The Hidden Organ Controlling Your Stress And How To Reset It

What about the emotional body?

Our emotions really heavily impact the function of this nerve. This concept of the polyvagal theory talks about how you feel and certain feelings triggering whether you're in a more vaguely activated state or in a more sympathetic state or in a freeze state.

What percentage of time should we be in our parasympathetic?

It's around 80% of the time. We should be sitting in a parasympathetic rest digest recovery state. Only about 20% of the time should be sympathetic.

I think that our ancestors for sure, but the way that society is set up and all the stressors that we have and the inflammation that we are exposed to, whether that's mental, emotional, physical, environmental, there's so many stressors or assaults that happen to our body. Doctor Navaz Habib, welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I'm so excited to have you.

I am very excited to be here.

So we just met at the Institute of Functional Medicine at the conference. I'm so grateful that you approached me because it feels like I've known you for such a long time. One, because of our Canadian connection, but two, because of the work that you do. I honestly couldn't think of a more perfect guest for this podcast. So thank you.

I'm honored to be here. I'm really excited to chat with you about this. And it totally feels like a connection from way back.

Amazing. Okay, so before we dive in, this podcast is all about. About becoming rooted in your own wisdom, your health, your inner wisdom that you know to heal. What would you say are three things that help you feel really rooted in your health and who you are?

I'd say number one for sure is time in nature. I love connecting with nature. I love kind of going back to source. And I find nothing is more back to source and more back to understanding where. Where we truly are from than nature and the creation around us. I think that is something that keeps me grounded, keeps me rooted, keeps me just present in every single moment. And whenever I get the opportunity to. I try to spend as much time in nature as I can, whether it's a bike ride along the edge of Lake Ontario, as you're aware of, or was lucky enough to go and visit Banff in the mountains in Alberta with my family just recently.

Beautiful.

Just the ability to be in a natural setting and just remember how almost how small any of my personal problems truly are in the grand scheme of the world.

I love that you're the first person to say source. And it's funny when I refer to the ashram When I go back to the ashram, it feels like I'm plugging into source energy. So I know the exact feeling that you're talking about. Talking about. Is there a practice or a ritual that you have every single day if you don't have time to get into nature?

Yeah, if I don't have the opportunity to get out, I'll just spend some moments breathing. It's the breath really, is that connection to myself, to my. To my creator, to my. My. Just the thing that's greater than me and taking that moment to reconnect and go through the breath. That's really the tool that I use.

Very cool. I think we're going to talk a lot about that. We are just in terms of the immediate shift that you have, but we take it for granted. We're never taught of it as a form of resetting how our body's functioning. Right.

You're absolutely right.

So many people have these daily habits that they don't even realize are uprooting them. And I say this all the time on this podcast. A lot of people treat their daily rituals as things on a checklist. And I have to correct, like, for people listening who are like, but I love the checklist. I love the checklist too. I love I'm a type. But I think what I mean by that is we're treating our wellness rituals like a checklist, but we're not dropping into our bodies when we're doing them. So with that said, are there a few things that make you feel uprooted in life and do you catch yourself all the time?

And I think it's so easy to do that in the world today. Right. We have our devices literally connected to us almost 24 7. And when we wake up and the first thing we do is we reach for our phone, then we're creating this disconnection. We're creating this opportunity to feel uprooted, to not feel connected with the world that we are trying to live in. And it's not necessarily that the device is the problem, but rather our attention is being taken away. And I think that for me is I do my best and everybody does kind of go down that rabbit hole. I think there's moments when you have to, especially when you run a business off of a lot of off of tech, but just becoming conscious, becoming aware. And when you do catch yourself, just put it away and forgive yourself. You're not doing anything necessarily wrong. It's a product of your psychology being hijacked and allowing yourself that freedom to say, okay, I allowed it to happen, but let me pull back. And that really is this tool. I have a friend who introduced a concept to me, and it was. The concept was initially around meditation and the idea of standing on the platform of a train station. And each thought is like a train that goes by. And occasionally you'll catch yourself on the train, and all you have to do is pull yourself back to being on that platform again. But it really just your thought that allows that to occur. So you'll catch yourself going on that train of thought, but allowing yourself to step back, I think is huge. And forgiving yourself for doing it, not beating yourself up if that does occur.

