Eight Cool Facts About The Vagus Nerve

Eight cool facts about the Vagus nerve

by with No Comment RelaxationStress

The vagus nerve is our relaxation superhighway and carries messages throughout the body to counterbalance the fight or flight system. It is one of the cranial nerves that connect the brain to the body and activates the parasympathetic nervous system – our inbuilt relaxation tool.

  1. The Latin root of the word vagus is “wandering.” This is a vital characteristic of this little gem within the world of relaxation. It begins its journey below the brain’s base, roams down the throat along the oesophagus, continues its sojourn near the lungs and heart, and innervates the digestive system.
  2. The vagus nerve prevents inflammation – alerting the brain to send anti-inflammatory neurotransmitters around the body. A certain amount of inflammation after injury or illness is normal. But an overabundance is linked to many diseases and conditions, from sepsis to the autoimmune condition rheumatoid arthritis.
  3. It helps you make memories – stimulating the vagus nerve releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine into the amygdala, consolidating memories.
  4. It raises the level of endorphins, which bring about positive feelings in the body and reduce the sensation of pain.
  5. The vagus nerve is responsible for controlling the heart rate via electrical impulses.
  6. It initiates your body’s relaxation response – the vagus nerve tells your body to chill out by releasing acetylcholine. Its tendrils extend to many organs, acting like fibre–optic cables that send instructions to release enzymes and proteins like prolactin, vasopressin, and oxytocin, which calm you down.
  7. It translates between your gut and your brain. Your gut uses the vagus nerve like a walkie-talkie to tell your brain how you’re feeling via electric impulses called “action potentials”. Your gut feelings are very real.
  8. Overstimulation of the vagus nerve is the most common cause of fainting. If you tremble or get queasy at the sight of blood or while getting a flu shot, you’re not weak; you’re experiencing “vagal syncope.” Your body, responding to stress, overstimulates the vagus nerve, causing your blood pressure and heart rate to drop.
Hands Up For Oxytocin – One Of Our Most Basic Human Needs

Hands up for oxytocin – one of our most basic human needs…

by with No Comment Relaxation

Walking home in the pouring rain this morning, I was struck once again by our dog’s delight on a walk. She appears to live entirely in the present, accepting and embracing what comes next, her bed, her walks, and her playtime. Yet she is a dog, in her mind not given to human principles and emotions. As her owners perhaps projecting our humanness, we attempt to rationalise her behaviour as per our own but dog or not; I believe there is learning for us in her dog world of living in the moment. She greats every moment with total joy – walk in the rain, YES! Long walk up – let’s go! Affection, hers is limitless.

News flash: humanising the dog as if she were a best friend or baby is expected. Why not? The bond is woven from the same stuff that merges mothers and infants.

The organisers of the 12th International Conference of Human-Animal Interactions scientists presented their latest findings confirming that friendly human-dog interaction releases oxytocin in both human and dog. If hormones could win popularity contests, oxytocin might well be queen of the day. Given oxytocin’s connection to such life-affirming activities as maternal behaviour, lactation, selective social bonding and sexual pleasure, researchers have been working overtime to uncover its role in the brain and in regulating behaviour.

Oxytocin is produced mainly in the hypothalamus. It is either released into the blood via the pituitary gland or other parts of the brain and spinal cord. It binds to oxytocin receptors to influence behaviour and physiology.

In one experiment, researchers found that women and their dogs experienced similar increases in oxytocin levels after ten minutes of friendly contact. Also, the women’s oxytocin response was significantly correlated to the bond they reported in a survey taken before interacting with their pets.*

This rang a bell in my mind recalling a news article on BBC exploring how researchers in Japan have developed a robot in the shape of a seal that they say can provide physical and emotional support to the sick and elderly. Japan’s robotic technology is among the most advanced in the world.

