How to Naturally Reset Your Vagus Nerve

Have you ever considered how important your vagus nerve is to your overall health? Maybe you’re interested in increasing your vagal tone, but don’t know where to start?

This article will explore how your vagus nerve can influence your physical and mental health. You’ll learn how you can look after your vagus nerve with simple lifestyle strategies.

What is the Vagus Nerve?

Also known as the tenth cranial nerve, your vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body. Vagus means ‘wandering’ in Latin, and this reflects the meandering route the nerve takes. Actually a collection of nerve fibres, it runs in two branches between your brain and your large intestine via your heart, lungs, and stomach. The vagus nerve helps all these organs to communicate with one another by forming a major highway.

When your vagus nerve is functioning as it should, you’ll have stable blood pressure, a healthy heart rate, controlled inflammation, optimal mood, and a strong immune system.

The vagus nerve forms the main component of your parasympathetic nervous system, part of the autonomic nervous system. It controls involuntary functions like your breathing, heart rate, digestion, urination, dilation and constriction of blood vessels, and reactions including coughing, sneezing, and vomiting.

The parasympathetic nervous system oversees your body’s rest and digest functions. These are automatic operations occurring while your body is at rest. This contrasts with the sympathetic nervous system, controlling your fight/flight response.

The vagus nerve carries signals back and forth. Messages travel to your brain to inform it about what’s happening in your body. Meanwhile, signals also run the other way, from your brain to your body, to help keep it in balance. The vagus nerve enables your body to switch between the stress response, governed by the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic’s rest and repair mode.

If this switch between the sympathetic and parasympathetic response doesn’t happen when it should, your body ends up in constant fight/flight mode. This usually happens because of some sort of ongoing stress to the body. This can arise from situations as unsuspected as blood sugar imbalances, infections, inflammation, or even ageing.

Signs and Symptoms of Vagus Nerve Dysfunction

Poor vagal tone can have a multitude of effects. These include:

Low mood or mood swings, anxiety
Disordered blood pressure, low or high
Sleep disturbances
Chronic pain
Migraines and headaches
Concentration difficulties
Changes in heart rate, particularly low heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the tiny fluctuations in the time between heart beats.
Dizzy spells
Constipation, wind, boating and other digestive issues.
Changes in voice and difficulty in swallowing

Because your vagus nerve connects so many organs in your body, the symptoms caused by issues with the nerve can be widespread, meaning the cause can be overlooked.

Over time, issues with vagal tone may increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It’s even thought vagus nerve dysfunction may be connected with some long COVID symptoms (1).

How to Reset Your Vagus Nerve

Stimulating or resetting your vagus nerve can help your body move back into parasympathetic mode, allowing the sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of your nervous system to return to balance over time. If you can control your breathing rate and cardiovascular functions, your body will be able to dial down its stress response. This can be achieved by lifestyle strategies promoting relaxation.

Breathwork, making your exhale longer than your inhale, will tell your vagus nerve it’s time to reset. Meditation practices naturally slow down your breathing.
Movement, especially interval and endurance training, can be effective at toning your vagus nerve. Tai Chi and yoga, especially poses involving gentle neck pulls, can also help.
Singing, humming music and even laughter - even if it's forced - all help reset the vagus nerve. This is because the nerve passes close to your throat and ears.
Certain massage techniques support vagus nerve function, while reflexology can stimulate the nerve.
Brief cold exposure, even simply splashing your face with cold water, can activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Because your vagus nerve can sense inflammation in your body, anything reducing chronic inflammation will help support vagal tone. This includes eating plenty of omega 3 fats, foods rich in the B vitamins needed to make neurotransmitters, and feasting on plenty of plants.

Help and Support for Optimal Vagal Tone

All this means you have the power to naturally support your vagus nerve. However, making these steps alone isn’t always easy. If you’d like some extra support, we’re here to help. We can draw on a comprehensive toolkit of natural therapies, with recommendations personalised to you.

For example, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) uses gentle tapping on acupressure points to tone the vagus nerve. Somatic Therapies can help calm your stress response and improve vagal tone. For example, Felt Sense Polyvagal Model aims to empower you to balance your nervous system by offering profound insights into your neuronal states using neuro-psychoeducation.

Whichever path you choose, we’re here for you. Contact us today to start your journey towards better vagal tone.