Category Archives: research

Anatomy, brain, research, Yoga

What is Vagus Nerve Stimulation?

The vagus nerve is a very long nerve that carries signals back and forth to your brain, heart, lungs and digestive system. It is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It is said to run from the brain all the way to the large intestines. It also has branches that reach all of our major organs.

I tell clients that the vagus nerve is what people consider to be the “lizard brain” of the body. It is responsible for fight or flight responses and also freeze and hide. It controls involuntary sensory and motor functions like your heart rate, speech, mood and urine output. It is a very complex system of communication with our entire body but it has a very important role in how we respond to stress. The role it plays is regulating the way the body switches from the rational brain (the parasympathetic nervous system – relaxed state) to a fight or flight response (sympathetic nervous system – alert state).

Apparently the vagus nerve can lose its ability to switch back easily to the parasympathetic mode due to factors like stress or age. Also Known as vagal dysfunction, this can put a person at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety.

Professionals say that stimulating the vagus nerve will help our body to switch more quickly to a relaxed state. They recommend a variety of things to do to “stimulate” the vagus nerve. These include: 1) meditation, 2) exercise, 3) music, 4)massage, 5)cold exposure and also through 6) a medical intervention, applying an implanted or transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation, VNS/tVNSSo “stimulation”.

These activities create a cascade of events in our body that lead to activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Sensory signals initiate when we participate in one of the above activities. This signal then travels up to the brain stem from the lower part of the body that is participating in the activity/sensation. The brain stem then sends signals to activate certain parts of the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn, decreases cortisol, heart rate, and increases metabolism. This mechanism triggers the release of chemicals like serotonin and anti-inflammatory related chemicals that help our body feel calm and less pain. This series of events isn’t just for experiencing relaxation — it’s a multi-system communication event linking the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. It affects not just an emotional state but the entire body.

The reason that the above activities trigger a response that activates the parasympathetic nervous system is the need for our body to seek balance and recovery. When we shock it with cold our body wants homeostasis, so it activates a series of events to calm us down. This idea of trying to return back to its original state and achieve homeostasis is also at work with activities like massage/yoga/exercise. These activities create specific changes in our body systems that makes the body want to return to it’s original state. Our body registers the sensations and our vagus nerve sends out messages to release chemicals to balance excitement or other changes. These chemicals make us feel calm and “okay”. Breathing/humming/music can also do the same thing. Basically any sensory activity that is not overly stressful or perceived as actual danger, can stimulate the vagus nerve in a healthy manner. The more we do these activities, the more training we do for our system to be stronger and recover quickly from changes and imbalances, ie stress in our environment.

On a side note, a big chemical messenger that is responsible in this process is Acetylcholine (Ach). It’s a little bit more technical for me to explain so for further information on this process, go to this link.

Also for more info on polyvagal theory, click here.

For a quick yoga routine the aids in stimulating the vagus nerve, subscribe to access our bonus content.

research, Treatment, Wellness topic

How to Get a Good Night’s Rest

Recommended Sleep ChartThe above chart comes from the National Sleep Foundation.    It suggests that an adult my age needs 7-9 hours of sleep.  Like good diet and exercise, sleep is a critical component to overall health.

The sleep foundation explains:

“One of the vital roles of sleep is to help us solidify and consolidate memories. As we go about our day, our brains take in an incredible amount of information. Rather than being directly logged and recorded, however, these facts and experiences first need to be processed and stored; and many of these steps happen while we sleep. Overnight, bits and pieces of information are transferred from more tentative, short-term memory to stronger, long-term memory—a process called “consolidation.” Researchers have also shown that after people sleep, they tend to retain information and perform better on memory tasks. Our bodies all require long periods of sleep in order to restore and rejuvenate, to grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize hormones.”

Many of us have difficulty sleeping.  Here are some general guidelines to follow in order to have a good night’s rest.

Stick to a sleep schedule , even on weekends.
Practice a relaxing bedtime ritual .
Exercise daily.
Evaluate your bedroom to ensure ideal temperature, sound and light.
Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows.
Beware of hidden sleep stealers , like alcohol and caffeine.
Turn off electronics before bed.

For those with an overactive mind:

Keep a notepad/journal and a pen near your bed to write down thoughts or things you want to remember.

You can also use this method to write down worries or concerns and if you’re having a hard time letting them go after writing them down, remind yourself you can just deal with it in the morning after you wake up.

At my practice:

Sleep problems are a common co-occurring issue that I see with my clients.  I usually help each person develop their own individual bedtime routine.  Many times we look at the therapeutic effects of yoga postures and breath techniques.  We practice these techniques in the office to figure out the right practice that will help calm the mind and body enough to allow sleep to take over at night.  Many times coming up with an answer to the individual’s problems will occur after tracking one’s schedule and diet over a week.  It is amazing what “hidden” sleep stealers we encounter throughout our day.  Sometimes changing something like when you have your last caffeinated beverage will be the miraculous fix.  Other times, what might solve the issue is long-term work on developing and keeping more healthy habits like exercise, balanced diet, and meditation.

If you would like to talk about finding your solution, please contact  Amanda.