What a good analogy. Right. It's like being on social media and getting caught and going down a wormhole, not even knowing how you got there. At the end of the day, I think a lot of people, we need to remind ourselves that, like, no one on the other end of receiving an email or a, like on a post or a share is going of know the difference if you send it out an hour, two or three hours later on that day. Right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. So no more uprooting that way. I want to share a little bit about your story. You started as a chiropractor, but you made a big career shift. Now you work in this world of functional medicine. Can you share about your story? Because I think our. Our journeys, they. They bring so much to the fulfillment and also like our sense of purpose in what we do and how we serve others. So tell us about how you got here.

Yeah, it was really the decision to positively change how I was living my life that really prompted it. So chiropractic college was a huge and very important part of my life. I graduated in 2010 and went out into the world to become this doctor of chiropractic and have my clinic. And as I was there, I realized my health was not doing well on its own. I actually, at my maximum, weighed 250 pounds. I had high blood pressure. I was borderline diabetic. I had all of these health struggles that I didn't really realize that my lifestyle and the stress that I was putting on myself were actually the cause of those health challenges. And I met my wife the same year that I graduated. And I remember on our first anniversary, we were sitting at a restaurant and we kind of looked at each other and we said, okay, well, if we ever want to have kids, we don't want our kids to deal with the same health struggles that we're dealing with. I had significantly greater struggles than she did at that time. And it was this decision to address this and try to figure out why it was truly happening in the first place. I wasn't comfortable with just simply being told, start running by my medical doctor, right? Like, go and change your food. Cool. But why? Why is it happening in the first place? What is actually causing my struggle to occur in the first place? And it was through this there were a few chance and wonderful encounters that occurred and that led me into the world of functional medicine. I met a wonderful mentor and friend of mine, Satchin Patel, in a very random occurrence, you know, Sachin. And Sachin walked into the clinic that I was working at, the only night of the week that I'm in that place. And I was standing in a spot when I'm never standing in that same spot ever.

Total chance.

And he lived in the condo up upstairs from where I was working. It was, it was one of those, like, you know, everything just fell into place in this perfect moment. He walked in and he said, unfortunately, his wife had had a car accident, not a major one, but enough that she needed some chiropractic care. And he walked in and he said that he himself was a chiropractor. And I said, well, if you're a chiropractor, why don't you just do the treatment and, like, do this? And he said, I don't practice that way anymore. And I said, what do you do? And he said, I practice functional medicine. And it was this light bulb moment. He went into an office to go and talk to the owner. And I ran into my office and I quickly typed up functional medicine. And it was like this light bulb went off. And it was that moment that changed my life entirely. It really changed my focus into creating health. Really not looking at health or health care as avoiding disease, but rather creating that holistic function of health. And it was a shift to my entire mentality. It shifted everything that I was practicing. It got me eventually to leave chiropractic care and really pursue this idea of root cause based medicine, root cause based health, and to eliminate those root causes and to understand what the pathway by which those root causes were creating the problems that many of us are suffering.

From today, which were people that you saw every day at the clinic, right? Like, what was it coming from outside of the car accidents and stuff like that. And I have to apply to you because it takes so much bravery to skip tracks, right, and to go in a different direction, especially from an Indian family, I think. I mean, you still were in medicine, but you obviously had A very successful career. It must have taken a lot of courage within you to do that.

Yes and no. And what's really interesting, what made it really easy was it turned out to be something that my mom tried preaching to me for a very long time prior to. My mom used to follow Dr. Andrew Weil for years and years, for decades, like, just watching his content and reading his books. And she would say, no, you got to do this, and you got to learn that. And I would say, I don't know what you're talking about, mom. And then eventually it became this. This. I started listening to what he was saying for real, and I understood what she was trying to get across to me. And. And so I think there was obviously the. I'm shifting my career path. I'm. I'm really changing what I'm doing. But it had such a big, profound impact on my life that it was a simple decision when it finally came down to it.

