Tag Archives: vagus nerve

Review of the Literature: Vagus Nerve and Treatment of Gastrointestinal and Psychiatric Disorders

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Happy Monday Tribe!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and amazing Fourth of July!  Last week I mentioned that I am switching to ONE office starting in August.  I won’t be in mission valley after that, so please schedule accordingly:)

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I came across a very interesting article this weekend, as you know i’m always nerding out to more science!
Some of this I already know, but I found it interesting enough to write about for all of you guys to learn about!

The article came out of a psychiatry journal, but the physical and emotional are so interconnected, it’s no wonder they are finding the two so intertwined!

You’ve heard me talk extensively about the vagus nerve.  One of the 12 cranial nerves that exits out of the skull.  One of our best calming nerves we got!  It starts up in the head, but continues down into the abdomen.


(not my image)

It is part of what’s called the parasympathetic nervous system.  This system overseas a numerous amount of bodily functions, mood control, immunity, digestion, heart rate.

This nerve connects the brain and the GI tract by sending information to the brain about how the inner organs are doing.  Stimulating this nerve influences the brain stem to play crucial roles in mood and anxiety disorders (called monoaminergic brain systems).
What else?  There’s also evidence that gut bacteria have an effect of mood, by affecting the vagus nerve.

Let’s talk about the GUT brain axis for a minute.  The gut has its own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system.  It produces more than 30 neurotransmitters and has more neurons than the spine!  Why aren’t we addressing the gut more?! (well, i do, but just saying)…….

Hormones that are released from this system cross the blood brain barrier and work together with the vagus nerve.  The gut is also a huge important factor in controlling the immune system, but also the vagus nerve has immune modulating properties to work with it.
So this little (or big) nerve has a role with the gut, brain and inflammation.

How is the vagus nerve linked between our main (central) nervous system, and this enteric nervous system??

The gut brain axis includes the brain, spinal cord, autonomic NS, HPA axis.  The vagus nerve sends signals from the brain to the gut which account for 10-20% and then transports signals from the gut wall to the brain which accounting for 80-90% of all the fibers.  

This nerve also regulates the HPA axis, which releases hormones from the hypothalamus in the brain.  It leads to cortisol release, a stress hormone .  Which we all know stress hormones affect us all around. The vagus nerve also has lines of communications to influence intestinal function, which are under the influence of the gut microbes.

How is the vagus linked to the immune system?

The GI tract is faced all the time with food antigens, pathogens, microbiotica that may cause intestinal inflammation.  This is HIGHLY innervated by the vagus nerve. It has many anti-inflammatory capacities ( i won’t go into them all ). For those that want to nerd out  you know who you are, I’ll copy it here:

“The anti-inflammatory capacities of the vagus nerve are mediated through three different pathways (18). The first pathway is the HPA axis, which has been described above. The second pathway is the splenic sympathetic anti-inflammatory pathway, where the vagus nerve stimulates the splenic sympathetic nerve. Norepinephrine (NE) (noradrenaline) released at the distal end of the splenic nerve links to the β2 adrenergic receptor of splenic lymphocytes that release ACh. Finally, ACh inhibits the release of TNF-α by spleen macrophages through α-7-nicotinic ACh receptors. The last pathway, called the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway (CAIP), is mediated through vagal efferent fibers that synapse onto enteric neurons, which in turn release ACh at the synaptic junction with macrophages (18). ACh binds to α-7-nicotinic ACh receptors of those macrophages to inhibit the TNF-α (69). Compared to the HPA axis, the CAIP has some unique properties, such as a high speed of neural conductance, which enables an immediate modulatory input to the affected region of inflammation (70). Therefore, the CAIP plays a crucial role in the intestinal immune response and homeostasis, and presents a highly interesting target for the development of novel treatments for inflammatory diseases related to the gut immune system (6, 18).”

What about the vagus for mood and PTSD?

Stimulating the vagus nerve decreases hippocampal activity in the brain through a neurotransmitter called GABA.  The hippocampus is pretty critical in the fear circuit.  When we decrease this activity, we calm the body. It’s been shown in numerous studies to decrease anxiety.  

What about inflammatory bowel diseases?

Vagus nerve stimulation gives an inflammatory response to endotoxins.  It also stimulates the spleen through its connection to the splenic nerve.  It’s been shown to calm down ulcerative colitis, crohns disease and also rheumatoid arthritis. 

CONCLUSION…….

The vagus nerve is an essential part of the brain–gut axis and plays an important role in the modulation of inflammation, the maintenance of intestinal homeostasis, and the regulation of food intake, satiety, and energy homeostasis. An interaction between nutrition and the vagus nerve is well known, and vagal tone can influence food intake and weight gain.