 

 

 

Breathwork, research, Stress Management, Wellness topic

How to Benefit from a Gratitude Practice

branch pic
         I think many of us can identify the calmness and peace that comes with having the thought of thankfulness.  If any of you have read my recent client manual or seen any research on what happens to the body when we experience stress versus when we cultivate peace and calm, you would put 2 and 2 together and know that anything bringing peace is going to have the power to heal.  This is something we intuitively understand but the science is building to show this as well.
         Dr. Masaru Emoto, the Japanese scientist and water researcher, discovered that vibrations affect the molecular structure of water. In his years of water research, through high speed photography of thousands of water crystals, Dr Emoto has shown the most “beautiful” (symmetric and well organized)  crystals are those formed after the water is exposed to the words ‘love and gratitude.’   When water was exposed to words of “anger and hate”, the water crystals became asymmetric and disorganized.  The fact that the human body is made of 70% water, one would consider how  our thoughts can have profound implications on our health.
         The wonderful thing about this feeling of gratitude is that it can be cultivated quite easily.   One can do 15 minutes a day of gratitude practice and experience immediate benefits.  The long-staying results though comes like anything does…. with consistent daily practice.  That’s the kicker, right?  Many of us will start a practice for a week or so and then see it flicker out.  Here’s some steps to help build a daily “consistent” practice of gratitude that has good potential to last.
  • Start small, 5 minutes.  Success will lead to you trying again and not being overwhelmed.  Set a timer and resist doing more.
  • Link your practice to something else you already do daily, like a morning cup of coffee or brushing your teeth.
  • Do it right before or after this already daily routine.
  • During this 5 minutes jot down 3 things that make you feel gratitude.
  • Do this for a month.
  • Bump up to 10 minutes the next month.
  • Bump up to 15 minutes the third month, this time add a nice sitting posture and a minute of quiet after.
  • Continue to build as you feel so, adding other health routines like yoga or breathwork if desired.
research, Treatment, Wellness topic

Dyslexia and Visual Talents

I have looked into this topic a great deal due to the fact that my oldest son has had much difficulty knowing left from right and letter reversal issues, for example his 4’s and 9’s look like Ps… A book that made a lot of sense to me although I had questioned how the scientific community held it as factual is the book called ‘The gift of Dyslexia” by   Ronald D. Davis  .  This book describes individuals with Dyslexia to have many talents that those of us who do not have dyslexia are not capable of having.  These talents involve the ability of seeing an object like a cube and being able to turn it around in their mind as if they are seeing it from many different view points instead of the view point of just staring down at it on the table.  The can actually pick it up in thought and turn it around to see accurately the different sides and angles of the cube.  The problem comes in when they are asked to read something on paper that to understand it you have to be looking at it from the same viewpoint as any other person reading it.  Training the brain to look at it from the same view point is the trick.

Well I just stumbled on to an article in Scientific American:Mind, Jan/Feb 2015, on “The Advantages of Dyslexia” which found scientific studies that back this theory up.  So that this ability to see everything 3 dimensional and to be able to  manipulate an object in one’s head without picking it up is quite an asset it areas where one might need to see things in this manner.  In the engineering and sciences this is an extremely helpful talent.

There are many kids that get labeled with a learning disability because of dyslexia.  I believe occupational therapy really helped my son understand how to interpret the perspectives and dimensions of what he is seeing in comparison to what he is expected to see by us 2 dimensional folk.  Also with him he also had difficulty crossing the mid line of his body and I wonder how that all fits in with the dyslexia and his visual/mental ability.  Occupational therapy also fixed that.  He spent a large amount of his occupational therapy time on a “scoot” with his hands moving him in a crawling fashion all around their offices.  He had a blast and it made him do a lot of mid line work.

I’m fascinated by how our brain, visual ability, and physical movement are so interconnected.   We all know this and are taught this but the part our past teachers emphasized was our brain controlling the movement  and not the other way around, our movement controlling/affecting the brain.  Funny how most therapies address the movement aspect last and not first, being that you only get it addressed if sent to a specialist.  It seems like it should just be common knowledge to have our kids do mid line activities and tests that measure “ability” in this spacial/visual talent and less on just sitting in a desk with a sheet of paper and measuring the disability.  It really is a paradigm shift though and that takes time.  The science is there however.

 

depression, Exercise, research, Treatment, Wellness topic

Weekly Wellness Post – Follow up on last post

I could not locate the research I mentioned in past post on exercising 3 days a week for 20 minutes for a month equal to that of taking antidepressant for a month but here is some similar research on exercise, mood, and antidepressants.  Looks like the overal result of these studies and research is that you can get the same final result from medications and exercise, but medications will get you there faster while exercise will keep you there longer.   I think exercise is a win-win but of course sometimes you may need help with the initial motivation to get moving and that is where medications can be very helpful.

( This article was first printed in the Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School “Understanding Depression”. For more information  go to www.health.harvard.edu/UD.)

(This one isn’t necessarily research but I like it’s explanations.)

(This one is an actual abstract of a research experiment on aging adults divided into groups of those given antidepressant and those given different exercise routines to follow.)

 

Take Care and nerd up on these studies,

Amanda