And knowing this Andrew Wiles book was the first nutrition book that my mom got for her rheumatoid arthritis. So our moms were imprinting clearly.

Yes.

You have some incredible books. I just zipped through your latest book on the vagus nerve. I should have brought a highlighter everywhere. Pages are folded. But how did you land on the vagus nerve?

It always stuck out to me. Even before I had chiropractic college in mind, before I did any of the more professional work in college. I was. I remember in. In high school, I was this biology nerd. I loved learning about just the brain. The brain always was this unique thing to me. I actually wanted to be a neurosurgeon when I was much younger and when I was kind of putting the pieces together and trying to understand how the brain body connection truly worked, There was one nerve that stuck out to me. There was one very unique, different than every other nerve in the body, and that was the vagus nerve. It's the only cranial nerve that connects in the way that it does. And I didn't understand why. I truly wanted to know. I was curious, why is this structure different than everything else?

Yeah.

And that was my defining kind of moment to dig into this. And so eventually, when it came down to it, and I learned on the functional medicine side and the two just linked entirely together, it was a perfect fit for me.

So let's talk about what the vagus nerve is and its function.

Absolutely. We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves that come out of our brainstem, which is just south of our brain, as we know. It okay, so connected just below. And these nerves, for the most part, 11 of them stick to and stay within the head cavity. So the optic nerve for your vision, the glossopharyngeal for your tongue. Right, We've got the facial nerve, the temporomandibular nerve. All of these nerves are there. They're doing very specific functions within the head cavity. But the 10th nerve of those 12 pairs leaves, and it's the only one that leaves. And it leaves and it comes down and it actually courses alongside the carotid artery and the jugular vein in the neck. So if you find your pulse just in front of your SCM muscle, you just go ahead and you find your pulse, you're actually within a couple of millimeters of your vagus nerve. And we actually have two. It's a pair. We call it the vagus nerve. We have two. So on either side, doesn't matter where you go, but this is where you can most easily access the vagus nerve. What's unique about it is it then courses down through the neck into the thorax, and it connects to the heart, it connects to the lungs, it connects to the esophagus, it follows down through the diaphragm, and then it connects to virtually every organ in her abdomen. It is the gut brain connection. It is that. That tool that controls inflammation. We'll get into that, I'm sure.

Yeah. Like every vital organ within us, and yet most of us don't even know that it exists. So when we think about, you know, how is it really connected? Let's start with our physical well being first. Okay, so when there's dysfunction within the vagus nerve, how is that connected to our physical health?

So physical health, there's a couple of very specific physical connections that the vagus nerve has. On the sensory side, it has sensation from a part of the ear through the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. So just this area right in the. Behind the tragus, basically that whole little area of skin that's actually a branch of the vagus nerve. So we may lose some sensation there. When we have dysfunction in this nerve, we then also have branches to the pharyngeal and laryngeal muscles. And this is very important to understand. The pharyngeal muscles maintain a good strong open patent airway. In order to keep an open patent airway, we need these muscles to stay nice and toned. When we lack that, the tonicity of the pharyngeal muscles decreases, and that leads to things like snoring or sleep. Apnea. It's a very common occurrence.

Wow.

And then down into the pharyngeal muscles where we then control our voice. And we'll notice when we have dysfunction in the laryngeal muscles, voices will become very monotone. So people will have difficulty going very, very low or very, very high with their voice. They're going to be stuck in a very monotone vocal pattern.

Because I'm thinking, as you're, you know, our posture when we're driving, our posture when we're at our desk for eight or nine hours a day, our posture when we sleep, when we're on the couch, all of these things that are working against the posture that we need for it to function optimally. Right.

You're actually 100% correct. And nobody talks posture first. But physical posture plays such a massive role in ensuring that we have space for the vagus nerve to send its signals effectively.

So we'll dive deeper into some symptoms. But first we address the physical body. What about the emotional body?

