Hacking the Vagus Nerve to Calm the Nervous System with Nicholas Hool, Ph.D. | Ep. 140

Foreign. We talk a lot here at the Holistic Inner Balance podcast about the vagus nerve. We've even gone into details on how to stimulate vagus nerve and how to measure vagus nerve with your pulse. But in this conversation, we are going to take that a thousand steps further. And we're interviewing an amazing innovator, a great human being, and the founder of the holist device. I love this conversation and the, the product. I've actually experienced it. And Hadley mentions later on in the recording that we don't usually do products or supplements or specific brands here. And this one, this one made it through the gates. And it's because I'm such a strong believer in it. I think the vagus nerve is really, really important, especially for our emotional and mental health. And my experience using the vagus nerve stimulation device was great. And so if you have situational anxiety or if you have performance anxiety or you need a solution that's really quick and really effective, then this is going to be the conversation for you. And the other piece that I think really stood out to me was the conversation getting into the detail about the different directions. I'm looking at my notes, y'.

All.

I took so many notes today about looking at the different directions, the ascending and the descending branches of the vagus nerve and how to know which may be out of balance for you and what strategies and techniques that you should be using. And. And Hadley has a really, really good question about what if you aren't in that fight flight kind of activation state, and what do you do if you're in more of a flop state? And Nick has all the answers for that there. Let me read you guys his quick bio. It's really super impressive. He was a competitive golfer. He wanted to do PGA and was absolutely amazing. Had a promising career. Everything was looking great, but his nervous system started to get in the way and he was choking when he went and started the golfing. He would go on the, the hole, the. The. What is it, Hadley? What is it?

Not the course, onto the course, the grass.

I don't know. I'm not a golfer. And. And he would, he would get. His body knew how to do it, he knew how to do it, he had the skills, but there's something that was getting in his way. And so he went to solve this problem and, and he received a PhD in biomedical engineering at ASU, and he is a renowned neuromodulation expert and he's absolutely, absolutely incredible. You can contact him by going to wholist.com h o-o l e S T. And he's actually really responsive on email, which is nickoolist.com and we'll put all of that information in the bio. But before we jump into the recording, Hadley, any, like, aha moments you want to jump out the gate with?

I mean, I just was geeking out so hard with all of the science that we're talking about and, like, how it all works, because I think a lot of times we think, oh, nervous system, like Vegas, Vagus nerve stimulation, sure, whatever. But we really got into the nitty gritty of it and we got into how you can actually figure out what part of your nervous system is affected and then utilize the proper tools. Because sometimes we just think, oh, I just need to use this thing, like cold plunging, which may not actually be effective and might actually be hurting more than it's helping. So stay tuned for that and stay tuned for Dr. Nicole's, like, test. Three testimonials that she has for this product because she's used it on herself and also other people, and it's kind of mind blowing the results.

So seriously. Yeah, let's get everywhere. Yeah, we're gonna talk about vagus nerve and strategies, and we're going to talk about you, Mr. Nick.

Awesome. Yeah, no, I'm happy to share as much knowledge as I have on the topic. I've got a unique perspective on it. Definitely a lot of areas in life where it's helpful. But, you know, with my backstory, I've got at least one interesting application for, and that's everything we're doing over here at Hulas. So.

Yeah, so tell me about the name and then we'll kind of get into the, The. The story of how you came up with this idea. But what is. What is who List? Tell me more.

Yeah, who List is just a name that I made up when I was a little kid. You know, my last name is Huel. So I just thought I was cool instead of saying, I'm the coolest, I'm the hoolest. And it was just like such a dumb little thing. But, you know, I wanted to start a company and was like, I'm terrible at coming up with names for things. So for whatever reason, it just popped in my head. I'm like, let's just call it, you know, who List Performance Technologies. And it kind of aligned a little bit. You know, it's like when you need to be cool, calm under pressure, you know, like, you can be the wholest. Like, go with the who list if you want to be your coolest you know, stupid stuff like that, but.

Oh, that's good. That's not. I like that. That's good.

It's funny. Like I get it all the time. People just, they get it right away. I'm like, yeah, our company's called the who list. And they're like, oh, like so you're gonna be the wholest, the coolest? I'm like, yeah, there you go. Kind of, kind of got it.

But yeah, I was thinking that in my brain as I was walking in my office and I'm like, I'm talking to Nick about the coolest device possible. And I'm like, hahaha. Nicole, you're so funny. But apparently your younger self already figured that out and I'm sketching on in 2024. Yeah, so. So okay, so tell us about you started in biomedical engineering at Arizona State, right?

