The important thing to melancholy, weight problems, alcoholism – and extra? Why the vagus nerve is so thrilling to scientists | Well being
I’ve made a cup of espresso, written my to-do record and now I’m wiring up my ear to a tool that can ship {an electrical} message to my brainstem. If the testimonials are to believed, incorporating this stimulating behavior into my every day routine may assist to scale back stress and anxiousness, curb irritation and digestive points, and maybe enhance my sleep and focus by tapping into the “electrical superhighway” that’s the vagus nerve.
From plunging your face into icy water, to piercing the small flap of cartilage in entrance of your ear, the web is awash with ideas for hacking this method that carries alerts between the mind and chest and belly organs.
Producers and retailers are additionally more and more cashing in on this development, with Amazon alone providing a whole lot of vagus nerve merchandise, starting from books and vibrating pendants to electrical stimulators much like the one I’ve been testing.
In the meantime, scientific curiosity in vagus nerve stimulation is exploding, with research investigating it as a possible therapy for every little thing from weight problems to melancholy, arthritis and Covid-related fatigue. So, what precisely is the vagus nerve, and is all this hype warranted?
The vagus nerve is, in truth, a pair of nerves that function a two-way communication channel between the mind and the center, lungs and belly organs, plus constructions such because the oesophagus and voice field, serving to to regulate involuntary processes, together with respiration, coronary heart charge, digestion and immune responses. They’re additionally an essential a part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs the “relaxation and digest” processes, and relaxes the physique after intervals of stress or hazard that activate our sympathetic “combat or flight” responses.
Within the late nineteenth century, scientists noticed that compressing the principle artery within the neck – alongside which the vagus nerves run – may assist to forestall or deal with epilepsy. This concept was resurrected within the Nineteen Eighties, when the primary electrical stimulators have been implanted into the necks of epilepsy sufferers, serving to to relax the irregular electrical mind exercise that triggers seizures.
As extra folks have been fitted with these gadgets, medical doctors started to identify an fascinating sample. “They seen that even when the system didn’t assist their epilepsy, a few of these sufferers began to have a greater outlook on life,” says Kevin Tracey, a professor of molecular medication and neurosurgery on the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Analysis in Manhasset, New York.
Right now, vagus nerve stimulators are more and more being investigated as an alternative choice to antidepressants in sufferers with treatment-resistant melancholy. Surgically implanted stimulators are additionally an authorized therapy for epilepsy – though they solely appear to work in a subset of sufferers.
Utilizing electrical stimulation to deal with mind problems resembling epilepsy and melancholy makes intuitive sense – nerves and mind cells talk utilizing electrical energy, in spite of everything.
Nonetheless, within the late Nineties, Tracey and his colleagues made a stunning discovery. They have been testing an experimental drug that they anticipated to dampen irritation in rats’ brains, however after they injected it, it dampened irritation all through the physique.
This was puzzling, as a result of the mind is bodily separated from the remainder of the physique by the blood-brain barrier – a tightly packed layer of cells that regulates the passage of enormous and small molecules into the mind, to assist hold it protected. Tracey and his colleagues tried severing the vagus nerve and repeated the experiment. This time, the drug’s anti-inflammatory results have been confined to the mind.
It was a rare discovery: standard knowledge held that there was no connection between the nervous and immune techniques – however the vagus nerve appeared to offer that hyperlink. Additional analysis revealed that the mind communicates with the spleen – an organ that performs a essential function within the immune system – by sending electrical alerts down the vagus nerve. These set off the discharge of a chemical referred to as acetylcholine that tells immune cells to modify off irritation. Electrically stimulating the vagus nerve with an implanted system achieved the identical feat.
Tracey instantly recognised the therapeutic implications, having spent years making an attempt to develop higher remedies for inflammatory situations resembling sepsis, arthritis and Crohn’s illness. Present medicine dampen irritation, however carry a danger of significant negative effects. Right here was a method with the potential to modify off irritation with out the necessity for medicine.
