The ‘rest-and-digest’ link between body and brain, the vagus nerve holds the key to your emotional health. Your job is to keep it active.

How do you usually deal with stress? Do you hide under the covers and sleep? Pour yourself a stiff drink? Park yourself in front of the TV for hours? Polish off an entire bag of chips? 

There may be a better way—one that calms and helps you cope with stressful days without turning to unhealthy habits. It involves tapping into something called your vagus nerve, hte longest nerve in your nervous system, which runs from your brain to your abdomen and plays a central role in regulating your nervous system and helping your body relax.

What Is The Vagus Nerve, Exactly?

Before we delve into the vagus nerve, first we must understand how your autonomic nervous system works. 

The autonomic nervous system is also called the “autonomic” nervous system, because it takes care of body functions without thinking first.1 Think pumping blood throughout your body, digesting breakfast, and sweating on a humid day.²

Your autonomic nervous system is divided into two parts: the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. These two halves have opposite but complementary roles in keeping you alive and healthy.

These two divisions create a balancing act. Sometimes, one part has to take charge—like your sympathetic nervous system when you have to leap out of the street to avoid getting clobbered by a bus—but overall, you want both systems to contribute equally. This balance is key to mental well-being.

So, what’s the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve, or the vagal nerves, are the primary nerves that your parasympathetic nervous system uses to send messages from your brain to your body.⁵ They collect information about how your organs are working (or not) and share that info, helping control heart rate, digestion, speech and… mood.⁶

The Mood Connection

...[The vagus nerve] can sound sort of magical with all the things it does. While the vagus nerve is pretty impressive, there’s still a lot we don’t fully understand, particularly when it comes to emotional health.

—— said Eric Porges, an assistant professor in the department of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida who studies the vagus nerve.⁹

What we do know: A strong, healthy vagus nerve helps your parasympathetic system recover from stress quickly.

The trouble is, many of us live in sympathetic mode too much of the time. With the stresses of modern life, your fight-or-flight response can’t tell the difference between life-or-death situations and ordinary life stresses, so it tends to keep our systems on high alert.

Ever hear the saying, “Use it or lose it”? The same concept applies to your vagus nerve.

When your sympathetic system rules the roost, your parasympathetic system doesn’t get much playtime, causing your vagus nerve to weaken. And a weak vagus nerve can’t activate your rest-and-digest system as well as it should.

If your parasympathetic nervous system isn’t supported and can’t stabilize and calm you like it should, then you may be living in a constant state of anxiety.

—— said Yufang Lin, MD, an integrative medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic.¹⁰

Chronic stress and anxiety is unhealthy for both body and mind. 

When your sympathetic nervous system is constantly switched on, it overwhelms your body with cortisol and other stress hormones, eventually disrupting everyday body processes.¹² This can increase your risk for mental health issues such as depression, sleep disorders, and memory problems.¹³ Plus, it can increase your risk for physical ailments, such as digestive issues, headaches, muscle pain, heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke.¹⁴

The good news is that strengthening the vagus nerve may help your body escape a chronically stressed state.

An Interesting Discovery…

So, how do you strengthen the vagus nerve? By stimulating it.

Scientists have been exploring the link between the vagus nerve and its effects on mood. In 2000, they made an interesting discovery: They found that by simply stimulating the vagus nerve with mild electrical pulses improved depression symptoms in patients who hadn’t responded to other treatments.¹⁵ The results were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.¹⁶

The idea is, stimulating your vagus nerve improves its tone, or its ability to respond to stress. Think of it like building muscle: If you want a muscle to get bigger and stronger, you have to exercise it regularly.

In 2005, on the heels of the Biological Psychiatry study and other research, the Food and Drug Administration approved vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) for treatment-resistant depression.¹⁷ VNS pings your vagus nerve with mild electrical pulses using an implantable pacemaker-like device.¹⁸ (Don’t worry, you can’t actually feel the electrical pulses.) But VNS is still pretty controversial and it’s not covered by most insurers.¹⁹

How To Support Your Vagus Nerve For Better Emotional Health

Thankfully, you don’t have to hit your vagus nerve with electrical pulses to give it a workout! There are many natural ways to stimulate your vagus nerve and boost your emotional health naturally.

In general, any activity that inspires a parasympathetic response (e.g., a slower heart and breathing rate) will stimulate the vagus nerve.

Great options include²⁰

Research also shows that exercise can tone your vagus nerve, especially if you choose interval or endurance training.²¹

When you practice these activities over time, you strengthen your vagus nerve function.

—— Dr. Lin said.²²

Obviously these options are much healthier than dealing with stress by smoking, drinking, watching endless hours of TV, lashing out at others, overeating (or undereating), avoiding your problems, and sleeping too much.²³ These less-healthy approaches to stress relief can sometimes get people by temporarily, making them feel better for the moment, but they also cause long-term serious health problems. They also tend to make depression and anxiety worse, not better.²⁴

Use It Or Lose It!

As the messenger that relays stress-reducing signals between your brain and body, your vagus nerve is essential for emotional health, but needs to be activated, regularly! To keep it strong and agile, practice calming activities that prompt your vagus nerve to switch on your parasympathetic system. 

For more tips on supporting your emotional health, watch your inbox for more articles on the latest in mental and emotional health research from GreenWave. 

¹ Parasympathetic Nervous System. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
² Parasympathetic Nervous System. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
³ Parasympathetic Nervous System. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
⁴ Parasympathetic Nervous System. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
⁵ Vagus Nerve. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed January 11, 2022.
⁶ Vagus Nerve. Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed January 11, 2022.
⁷ Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS). Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
⁸ Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Cleveland Clinic. Last reviewed June 6, 2022.
⁹ This Nerve Influences Nearly Every Internal Organ. Can It Improve Our Mental State, Too? The New York Times. June 2, 2022.
¹⁰ Your Vagus Nerve May Be Key to Fighting Anxiety and Stress. Cleveland Clinic. April 23, 2023.
¹¹ Your Vagus Nerve May Be Key to Fighting Anxiety and Stress. Cleveland Clinic. April 23, 2023.
¹² How Stress Affects Your Health. American Psychological Association (APA). Last updated October 31, 2022.
¹³ How Stress Affects Your Health. American Psychological Association (APA). Last updated October 31, 2022.
¹⁴ How Stress Affects Your Health. American Psychological Association (APA). Last updated October 31, 2022.
¹⁵ Rush JA, George MS, Sackeim HA, et al. Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) for Treatment-Resistant Depressions: A Multicenter Study. Biological Psychiatry. February 2000.
¹⁶ Rush JA, George MS, Sackeim HA, et al. Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) for Treatment-Resistant Depressions: A Multicenter Study. Biological Psychiatry. February 2000.
¹⁷ Vagus Nerve Stimulation. American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
¹⁸ Vagus Nerve Stimulation. American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
¹⁹ Vagus Nerve Stimulation. American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
²⁰ Your Vagus Nerve May Be Key to Fighting Anxiety and Stress. Cleveland Clinic. April 23, 2023.
²¹ Kai S, Nagino K, Ito T, et al. Effectiveness of Moderate Intensity Interval Training as an Index of Autonomic Nervous Activity. Rehabilitation Research and Practice. 2016.
²² Your Vagus Nerve May Be Key to Fighting Anxiety and Stress. Cleveland Clinic. April 23, 2023.
²³ Watch Out for Unhealthy Responses to Stress. Harvard Medical School. August 4, 2012.
²⁴ How Stress Affects Your Health. American Psychological Association (APA). Last updated October 31, 2022.