Yeah, so I got both my undergrad and my PhD in biomedical engineering. It was all straight through. So eight straight years of school and just a lot of research, a lot of projects, things like that. Learned about the vagus nerve in school, learned about a lot of other crazy technologies. But yeah, I, I never really cared that much for like higher education. I've always assumed I would just get my undergrad and go work and do something. But the reason I went in as a biomedical engineer was to solve my own problem with stress and anxiety. You know, I was a competitive golfer growing up. I, you know, I started playing since I could walk basically. And when I was 14 years old, I won my first, you know, statewide tournament. And you know, it's not national, but in the state of Arizona it's pretty competitive place to play golf. And I realized I'm like, okay, this is. Of all the sports I played growing up, golf seems to be the one I'm best at and I enjoyed it the most. Something about, you know, anything related to the mind. Like I love brain and mind based games. Like I've loved playing chess growing up with my dad because it's like a mind game. And golf is very much mental. You know, it's like a 90% mental game. So dedicated myself, I wanted to play golf, that was my sport when I was 16. Traveled the country, won a few more, you know, large tournaments with people from all over the country and started getting, you know, noticed by college coaches and actually got an offer to join the team at Arizona State University, which if you're from Arizona and you're a golfer, that is the dream school. Yeah, that's where Phil Mickelson went, you know, at the time, John Rahm didn't go there, but John Rom went there. I mean, lots of of the all time great players went through ASU's golf program. So it's like, oh my gosh, I can go play at asu. I probably wasn't going to be a starter. You know, I might have been lucky to play a couple tournaments. I wasn't that good. But either way it was like, this is the dream. And then for whatever reason, the, well, I guess first the coach got fired, you know, several months after I had contact with him and he offered me a spot. And then I had a few tournaments where I kind of choked under pressure and just the combination of, oh man, I have to impress this new coach at ASU if he wants to give me a spot. Suddenly I'm not performing as well and I'm getting in my head. And it just culminated into like, I started getting these severe stress responses. Every single time I'd step up to the first tee. It would happen on the golf course like randomly. And it was just a miserable experience because you go from being one of the top players, you know, in the, in the state, possibly country, and then suddenly you just cannot compete in tournaments anymore. It was like, what the heck is happening? And I knew it wasn't my talent. Like talent didn't just go away, it was something to do with my brain or my body. You know, the, the physical symptoms were like, I'm on the first tee and it's just that chest anxiety, right? Heart just beating out of my chest, throat kind of tenses up. All my muscles are really tense and I just cannot relax. Tried all the breath work. You know, meditation doesn't do anything in that moment. Meditation's good for like preventative and perspective, I guess, but in the moment it's not going to do, you know, calm your body exercise, like doing jumping jacks, push ups, like self massage. I did all the stuff, nothing calmed me down and ended up going to see a sports psychiatrist for a little bit. And it's funny, the psychiatrist, they teach you all those things anyway. They're like, oh, let's try some meditations, try some breath work. I'm like, dude, I've been trying that. Like it, yeah, that's not the problem. Like I, I have a good perspective but for whatever reason I just freak out. Like the moment it's time to perform. And he prescribed me benzos, I can't remember which one, but you know, one of the strong ones, I didn't know anything at the time. I'm a teenager. So I'm like, all right, yeah, cool, I'll take it. Hour before tournament. All right, whatever, take it. And it worked really well. When I'd step up on the first tee, I was like, I don't feel a thing. Problem was, I didn't feel a thing for the whole round. And now I'm, like, dull. I noticed. I'm like, I don't feel like being out here right now. I'm really unmotivated, just not focused, you know, sluggish. And I'm like, this. This isn't good. So you start looking up the side effects of. Of benzos, and it's like, you know, it's really bad for you. I mean, that is one of the symptoms is it totally doles the entire nervous system in the brain. And then, you know, if you take it for more than, like, a month, suddenly you start having risks of, you know, dependency. If you stop taking it after a month, there's withdrawals. You don't just stop taking a benzo. You have to, like, wean yourself off of it. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I do not want to be on these for very long. So that's not a solution. And it just clicked in my mind. I'm like, there's nothing out there that is, like, effective for what I want. I mean, there's a lot of stress relief techniques and there's millions of things out there, but in the moment when I'm on the go, I'm on the golf course, you know, wherever, nothing really was able to just pull. Pull me out of that for. It didn't need to be very long. It just calm me down for, like, five minutes, and I can take it from there. So that was my motivation. It was like, let's go to school. Let's study what's physically going on inside my mind and body. I didn't want to be a psychologist because I wasn't interested in positive thinking. Like, I'd already tried all those things. And great. I mean, I'm huge on meditation and the power of positive thinking, visualization. But it was the physical side I needed help with. So I thought, all right, let's go study the nervous system and figure out what's happening. Why does this happen? And are there ways you can shut that off? Because if you go from. I can go from 0 to 100 in 5 seconds, but why can't I go from 100 to 0 in 5 seconds? Why does it take so long? Those are just some of the open questions I had went to school, studied biomedical engineering. Just seemed like the right fit to kind of study.