The vagus nerve plays an important role in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, obesity as well as other stress-induced and inflammatory diseases.

 

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So that’s all great right, but how do we stimulate that vagus nerve for our health?  In the article they stimulate it through electrodes, but we like other means .

1. Breathing.  Breathing properly is HUGE for activating the vagus nerve. It runs through the diaphragm, so many bowel problems come from improper movement of the diaphragm.

2. Craniopathy.  Of course!  Directly taking pressure off the vagus nerve where it’s entrapped has a huge impact on it’s ability.  Its the BEST way in my opinion.

3. Quantum neurology.  Once the pressure is taken off the nerve you can also directly affect its activation through neurological testing and light therapy.

4.  Exercise.  Some say yoga and meditation has a big effect on the vagus nerve, but i’m not huge into yoga, so I say proper breathing and stretching techniques are your best bet.

Many patients experience extreme calmness after an adjustment and this is why!  We are stimulating that vagus nerve!  Mood will change, guts will changes, and inflammation will change!

I mean look at the circuit of it’s path!!!


(not my image)

Reference:

Division of Molecular Psychiatry, Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
2Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

 

 

OIL OF THE WEEK

ON the spotlight this week is Do Terra Patchouli.   What better way to stimulate the vagus nerve than through aromatherapy.  That’s in the research too!

Patchouli is a bushy herb from the mint family with stems reaching two or three feet in height and bearing small, pink-white flowers. Easily recognized for its rich, musky-sweet fragrance, Patchouli is regularly used in the perfume industry as well as in scented products such as laundry detergents and air fresheners. Patchouli is beneficial to the skin in many ways. It is often topically used to help reduce the appearance of wrinkles, blemishes, and minor skin imperfections and to promote a smooth, glowing complexion. The fragrance of Patchouli provides a grounding, balancing effect on emotions.

Uses

  • Combine with Peppermint and apply to the forehead, temples, or back of the neck after a long day of work.
  • Apply one to two drops to help reduce the appearance of wrinkles, blemishes, or problem skin areas, or add to your favorite moisturizer.
  • Combine with Vetiver and apply to the bottoms of feet to help calm emotions.

Directions for Use

Diffusion: Use three to four drops in the diffuser of your choice.
Internal use: Dilute one drop in 4 fl. oz. of liquid.
Topical use: Apply one to two drops to desired area. Dilute with doTERRA Fractionated Coconut Oil to minimize any skin sensitivity.

 

 

Have a happy and healthy week,

 

Dr Rachel hamel

 

Stress isn’t in your head, it’s in your nervous system

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How to Survive the Holidays Stress Free!

Happy Monday and happy December everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed last months topics all about auto-immunity and the immune system in general.

This month since it tis the season, we will going over various ways to help increase your body’s armor to keep the stress down.  We know the holidays are a happy time where families and loved ones come together, but it can also be a time of increased stress, trying to get things done, finances, family drama, traveling, ect.

We will also be prepping to do a start of the year 21 day cleanse to begin the year off on a great start!
(More to come about that topic in next week’s post about nutrition and traveling).


Step 1.

To start off the month, it’s important to prep the body for the holiday season.  Knowing that there will be extra stress, making sure your nervous system is at its best is key #1.

For a start, it has been shown in research that chiropractic adjustments boost the immune system. 

What happens with increased stress?  Your immune system goes down.  That’s why college students always experience getting sick after finals or on their breaks.  Once the adrenaline wears off, the effects kick in.

January is also the month of resolutions and goals (hopefully you have goals all year:)), but regardless, maybe a certain goal is saying: you’d like to workout more or eat better, you have to make sure your body can handle it. 

Just like how you would prep your notes for a presentation, or making a meal plan.  You need some sort of preparation for the body.

The prep phase so to speak.  In order to prep, you need to make sure your pain levels are down, and your brain and nervous system are communicating with one another.  When you do this, it makes less stress on the body, so that when those periods of increased stress come, your body can handle it and not go completely off course.

Cranial work in general is an amazing tool we have to help with the stress response. 

In research done specifically using cranial work for anxiety, depression and sleep, a study in 2011 testing over 100 patients,  found that using cranial based osteopathy (which i do) showed improvements in anxiety, increase in physical function, significant improvement in sleep function.  This is great!  A main reason in this study was improving sleep, and overall physical function.

When you are able to move pain free, and sleep (deep and rested), your body can heal and isn’t burdened by the littlest of things that come it’s way.

Which brings me to this point.  If you are in chronic pain, or aren’t sleeping, or you are already stressed, it is literally like typing into the computer all the keys at the same time.  Your brain can’t handle it.  Any little disruption, even a little stress can throw you off at that point.