I think this is where the vagus nerve is really unique in the entire body, and that is that it is the physical connection from the gut to the brain. It is the physical connection down, controlling the inflammatory control pathways within the entirety of the body. But our emotions really heavily impact the function of this nerve. I'm not sure if you've read it. I have a feeling you probably have. The Polyvagal theory is a wonderful book and an entire theory by Dr. Stephen Porges. And this concept of the Polyvagal Theory talks about how you feel and certain feelings triggering, whether you're in a more vaguely activated state or in a more sympathetic state or in a freeze state. So we want to be in a state where our vagus nerve is active most of the time and in a positive way where we're capable of feeling. The most important word is going to be safe. Safety is the driver of good vagus nerve function, of parasympathetic, ventral parasympathetic function. There's going to be moments when we need to go into a sympathetic state. And this is where we need to go into a little bit more of an active, functional performance based state. And that's going to be sympathetic. So our vagus nerve is going to decrease function for a period of time. The sympathetics are going to take over. And this is a seesaw that normally should occur. We should be parasympathetic, sympathetic. It's almost like the accelerator and the brakes of a car. So we need to push the accelerator for the car to be functional. But we need the brakes in order to maintain safety and be able to bring us back to a calm state. And that balance, that ebb and flow is what we really want to be able to do. But when the brakes wear down and we get out of a sense of safety, what happens is we push into a state called dorsal vagal. And dorsal vagal is this freeze state. And this is where mental health struggles become very, very prominent. This is where challenges like anxiety, depression, challenges like just simply being disconnected from yourself and from the world are at their absolute max. And so we want to avoid going into that situation. Even if we're in the high end of the sympathetic ladder state. It can lead into that, but we want to avoid that. And that's where mental health struggle really comes in. This is where the emotional piece really sticks out for the vagus nerve.

So let's backtrack and hover on that for a second. What percentage of time should we be in our parasympathetic?

I believe, and I think this is, I believe Stephen Portis would agree with me on this, it's around 80% of the time we should be sitting in a parasympathetic rest, digest recovery state. Only about 20% of the time should be sympathetic. And in today's world it's not, I.

Know, and I shouldn't be laughing, but it's almost like it's laughable because it seems like a fantastical number in today's world, right. I think that our ancestors for sure, but the way that society is set up and all the stressors that we have and the inflammation that we are exposed to and whether that's mental, emotional, physical, environmental, there's so many stressors or assaults that happen to our body the second we leave our house. Right. So let's keep that in mind. Like the intention is to be in our parasympathetic state 80% of the time. So we need to train ourselves on how to get there, which we'll get to. So when we think about inflammation, then, okay, so here we are, we go out into the world, our intention is to be in parasympathetic. Then all of a sudden we get pissed off in the car, there's a driver, we are late for work, we forgot our lunch, you know, all these little fires keep going off. And I have a theory that a lot of us, you know, and it's also trend worthy right now. It's like this nervous system dysregulation, right? We're already dysregulated, dysregulated going out into the world in this dysregulation. So things that would seem like little triggers that we shouldn't, we should not sweat, the small stuff are like big things to us. It just sets us over the edge. Do you agree?

100%.

Yeah.