The therapeutic robot, named Paro, makes a seal-like noise and moves its head and tail. It is fitted with artificial intelligence software and tactile sensors to respond to touch and sound. It can show surprise, happiness, and anger, learn its name, and react to words that its owner frequently uses. A study** has found that interacting with a therapeutic robot companion made people with mid-to late-stage dementia less anxious and positively influenced their quality of life. Does petting Paro make people feel better in the same way that petting a dog does?

And whilst recognising the sadness of someone’s loneliness being assuaged by petting an electronic animal (having seen the response in my husband’s grandmother when my mother in law took her dog into the nursing home for her to cuddle, in her dementia induced haze, the most base human response of love and affection flickered in her response to the dog), in the reality of today’s short-changed world at least some gadgets can evoke this oxytocin response.

Shakespeare or Da Vinci (or perhaps even Cicero further back in time, tell us that “the eyes are the window to your soul.” They didn’t say that those eyes had to be human!

Resources

* These findings come from the lab of Kerstin Uvnas-Moberg, an M.D. and Ph.D. at Uppsala University in Sweden. Dr Uvnas-Moberg is also a pioneer in the study of oxytocin and its social bonding and anti-stress effects. Dr Uvnas-Moberg’s findings that high oxytocin levels, naturally occurring during breastfeeding, were linked to a mother’s increased sense of calm and desire to make a social connection.

**Source

Prof Cook, Professor of Nursing at Northumbria University

http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/browse/ne/uninews/robo-pets

My Legs Are Painful And Restless At Night

My legs are painful and restless at night. Why?

by with No Comment RelaxationSleep

Do you ever feel a crawling sensation in your lower limbs at night and the irresistible urge to move your legs? If so, you’re not alone. Many people routinely suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS), a neurological disorder that sometimes lasts for several hours and can disrupt your sleep.

Why does it happen?

RLS seems to occur during periods of inactivity, usually in the evening when people are resting or falling asleep. For some people, nerve damage can trigger sleep apnea or sleep deprivation, but there is no universal consensus on causality. Interestingly, although it was once thought RLS may occur due to muscle abnormalities or a disturbance in the part of the brain that controls movement, new research seems to suggest low iron levels may cause it in the brain, for which, unfortunately, there are no tests. This is very different from iron levels in the blood; subsequently, many people with RLS symptoms can have a blood test for iron- deficiency only for it to come back normal.

Who gets it?

RLS has a 60% chance of being inherited, and it can appear at any age, although women are twice as likely to get it than men. In children, is it sometimes mistaken for “growing pains”. There’s no apparent trigger for onset in most cases, and some may get it occasionally, whereas others suffer from it daily.

There’s also a recognised link between RLS and pregnancy, possibly brought on by low iron and folate levels. Around 20% of women experience RLS during pregnancy, although it often stops once the baby arrives.

How to manage it

Despite the high number of people suffering from RLS and the significant impact upon their lives, research into effective treatments is still ongoing, and the exact cause remains unknown. The pathophysiology is known partially, and it is believed that there is an association between the different variants of genetic mutations combined with dopaminergic and brain iron dysregulation, which plays an important role.

Fortunately, however, there are things you can try to help reduce your symptoms, but discovering what works for you may be a matter of trial and error as everyone will respond differently.

Medication

Only around 20% of sufferers will require medication (such as anti-seizure drugs), but it is essential to seek the advice of your GP if your symptoms are impacting your day to day life.

Compression socks

These may help by applying pressure to the leg and increasing blood flow into the extremities at night.

Evening stroll

When symptoms tend to be at their worst in the evening, a gentle walk around the block can help, and some people say that using an exercise bike is useful.

Pillow support

Try sleeping with a pillow between your legs; this may prevent compression of the nerves in your legs.

Supplements

Supplements including iron, magnesium, vitamin D and folic acid can also help but check with your GP first before taking these.

Reduce caffeine intake

For many people with RLS, caffeine is a trigger, but recent research has shown that caffeine can also help, so you need to identify whether or not you are sensitive to caffeine. If you are, you probably already know, but if you drink a lot of caffeine, you may have become immune to it, so reduce your consumption (don’t just stop as you might experience withdrawal) to see how it impacts your symptoms.