Tracey’s discovery additionally caught the eye of mind-body practitioners, together with the Dutch motivational speaker and “Iceman” Wim Hof, who claimed that he may management irritation in his physique by a mix of breath work, meditation and chilly water immersion. “He needed me to review him,” Tracey says.
They devised an experiment that concerned drawing blood from Hof earlier than and after practising his strategies, and analysing them for markers of irritation. To their shock, it appeared Hof actually may scale back irritation in his physique, though they required extra proof to be satisfied his strategies would work in others.
Choosing up the baton, Matthijs Kox at Radboud College Medical Middle within the Netherlands recruited 12 volunteers to attend Hof’s coaching camp in Poland, the place they spent 10 days swimming in icy water, rolling round in snow, meditating and studying his respiration workouts – that are characterised by a interval of pressured hyperventilation adopted by a interval of holding your breath.
Afterwards, the researchers examined the volunteers’ potential to suppress their immune responses by injecting them with a part of micro organism that triggers irritation and flu-like signs. In contrast with volunteers who had not undergone Hof’s coaching, their levels of inflammation were lower they usually skilled fewer flu-like signs.
However have been they actually hacking their immune techniques by tapping into the ability of their vagus nerve? Sure and no. Though the volunteers have been in a position to dampen irritation, they launched massive quantities of adrenaline within the course of – a key part of the combat or flight response. “That is just about the alternative of what you’d count on if Hof’s strategies have been working by the vagus nerve,” says Kox.
Adrenaline additionally suppresses the immune system, however by a special mechanism. And Kox warns that repeatedly triggering these combat or flight responses might be harmful for folks with cardiovascular situations.
Hof’s aren’t the one strategies being espoused as methods to manage anxiousness, melancholy and enhance basic well being by tapping into the vagus nerve.
Search “vagus nerve hacks” on TikTok, and also you’ll be bombarded with ideas starting from buzzing in a low voice to twisting your neck and rolling your eyes, to practising yoga or meditation workouts.
Researchers who research the vagus nerve are broadly sceptical of such claims. Although such strategies could provide help to to really feel calmer and happier by activating the autonomic nervous system, the vagus nerve is just one part of that. “In case your coronary heart charge slows, then your vagus nerve is being stimulated,” says Tracey. “Nonetheless, the nerve fibres that gradual your coronary heart charge will not be the identical fibres that management your irritation. It might additionally depend upon whether or not your vagus nerves are wholesome.”
Equally, immersing your face in chilly water might also decelerate your coronary heart charge by triggering one thing referred to as the mammalian dive reflex, which additionally triggers breath-holding and diverts blood from the limbs to the core. This will serve to guard us from drowning by conserving oxygen, however it entails sympathetic and parasympathetic responses.
Electrical stimulation could maintain better promise although. One factor that makes the vagus nerves so engaging is surgical accessibility within the neck. “It’s fairly simple to implant some system that can attempt to stimulate them,” says Dr Benjamin Metcalfe on the College of Bathtub, who’s finding out how the physique responds to electrical vagus nerve stimulation. “The opposite cause they’re engaging is as a result of they hook up with so many alternative organ techniques. There’s a rising physique of proof to counsel that vagus nerve stimulation will deal with a variety of ailments and problems – every little thing from rheumatoid arthritis by to melancholy and alcoholism.”
In 2016, Tracey and his colleagues printed the outcomes of a study of 18 patients with rheumatoid arthritis – an autoimmune situation that causes ache, swelling and stiffness in joints – who have been nonetheless experiencing signs regardless of taking immunosuppressive medicine. The sufferers have been fitted with a vagus nerve stimulator that was used to focus on the fibres of their necks which are thought to regulate immune exercise within the spleen. This led to an enchancment of their signs and was related to diminished ranges of tumor necrosis issue, an inflammatory protein that may be a main goal of medicine for rheumatoid arthritis.
Preliminary data additionally means that the expertise may be efficient in sufferers with Crohn’s illness, one other inflammatory situation, which impacts the digestive system.
