in your body cavity to breathe and you have lax right around the rib cage. This could feel very normal to you to have this shallow breathing, right?

Navaz Habib, DC

Yeah. In fact, very uncomfortable to do.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Is it not the bottom third of the lungs that last third of the exhale that is actually detoxifying? We have to get all the way through that exhale.

Navaz Habib, DC

That is why you need to extend the length of that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Can you. You are quiet right now.

Navaz Habib, DC

It should be working. 

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Try again. 

Navaz Habib, DC

How is that? That was weird. I do not know what was happening there.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Sorry, your thought. Continue.

Navaz Habib, DC

The exhale needs to be drawn out and it needs to be a complete exhale. You are absolutely right when you say that the inhale while we are doing that or while we are trying to exhale and it is very shallow, it can be very uncomfortable to get into a deep exhale and that is because we have literally created a comfort zone that is tiny with regards to how long the inhale and exhale can be and how much actual motion is occurring within the diaphragm. That key, if our diaphragm is not going up and down with every breath significantly then there is a whole second piece of this puzzle that is going to be affected and that is the diaphragm is creating, as we are breathing in, it is creating a vacuum in the lungs to bring in that air, but it has to go down to create that vacuum, it has to literally go and compress. It is not a big deal. It has to literally go and compress all of the organs that are below. Now which organs might be right below the diaphragm? Anyone there know? Stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, gallbladder, pancreas. Those might be involved in gut function, not entirely certain, but that motion pattern literally is creating a motion massaging type effect within the organs below. 

We have a physical motion of the diaphragm that is creating a physical motion of peristaltic action within our gut. Parasympathetic activation would slow deep diaphragmatic breaths, especially with the exhale, are going to compress and create that massaging motion pattern in the organs below. Those are all the abdominal digestive organs that will help to create a physical motion moving food along in the correct pattern that it should be at the correct rate that it should be and making sure that you will then be able to go to the bathroom on a regular basis, be able to extract nutrients from your food regularly, be able to pump out the bile from your gallbladder that needs to be there to help absorb the fats with the bile salts and push out the toxins within the bile that is being released as well. It is so simple that it can be very easily overlooked but the breath is going to drive that and there is no question about it. This has been studied thousands of times over and corroborated by almost every single study that the breath will drive health and your control of your breath is going to do that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is so beautifully said. Okay. I think we did a good unpacking of that process. Let us do a wrap-up of, in your mind what are the top five ways to upgrade vagus nerve function. Let us be clear about the ones that you have already covered before. What is in the top five that we have already mentioned and what other ones do you want to list?

Navaz Habib, DC

Number one, no question, deep diaphragmatic breathing with long exhales, doubling exhale then inhale four seven eight is a very simple easy to sum in practice. Okay. That one we have already talked about, wonderful, but it is going to be linked to every other one that we talk about. Number two, we talked about some of the other connecting points of the vagus nerve, we talked about the pharyngeal in the laryngeal muscles. Gargling is a wonderful tool that I recommend to a lot of patients, it is a really simple one to add in. By the way, the majority of what I am going to tell you today is easy-to-implement free stuff which is always fun. You do not need to spend too much money to make breathing happen which is wonderful. Grab a cup, keep it by your sink and every morning and every evening when you brush your teeth take a little bit of water, and throw in a bit of salt that helps to break up some of the stuff at the back of your throat and take a sip and hold it at the back of your throat and gargle as hard as you physically can, okay? Gargling is wonderful and what it does is it, the salt is going to be there to help break up any of the mucus that is sitting at the back of the throat. But what is special about gargling here is while we are doing the gargle we can not inhale, we cannot take water into our lungs, it is going to create aspiration literally going to choke us and cause us to drown internally if we were to do that. We have to be in an exhale state, we are creating a sound. If you remember we have a branch of the vagus nerve that goes to the larynx that stimulates laryngeal muscle activation in the vocal cords get activated. That vocalization is your vagus nerve working over there. Now we have this pocket at the back of the throat that needs to hold water. Pharyngeal muscles at the back of the throat are the ones that are there creating that tone to help create that pocket where the water sits so it does not go into the back of the throat or into your lungs. We are breathing out, we are exhaling, and we are vocalizing, we have got three different areas that we are affecting with the gargle that are going to stimulate vagus nerve. 

Okay. We are getting the vagus nerve activated in multiple ways with the basic gargle. The longer the exhale the better, if you can do anywhere between ten and 30 seconds on an exhale with that or with that gargle that is a really great sign. If you can do that three or four times in the morning, three or four times in the evening, you are literally setting yourself up to have a successful day with that gargle. Quick sign as a check-in to make sure that it is working, you know it is working when you start to tear from your eyes, you are gargling hard enough to create an actual tearing that occurs. That is really beneficial, it is really important to remember. Okay. We have got breathing four seven eight, gargling, wonderful tool. 

I mentioned the vocalization piece and I will just kind of add that as number three as well. Humming, chanting, singing, speaking with friends, and laughter, these are all ways to stimulate your vagus nerve. Because when we are getting things off our chest, when we are actually vocalizing, when we are singing or creating a vibration within the laryngeal muscles we are physically stimulating that muscle with the motor branch of the vagus nerve that goes there. We are simply getting vagus nerve stimulated while we are singing or talking, we are exhaling. We can not do it while we are inhaling so we are lengthening the exhale by doing so which is wonderful. Sing in the car, sing in the shower, talk to your friends, and be around people, that is social connectedness is a really important piece that is easily overlooked as well. When we spend time with people were able to get things off our chest and we do not hold on to emotional triggers and stuff as well. Get the things off your chest and speak about the things that you are not happy about, it does not need to be to everybody, it can be in your in the comfort of your own office or home whatever it is, okay? Git off your chest. Breathing, gargling, and vocalization. On the vocalization piece for those who know when you, a practice that is been around for thousands of years but “Omm” when you are meditating and you use the words or the humming “Ommm”, that vibration piece is actually the frequency that improves vagus nerve function significantly because you are physically activating that as well.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Is not that fun and that is the universal sound?