Using Neuroplasticity To Change Your Brain

Using neuroplasticity to change your brain

by with No Comment RelaxationSleepStress

For those of us old enough to remember playing our favourite record over and over again until the track became a deep groove where the needle repeatedly stuck, the imagery is clear.

Returning to that record, it’s a catchy tune that seems to hang around. Thoughts are like that – both positive and negative. We can get caught in a cycle of rumination, repeatedly playing the thought over and over and over again. Who notices that they do that and what sort of memories come up? It is proven that the negative will outweigh the positive.

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson (www.rickhanson.net) refers to this as “the brain’s negativity bias.” The human nervous system, he writes, “scans for, reacts to, stores, and recalls negative information about oneself and one’s world. The brain is like velcro for negative experiences and teflon for positive ones. The natural result is a growing – and unfair – the residue of emotional pain, pessimism, and numbing inhibition in implicit memory.”

Our primitive brain, see here: http://www.brainwaves.com/brain_basics.html, thinks this is a good idea. The term “reptilian” refers to our primitive, instinctive brain function shared by all reptiles and mammals, including humans. It is the most powerful and oldest of our coping brain functions since we would not be alive without it. It makes sure that we remember danger, so we don’t do it again was helpful when we were pre-modern humans, not quite so beneficial now that tigers are not lurking behind parked cars.

So returning to the record. We can repeatedly replay a memory or a thought until it becomes an indented groove in our brain’s neural pathways. Knowing this, it is logical that getting the needle out of the groove requires physical action. Keep playing the record, or stop playing the record? Change the groove.

This is where it gets exciting. We used to believe that the brain was a fixed entity but the discovery that active repetition changes the brain means that our thought patterns can and do change. Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganisation. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping.

The key to overriding that negativity bias is to notice when a familiar thought arises and think about the following: Does it feel good? What is happening now? Does this thought matter? I am sure we all recognise these thoughts. They are often the ones that wake us up at 3 am and feel huge in the darkness. It might be the thought that replays as you walk into a room full of strangers – most of us will experience several thoughts at that moment; are they good or bad? When you look back on a typical day or survey your life, what experiences capture your attention – your successes and pleasant times, or the failures, hurts and disappointments?

Noticing that these thoughts are happening is so important. Think about it. If you think something is it real? (See the Matrix film series for what is real or not :-)) When you last had this thought or feeling, did the ceiling cave in? See if you can look at it differently. A new tune is a perfect distraction; find a tune to oppose the thought – upbeat songs work all-round. Do a little dance? An actual dance if you feel relaxed with that – on the tube, I wish you luck but do a dance in your head, visualise a character dancing and make it your internal friendly dancer. (If you remember records, you are likely to remember the dancing baby in Ally McBeal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx88NMh-YRs )

Overall have some compassion for yourself. Our thoughts come and go. Holding onto any of them, good or bad, are transient moments. Ruminating on them deepens their effect. When our son was little we had a before bed practice called ‘three good things in our house.’ Together we find three good things to talk about from each of our days regardless of how bad we think our day has been. There will ALWAYS be something somewhere.

Finally, rumination is a large part of depression. If you are experiencing ongoing negative thoughts that you cannot seem to shift, if you can, seek support through friends, family or a therapist when times become challenging.

Footnote

For an experts approach, I mentioned Rick Hanson. A favourite resource of mine is excellent TED talks, a great website, and great books. He offers excellent advice on how we might hardwire happiness. http://www.rickhanson.net/hardwiring-happiness/faq/

References

Law, B., 2021. Probing the depression-rumination cycle. [online] https://www.apa.org. Available at: https://www.apa.org/monitor/nov05/cycle [Accessed 11 March 2021].

http://www.tommoon.net/articles/are_we_hardwired-1.html