hey there everybody and welcome to part one of three how trauma gets trapped in your body
in this video we're going to be learning about the vagus nerve i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
as i said all we're going to really cover in this video is learning about what the
vagus nerve is and what it does in part three we'll start talking about how to
um improve the functioning of the vagus nerve so the vagus nerve a lot of people have started
talking about the vagus nerve the vagus nerve but what is it the vagus nerve is actually a
family of neural pathways that carry information both to and from the brain and i think of it kind
of like the body's email system or messenger system it is the best analogy i can really make
so the vagus nerve takes in sensory information either directly or by connection with other
nerves like the trigeminal nerve and it reports it to the brain and the brain says okay this is
what i'm going to do with this information this is what we need to do with this information and the
vagus nerve takes that information and it sends it back out through the body and it tells the
body what to do in a study that they did many many years ago now granted it was with rats but it was
a very interesting study where they altered the microbiome of rats and they found that when they
had rats that had their vagus nerves severed altering the gut microbiome did not affect their
behavior but in rats in which the vagus nerve was still intact alterations in the gut microbiome
actually produced alterations in behavior and they did this simply in in both groups
of rats by feeding them probiotics so i thought that was kind of interesting how the
vagus nerve acts as that messenger system the vagus nerve is connected to most bodily systems
wow either directly or indirectly it's called the vagus nerve in vegas i think it's latin
for wandering and it does i'll show you a picture in a minute
the vagus nerve can also trigger what's called the orienting reflex have you ever been in a situation
i was today it was cloudy this morning and i was standing in the hallway and all of a sudden it
started to get bright sunshiny outside and my attention suddenly turned to see what was going
on because i noticed a change and the orienting reflex is what we do when our sensory organs when
our body notices a change in the environment that's taken in reported to the vagus nerve
the vagus nerve says hey something's new and it triggers that orienting response the orienting
reflex we're going to go into in much greater depth in part two of this three-part series
so let's take a look at really where the vagus nerve is and i wasn't kidding when
i said everywhere the green line represents the vagus nerve and it goes it attaches to
your trigeminal nerve which we'll talk about in a minute which is in your face and head but it also
is responsible or implicated in swallowing and talking the pharyngeal branch it connects to your
heart it connects to your gut it connects to your liver and your spleen and your kidneys and your
digestive system so let's think about that for a second
what happens when you get stressed when that hpa axis gets kicked off the vagus nerve
tells all of those organs hey threat warning fight or flee so what happens the heart rate increases
we may start salivating more we start breathing more quickly most of the time and our
gut microbiome changes especially if the stress is ongoing there's an ongoing change but there are
incremental or or minute changes even with a acute stressor and then down in our intestines
we see the vagus nerve communicating that there's a threat so what happens in your intestines
everything speeds up it's not time to rest and digest it's time to fight or flee so we're gonna
push that stuff out which when people get anxious they tend to have more ibs more um irritable bowel
more flatulence more diarrhea to you know i don't want to get too graphic for you
but all of this or a lot of this is controlled by the vagus nerve
so we do want to recognize that when our vagus nerve is not behaving
hopefully then it can trigger a variety of symptoms throughout our body
now i said earlier we're going to talk about the trigeminal nerve
the trigeminal nerve connects to the vagus nerve and the trigeminal nerve innervates our face in
certain theories they talk about your third eye up here and your ophthalmolic zone
nerve really comes up right between your eyes and that communicates to your vagus nerve
so if you raise your eyebrows like you're curious about something that communicates
to your vagus nerve hey that's a curious look if you scowl that communicates to your vagus nerve
there might be a threat going on when you smile your maxillary zone uh areas of the
trigeminal nerve are are triggered and that tells the vagus nerve hey this person is smiling
so there must be something positive going on and likewise when you activate those frown muscles
it communicates again to the vagus nerve what's going on the person is making certain
movements and stimulating the vagus nerve by virtue of the set of muscles that it's innervating
and finally the auricular branches of the vagus nerve and auricular means ear and there's a lot
of information on auricular stimulation of the vagus nerve using tens units which again we're
going to talk about in part three but i do want you to recognize and i have a video on vagus nerve
massage that your vagus nerve and you can see in the picture probably better than you can see me
just pointing to my ear but on the outer side of your ear there's a couple of points so massaging
there kind of under where your ear rolls if you want to call it massaging there and then inside
in the concave area of your ear there are also other points and then on what's called the tragus
which is the little flap of skin that covers your ear hole for lack of a better word that is also
innervated so all through your ear there are nerves that are activated
parts of the vagus nerve that are activated so when we stimulate those
we theoretically are activating the rest and digest part of the vagus nerve
so ultimately what's important to know about the vagus nerve is that it runs throughout your body
taking in sensory information and sending it to the brain to find out what to do how does this
relate to trauma well when you experience trauma the brain learns from that and creates what we've
called called in other videos schema or shortcuts about when this situation occurs it's a threat
therefore when the body receives information when the sensory organs pick up information or triggers
for that trauma the vagus nerve sends that information up to the brain and the brain
says uh oh i know what this means in the past when we've encountered this smell or this site or this
place it's meant really bad mojo so i'm going to trigger the stress response
all of this takes place in what we call our default mode network or our autopilot network
and one of the tricks and i know i'm getting ahead of myself one of the tricks that is important or
tools i guess that's important for recalibrating the vagus nerve and the orienting reflex is to
help the person learn how to deactivate that autopilot and activate what they call the
executive control network or basically our higher order thinking our ability to say okay in the past
this really sucked in the present am i safe is there still a threat what's going on but
all of this relies on the vagus nerve being able to effectively communicate throughout our body