So our goal with the cranial care is to create that optimal environment for the brain, to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, and make sure the network of nerves are effectively communicating. 

It’s also important to note that stress isn’t always in your HEAD, but in your NERVOUS system. 
Have you ever been told when you’re stressed to stop and just relax? That it’s all in your head? It would be nice if it were that simple. But it’s not.
“Physiology research shows that the stress response memory lives in your nervous system. Take for example exposure to a stressful event. One in which you felt helpless, hopeless, and lacked control. In this case your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is engaged. This is the part of the nervous system responsible for controlling unconscious bodily actions like breathing. To be more specific, it was the sympathetic branch (fight or flight) of the ANS that kicked in while you were strained. In addition, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis of the midbrain began firing. In which a signal from your hypothalamus sends a hormonal message to your pituitary gland that stimulates to your adrenal glands.

To activate this fight or flight response, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released from your adrenal glands. They help our body suddenly mobilize to flee danger. According to Peter A. Levine, trauma expert in the field of psychotherapy, trauma occurs when this biological process is overwhelmed and a person is unable to release and process the stressful event. It is possible to avoid a traumatic response by discharging the energy generated. For example, shaking, crying, and screaming can allow the individual to physically process the stress.

However, if the stress response is not processed, it remains in the tissues of the body. When a subsequent stressful event that does not pose a serious threat occurs, the traumatic memory is recalled. A large amount of stress hormones are released. Blood rushes to extremities, pupils dilate, muscle tone increases presenting as tension, breathing rate increases, the heartbeats faster, and sweating occurs. Hence, the nervous system responds as if this small incident is life threatening.

This biological response is clearly beyond the ability to rationally control. You can’t think your way out of it. Chronic stress leads to dissociation or immobility, a state of sympathetic charge and hormonal release, which is health damaging. The brainstem (the primitive part of the brain) governs emotional experience and biological response. When the brainstem is activated by fight or flight, it trumps the more developed front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. It is therefore not possible to be in the primitive state of fight or flight and also to think rationally and critically (as the prefrontal cortex would have us do).

The work is then to re-train the body. These are tools to deactivate the sympathetic response and activate the opposing parasympathetic response, called the rest and digest mechanism. The goal is to feel safe. To regulate breathing, slow the heartbeat, and circulate blood back to the vital organs.

The next time someone suggests it’s all in your head, you will have a different response. ”
-Melody Walford.

Re-training the body through calming certain nerves down or reflexes or while stimulating others like the parasympathetic nerves in the brain is key here.

We need to clear the stress out of the nervous system first!! This will prep the body to be able to handle things that come up!

Next week we will talk about food stress, if you’re traveling in the winter and exercise to keep you on track.

Also, if you have any FLEX or HSA spending you need to use before the end of the year Dr. Hamel accepts it as form of payment!

Let’s get the prep phase started so you can really enjoy this holiday season and not feel like you need to revamp your whole life in January.

If you’ve been holding your palms on your temples all too often, you might be coming up short on certain nutrients. Research suggests that folic acid deficiency can suppress the production of S-adenosylmethionine, a naturally occurring compound that helps produce serotonin and dopamine. Compounded with the fact that when you’re chronically stressed, your brain begins to produce excess stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, and fewer neurotransmitters associated with relaxation and happiness, like dopamine and serotonin, you’ve got a problem. Luckily, scientists believe that improving folic acid status can help reinstate happy hormone levels. To reap the benefits, whip up a three-cup spinach salad and you’ll reach nearly half of the daily recommended intake of folate for both men and women. For more sources of folate, try beans, chickpeas, lentils, asparagus, avocado, or broccoli.

Even if you have the MTHFR gene, getting FOLATE from your food is the best way!!  Folic acid supplementation is the synthetic form and can be toxic if you have any of those mutations.

 

 

That is all for now,

 

Have a happy and healthy week!

 

 

Dr. Hamel

Digestion Issues in Children on the Rise, What is happening?

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Happy Monday!  I hope you are all enjoying this month’s topic of chiropractic, nutrition and children.  After this week, I will diverging more from the chiropractic portion and moving more towards the nutrition aspect. 

I am returning this week, from a chiropractic research conference, where I had a poster and presentation this year (see the bottom for pictures).  I will tell you, there is a huge need for more research for cranial care, but one thing is certain that there is more and more research happening for its use in pregnancy, post partum and children.

It seems more and more children are having more and more digestion issues.  Why is this?
Well, of course this isn’t an “easy” answer or a quick fix, as it can be multiple different factors. This is a “blog” so as you know this is my professional opinion, I believe that the increase in digestion issues is caused by three main factors.

