Activate Your Vagus Nerve by Navaz Habib

Author:Navaz Habib
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2019-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

DYSFUNCTIONAL HEART RATE

We are told that the average resting human heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. The more calm and collected you are, the lower the heart rate will be, and the more stressed out you are, the faster your heart will beat. Electrical signals from the vagus nerve and sympathetic nerves dictate change to the heart rate. The lower your resting heart rate, the stronger your vagus nerve. Interestingly, there are studies suggesting that one’s lifespan is inversely correlated to resting heart rate—thus, the lower your heart rate, the longer you will live. From this, we can extrapolate that stronger vagus nerve tone and function is associated with lower heart rate and thus a longer natural life expectancy.

When a car goes spinning out of control on an icy road, the driver will immediately feel stressed and enter the fight-or-flight state. The sympathetic nerves activate immediately and the vagus is shut down. The signals from the sympathetic nerves speed up the heart rate by signaling that the muscles of the arms and legs need much more oxygenated blood to control the steering wheel and push on the brakes of the car.

Once the car comes to a safe stop, the sympathetic nerves slowly stop firing and the vagus is able to turn back on. The effect of vagus is to slow the heart rate using calming, rhythmic electrical signaling.

One sign of a dysfunctional vagus nerve is the inability to quickly normalize the heart rate after this type of stressful event. The amount of time a person spends with a high heart rate and shallow breathing following a stressful occurrence is a strong sign of vagus nerve function. One who is able to quickly calm their nerves and slow their heart rate has a very strong vagus nerve, while someone who takes longer to come back to their resting rate is likely suffering from dysfunctional vagus nerve tone. How well do you function under the pressure of a high-stress situation like this? Do you remain very calm and rational when dealing with such a scenario?

The opposite of this issue—an uncontrolled, overactive vagus—can also occur. Vasovagal syncope is a major issue caused by underactive sympathetic nerves and a hyperactive vagus nerve. Syncope is the medical term for fainting. The sympathetic nervous system acts to increase heart rate and blood pressure while the parasympathetic nerves act on the heart to slow heart rate and decrease blood pressure. If the sympathetic nerves are weak and the vagus nerves are overactive, the result is a temporary loss of consciousness that is not life-threatening.

This condition can manifest in otherwise healthy individuals and have devastating immediate effects. Though there is no indication of long-term effects, vasovagal syncope is a sign of improper balance within the autonomic nervous system. It is a common concern without a single clear cause. In fact, there are many different causes, and the mechanisms are very different between younger and older individuals.

The most common theory is that the imbalance

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