Navaz Habib, DC

I love it. I am going to go to my last two big ways to upgrade vagus nerve. Number four is going to be cold exposure. Okay. Now, I always get a bit of a cringe from people that are like, ‘Oh, cold shower, I do not want to do those things.” They work. I can not explain it in significantly better ways, but everybody, when they get into cold water, you jump into a cold lake, the water on the shower is too cold, what is the first thing you are going to do? Go into a sympathetic state that is so stressed out and then if you can you breathe through it. What cold exposure does when you do it over a few minutes is it teaches you to breathe parasympathetic calmly while you are in a sympathetic state, it is literally training your ability to go between the two states. Okay. Do not do it if you have a runny nose, do not do it if it is going to cause you to be in significant stress to the point where you are going to go off and have a dizzy state after doing it, figure out where you are at. If you feel like you can add in something like cold exposure into your plan, you have been thinking about it and it is something that you have been dancing around, I promise you try it for five days in a row and you will start to notice huge differences in your ability to handle stress really easily.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think you said something really important there. You do not have to be a biohacking bro about it, if you are not well you can ease into this. I took a couple of months rotating hydrotherapy in the shower, down a little bit more back, now a little bit more every day, and back for a longer and longer. Now, if I do not have that cold shower after a workout I am thinking about it, I am looking forward to it because I know the body response I am going to get, I think, yes.

Navaz Habib, DC

Exactly. That is the exciting thing, you have trained yourself, and you have allowed it to help you with your dopamine waves and make you feel like you have accomplished something and now you are ready to take on the next challenge and you want that next dopamine hit and it is going to be a positive one because we are not going off the deep end with dopamine and we do not need to do that trick, but what it is is a wonderful way to get yourself set up to say, I can do hard things.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. That is beautifully said. I think we covered an important range of concepts here for whether you are a beginner taking your health journey into your own hands just now or whether you are a very complex case and you have tried all the things there is more work to be done on the parasympathetic state and reclaiming your vagal tone and a lot of it is free. What I would love to end on for today is I really want to invite you to share your message to practitioners. Because we have a lot of practitioners in the audience who are acknowledging that, “Hey, the bucket of tools that I went to school to learn are no longer working for these complex chronic conditions.” I need to expand my skill set, I need to meet the challenges of humans today. What would you say to them? What do they need to know in order to ease suffering and help their patients thrive?

Navaz Habib, DC

I think with regard to all the tools that I have stated so far that there are basic foundational tools that we were taught in school that need to be reimplemented into everyday life for everybody, especially for us as practitioners because if we do not take care of ourselves nobody else is going to. This comes down to something as simple as doing a breath practice with your patients when they come into the office. How cool would it be for your patient to come into the office in a sympathetic state? You do three deep breaths with them four seven eight, they actually start to think about things very clearly, their executive function turns on and they are able to go home with a tool that they have implemented in their brain that they can utilize at any given point. How cool would that be to actually create that positive change in the life of that patient? For me as a practitioner, I love that, I love being able to share that something as simple as your breath can have, that profound effect, and when needed there are tools that are coming out that are really exciting.

I just want to share a quick case story. A patient that I spoke to last week, been working with her for about four months, she came in with a diagnosis of Gastroparesis, type two diabetes and sadly her husband had passed away about eight months prior, had this emotional stress and this charge of just negative energy, negative emotion that was around this. When she first came in we did the functional assessment, we checked her got, we checked her organic acids, do a couple of tests here and there and I get really great results showing what nutrients are missing, where the challenges are occurring and we found a couple of bacterial imbalances, a little bit of dysbiosis going on, we found some nutrient efficiencies and we started plugging away on these holes, but I added in these breath challenges and I added in these practices for her and she started to feel a little bit better. Then I added one more tool into her toolbox and that was electric vagus nerve stimulation, a non-invasive tool that I can utilize, that I can share with patients to literally electrically stimulate the vagus nerve in the neck, I added this in with her five weeks ago. The changes I can not even explain to you are profound, her bowel movements have completely normalized, her energy is through the roof, she used to need to take a nap every afternoon, did not have the energy to get up out of bed in the morning, it took her an hour to be able to do so, she is waking up at 6:30 and going for a walk every morning right now. After having done this regular bowel movement, her blood sugars are coming down significantly, she has not made major changes to her diet, she has not made tons of massive changes, and taking supplements and whatnot. I am not at all about adding a lot of those things and I am all about creating those strong foundations, yeah, there is been a few things sprinkled in, this thing has been a game-changer for a lot of patients, her gastroparesis is essentially gone within a month.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Wow. Very interesting. Okay. That is very thought-provoking.

Navaz Habib, DC

This is one of the tools that I am going to be sharing in my next book which is coming up eventually. But there is a lot of positive research coming up on vagus nerve stimulation as being a tool that we can use when people have gone into those chronic disease states to help bring them back into thriving.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Beautiful. What a great message I hope to end on. Thank you, Navaz. That is awesome. Thanks for being here and sharing your wisdom today. Thanks for helping to spread this in a way that is really accessible to people and also acknowledges the complexity of chronic gut issues today, it is an epidemic and it does not need to be. We are on a mission to change that.

Navaz Habib, DC

Love it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.