1. The increase in vaccinations.  Food proteins are added among other things, which causes abnormal immune responses, which can then lead to food allergies, and gut imbalances.  Wonder why no peanuts are allowed in schools anymore, that’s because so many are allergic to so many foods because of this increase.

2. The sources of our food.  Genetically modified foods we cannot digest, sprayed with herbicides and pesticides that break down our intestinal wall, and allow bugs and proteins to seep through.  Our soil is nutrient deficient, so most are nutrient and mineral deficient. Non organic GMO foods can cause problems in children and adults as well, and dairy (cow’s milk) has often too much casein that children cannot properly digest.  A decrease in infants breastfeeding, and an increase in children being fed soy based formulas is also a huge cause of digestive disruption in children.

3. Nervous system dysfunction and Sympathetic overload. This is mainly structural problems caused from birth.
 For the sake of this blog, we will mainly focus on the structural causes of digestive issues.  

1 What’s big in this category is the involvement in the nervous system.  As previously mentioned before            in last week’s blog is birth is traumatic on the head and nervous system.  Because it is traumatic on                the head and nervous system, what can usually happen and cause digestion problems in infants and           children is compression on a nerve called the vagus nerve (shown in green).

The vagus nerve starts its origin within the head, and exits through the base of the skull.

What does the vagus nerve do??

It is one of the 12 cranial nerves we have that exit the skull. The vagus nerve is the longest and most complex of the 12 pairs of cranial nerves that emanate from the brain. It transmits information to or from the surface of the brain to tissues and organs elsewhere in the body. This nerve has many functions, but the 4 main functions are:

  • Sensory: From the throat, heart, lungs, and abdomen.
  • Special sensory: Provides taste sensation behind the tongue.
  • Motor: Provides movement functions for the muscles in the neck responsible for swallowing and speech.
  • Parasympathetic: Responsible for the digestive tract, respiration, and heart rate functioning.

The parasympathetic side, which the vagus nerve is heavily involved in, decreases alertness, blood pressure, and heart rate, and helps with calmness, relaxation, and digestion. As a result, the vagus nerve also helps with defecation, urination, and sexual arousal.

Other vagus nerve effects include:

  • Communication between the brain and the gut: The vagus nerve delivers information from the gut to the brain.
  • Relaxation with deep breathing: The vagus nerve communicates with the diaphragm. With deep breaths, a person feels more relaxed.
  • Decreasing inflammation: The vagus nerve sends an anti-inflammatory signal to other parts of the body.
  • Lowering the heart rate and blood pressure: If the vagus nerve is overactive, it can lead to the heart being unable to pump enough blood around the body. In some cases, excessive vagus nerve activity can cause loss of consciousness and organ damage.
  • Fear management: The vagus nerve sends information from the gut to the brain, which is linked to dealing with stress, anxiety and fear – hence the saying, “gut feeling.” These signals help a person to recover from stressful and scary situations.
Because we are focusing on digestion, some big points here.  Vagal dysfunction whether increased or decreased CAN and does can digestion problems.  
  • Difficulty swallowing is one, which when you are dealing with a child or an infant swallowing it can have huge problems.  Also can lead to problems with the tongue and palate which can change the way the palate grows and develops.
  • Delayed gastric emptying- nausea, heart burn, stomach pains, spasms in the stomach, weight loss
  • B12 deficiency.  The vagus nerve stimulates parietal cells in the stomach to secrete acid and intrinsic factor. This factor is needed to absorb vitamin B12.
  • irritable bowel syndrome.  Dys-regulation of the nervous system plays a role in the development of IBS.

How to normalize the nerve function?

-There are many ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, however the BEST and only way in children I have found (and adults), is taking the compression of the nerve away at its source.  THE HEAD.  Craniopathy chiropractic care.  Taking direct pressure can cause symptoms to improve almost instantly in children.

2.  Structural causes can also stem from dysfunction within the palate, which can further cause digestion problems.  Birth trauma can cause changes in the palate, or dysfinction in the tongue.  And of course genetic problems such as tongue and lip tie can cause digestion difficulties and speech and developmental problems for some if severe.  These dysfunctions also made breastfeeding difficult and for some infants impossible.  Get them checked for cranial care before stopping breastfeeding.  Breastfeeding is huge for much development.

I hope this was all beneficial to you this week, and for those with children, know children or expecting children, please keep my care in mind.  There are not many individuals that do what I do, and the need is BIG.  Having proper digestion is key to actually absorbing nutrients which help children and adults alike.  If that child is nutrient deficient it can cause big problems later on.