Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist.
and I make mental health education videos.
Today, I'm talking about how you can stimulate
your vagus nerve to calm your anxiety.
The vagus nerve is called a cranial nerve
because it starts in your brain.
And this is in contrast to your peripheral nerves
that start in your spinal cord
and then move out to the periphery of your body
to control your body movements.
The vagus nerve travels out of your head
and it joins up with your carotid arteries
and your jugular vein then goes down into your chest
and then down into your abdomen.
And along that path, it sends out branches
to control your vocal chords and your internal organs
of your chest and your abdomen.
I talked about how the vagus nerve
is the communication vehicle for your gut bacteria
to communicate with your brain.
If you didn't see that video,
you can watch it after this one.
But another important influence of this nerve
is on the heart.
And this is one of the biggest ways
that it can reduce your anxiety.
Here's a quick explanation of how this works.
You can think of your nerves as falling into two groups,
one group that controls the automatic functions
of your internal organs
and the group that controls your voluntary functions,
like your muscle movement.
The nerves that automatically control your organs
are part of the autonomic nervous system.
The voluntary nerves are part of the
peripheral nervous system.
Within the autonomic nervous system,
you have a sympathetic response, which activates you,
and the parasympathetic response,
which slows down your functioning.
The sympathetic response gives you surges of adrenaline
and prepares you for action.
And it's what we commonly refer to
as the fight or flight response.
But it's not just something that happens
when you're faced with a threat.
If you go on a brisk walk,
your sympathetic nervous system kicks in
and increases your heart rate
to pump more blood to your muscles
and your breathing increases to take in more oxygen.
If you become afraid or have an untriggered panic attack,
you can get a similar increase
in your sympathetic nervous system
that increases your heart rate and your breathing
and makes you feel ready to fight or flee.
Newton's Third Law of Motion says that "For every action,
there's an equal and opposite reaction."
So similarly, the parasympathetic nervous system
is the equal and opposite reaction
to the sympathetic system.
The sympathetic system is the accelerator
and the parasympathetic is the brakes
that slows things back down to their resting state.
So this is the science behind how the vagus nerve works
and how it produces a relaxation response.
Here are five things that you can do
to stimulate your vagus nerve.
Some people call these vagal maneuvers.
Number one, deep breathing.
Your brain via the vagus nerve
controls your resting breathing rate.
But you can override that resting rate
by slowing your breaths, holding your breaths,
or hyperventilating.
So you can then trigger a relaxation response
by taking deep breaths in from your abdomen.
And there's many kinds of deep breathing exercises
that you can do.
But the main goal is to override
your automatic breaths with slow breaths.
And a good target to aim for
is anywhere from six to 10 breaths per minute.
If you go with six, you're breathing in and out
every 10 seconds.
And you can do this by counting to five on the inhale
and then five on the exhale.
Number two is humming.
This works because as your vagus nerve leaves your head,
it passes through your neck and passes by your vocal cords.
The vagus nerve also controls your vocal cords.
So when you hum, you cause vibrations in your vocal chords
that stimulate your vagus nerve.
A variation of the humming is to make the "ohm" sound.
And this is why some types of yoga and meditation practices
will have you make this sound, ohm.
Number three is splashing cold water on your face
or taking a cold shower.
The sudden change in skin temperature
triggers a parasympathetic response
and therefore a relaxation response.
If you don't like cold water on your face,
like you're at work and you don't want to mess up your makeup,
you can try putting a cold compress
on the back of your neck.
The last one or two is what's referred to
as a Valsalva maneuver.
And this is often prescribed by cardiologists
to their patients who need to slow their resting heart rate
or their heart rate,
especially for people who have like tachycardia syndromes.
So you have to be cautious about using this maneuver
if you have a heart problem
or other serious medical illness,
like increased pressure inside of your head.
If that's the case,
just check with your doctor before using this maneuver.
There are two forms of this.
The first one is when you hold your nose
and try and forcefully breathe out of your nose
like you're trying to blow your nose.
So you hold it or you pinch it.
It's not that comfortable.
This is what people will also recommend to unpop your ears
after you've been on an airplane.
This maneuver increases the pressure inside of your head
and therefore, and it stimulates
the vagus nerve through that.
This maneuver is more aggressive than the breathing
and the humming and the cold water on your face.
It's generally used when someone
has a really rapid heart rate.
The second type of Valsalva maneuver is to hold your breath.
That increases the pressure in your chest area.
And you would also do this just for a few seconds.
This is not as aggressive as blowing into your nose.
And there are times that you need to hold your breath
like when you're swimming.
People will hold their breaths
to get rid of hiccups as well.
Hiccups occur when you have abnormal contractions
of your diaphragm.
It pulls down and then quickly pulls back up
and closes off your vocal cords
and you hear this hic sound.
We don't know exactly why people get the hiccups.
Well, you can get more hiccups when you're under stress.
Your vagus nerve and your phrenic nerve
are involved in this abnormal diaphragm movement.
When you hold your breath,
you're trying to do a manual override with your diaphragm
by not letting it move.
And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
These vagal stimulation maneuvers work best
for anxiety that you feel physically
like heart racing, body sweating,
or even feeling lightheaded.
But you don't have to be in the throws
of a panic attack to do them.
You can do it if you're feeling tense
and just want to do a reset.
I find the ohm humming particularly useful
when I want to calm myself.
And that's how I look too when I do it.
Ohm.
So you might want to do this
or have a little privacy when you do this.
So these are some simple tools
that you can have in your back pocket that you can pull out
anytime you want to feel more relaxed.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.