In the entire medical situations mentioned to date, the system is implanted into the affected person’s neck, the place it gives common bursts of stimulation, with completely different frequencies blocking or activating completely different nerve fibres. Though that is comparatively protected, some sufferers do expertise negative effects resembling fatigue or complications.
However there could also be other ways of stimulating the vagus nerve. Prof Chris Toumazou at Imperial Faculty London and his colleagues are investigating whether or not a microstimulator might be connected to a particular department of the vagus nerve that tells the mind when the abdomen is full or empty. This concept stems from the invention that the hormones controlling urge for food talk with the mind through the vagus nerve. Minimize the nerve, and these starvation alerts now not get by.
The workforce has been engaged on a tool that would listen in on this chemical chatter, and ship {an electrical} sign to the mind in response to the discharge of starvation hormones by an empty abdomen. “The system will be capable to ship an reverse sign to the mind to say: ‘No, you’re full,’” Toumazou says. “We’re not fully reducing these alerts off, however controlling them, which might be a significantly better technique of weight problems management than a abdomen bypass.”
The system that I’ve been clipping to my ear, referred to as a Nurosym, may present another technique of stimulating the vagus nerve, and, in contrast to implanted stimulators, doesn’t require surgical procedure.
In addition to organs and constructions within the chest and stomach, there’s a department of the vagus nerve that terminates on the outer ear, referred to as the auricular department.
“It initiatives to the brainstem after which to completely different areas of the mind, and that results in vagal signalling that initiatives right down to the center and different organs,” says Nathan Dundovic, co-founder of London-based neurotechnology firm Parasym, which develops and manufactures the Nurosym system.
Though that is primarily a medical system designed for sufferers with chronic health conditions that have an effect on involuntary processes resembling coronary heart charge or digestion, Dundovic believes that wholesome people like me might also profit from auricular stimulation – albeit to a lesser extent.
Lots of the firm’s staff use the system to advertise rest and sleep, and to doubtlessly reap among the cognitive enhancing results that early scientific research have hinted at – resembling enhancements in short-term memory.
Clipping the system to my tragus, the fleshy chunk of cartilage in entrance of my ear, I really feel a delicate pulsating prickle when it’s switched on. I can’t declare to have been reworked right into a hyper-efficient, calmer model of myself – but – however I’m prepared to persist and see.
Not everyone seems to be satisfied that this type of auricular vagus nerve stimulation might be clinically efficient. “As a result of the vagus connects to so many alternative organ techniques, it may nonetheless be a problem typically to be sure that we’re solely stimulating the fitting a part of the nerve,” says Metcalfe. “The thought which you can place electrodes fully outdoors the physique and nonetheless selectively stimulate nerve fibres, I discover that very onerous to consider.”
Nonetheless, Parasym’s system is at present being examined in trials for numerous coronary heart and brain-related problems, together with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (Pots) – a situation characterised by an irregular enhance in coronary heart charge upon standing – and lengthy Covid, by reputable research institutions throughout North America and Europe.
The concept auricular stimulation may gain advantage lengthy Covid sufferers is being investigated by different groups as nicely. Already, there’s some proof to counsel that it might assist to alleviate the fatigue related to an autoimmune illness referred to as Sjögren’s Syndrome.
Inspired by such findings, Dr Mark Baker at Newcastle College is now exploring whether or not it may additionally profit sufferers with post-Covid fatigue.
An earlier study recognized abnormalities in a number of areas of the nervous system – together with an imbalance within the half that regulates involuntary physiological processes. “It appears a bit bit like an under-functioning vagus nerve,” says Baker.
It’s early days, but when researchers can discover an efficient strategy to faucet into the vagus nerve – be it surgically, or by the pores and skin – the advantages might be nice.
The phrase vagus derives from the Latin for “wandering” – a nod to the complicated and meandering path it takes by the physique, and the variety of physiological processes underneath its affect. Fairly than popping a tablet to alleviate sickness, maybe sometime it will likely be doable to breathe, hum or zap our strategy to higher well being.