And it has a lot to do with the fact that there's a concept called allostatic load. Where we have almost a cup is a great analogy for this. I've got a glass of water in front of me. When the water is reaching near the top of that glass, we're close to a point of overflow, Right? What this means is the cup can only handle a certain amount of water in the same way our bodies can only handle a certain amount of stress, positive and negative. But stress capacity is only so much. And there's things we can do to make the glass a little bit bigger. There's things we can do to decrease the amount of water in that glass. But when it's at the brim or it's close to it, even the smallest drip of water that pops in, somebody cutting you off on the road, can be enough to throw it over and cause the glass to leak over. Right? The water to leak over the edge of the glass. That's exactly the type of situation where we're sitting in this nearly full capacity level to begin with. And then these little drips, these little excess annoyances of day to day stressors that we want to try to avoid, lead to a complete dysregulation, completely throwing us off of our game. And so those are the daily stressors that affect us. The question we have to ask then is, what's causing the cup to fill up in the first place? Why is the cup almost full to the brim to begin with? The answer to that is we have to look at other stressors that we've been exposed to that we're not fully conscious of. And this comes down to this concept of stress is not simply the day to day challenges that we're experiencing and not just the thing that we now, on this Instagram world that we live in, think of as stress. That's not it. There are stressors that we've been exposed to from a psychological perspective in our childhood. Right? These are childhood traumas. These are if you've ever been the victim of a crime, if you've gone through a major loss of a family member or somebody that was a difficult life event, that's a major stressor that will fill the cup very quickly, very rapid filling of that cup. We Also have physical stressors. You mentioned posture. How many people are sitting in a perfect postural position most of the time? How many people are physically active to the level that they should be on a day to day basis? How many people are getting close to their 10,000 steps or getting in their 30 to 40 minutes of weight training three times a week? Most people aren't. We're living a sedentary life and that's something that we need to be really conscious of because sedentary life is a major stressor. On the other side, there's people that overdo it, right? Athletes now have learned that recovery post performance is so important because if they overdo it. I was listening to Gary Roberts, a former NHL star, which you know because you're Canadian. So Gary Roberts used to talk about he was excited to go and play in Tampa Bay so that he could go golfing on his off days. And he realized that when he went golfing he wasn't recovering well and so his performance would decrease game after game. But when he took that time off, he didn't realize. He thought golf was, you know, this is a recovery thing. After a game of hockey, of course you would think so.

So much more peaceful.

But in fact, you're still physically active. And so you've learned now that we need time to recover. We need to go into a state where we calm everything down and actually allow our body to bounce back. And so physical stress of too much can be a major issue as well. So we've got physical stress, we've got the psychological stress, we've got the daily stress, which we talked about. And one of the big ones and something that we're now going to be talking a lot about and is out there is the biochemical stress. So biochemical stress in a negative way can be that we're experiencing excess levels of toxins, excess levels of inflammatory triggers. These major things that are dripping and causing the biochemical dysfunction to occur within our body. The presence of lipopolysaccharide because we have a dysbiotic microbiome, right? The presence of, you know, all of the chemicals that are in and around us, all these forever chemicals that are making their ways into our bodies. These are all around us as negative biochemical stressors. On the other side of this, we have these biochemical stressors of not having enough of the good things that our body needs to be functional at a high level. These are the macronutrients at a good level. Are you getting enough protein? Are you getting good quality fats? What's happening with those macros? What about the micronutrients? Do you have enough B vitamins making their way in? What's happening with the rest of those vitamins? Right. Are we getting in all of the tools that our body, that our cells need in order to be resilient, in order to bounce back and rebuild? Most people aren't. So we have these four different areas of stress that are causing that cup to fill up little bit at a time. And in certain situations, a lot at a time, those major stressors will help to fill that cup more readily. What we need to learn to do is to build patterns, build methods for us to lower the amount of water in that cup on a regular basis. And this is where our daily practices, our lifestyle practices that help us overcome stress, that are our self care routines, that's where those work out. Because they're going to lower the amount of water in that cup easily and quickly. And if we get really good at them, they will do it really rapidly.

This is so fascinating because, you know, a lot of arrows point to the mismatch for human physiology. Living in our modern world, right? There's so many gifts of living in today's world. We're living longer, we have access to a lot of things, but there's so many things that it seems throw off the homeostasis of our body to be in balance and in flow and with some fascinating. And like I applaud you for vagus nerve, like for you to go to this. What if we started with the vagus nerve, like if you think about root cause and if we think about inflammation, if the vagus nerve is telling us that you are inflamed, start with that, right? By deduction, look at what is causing the inflammation. And before we get to like how we can measure that, I want to go back to one point that you brought up. You know, a lot of us, the cup is already, you know, filling up since we were kids, right? So for me as a kid, I was an anxious kid. I remember having a stomachache every single day, driving to school. It's just in a stressful household, nothing bad happened. But I just remember being a very anxious kid. And now as an adult I'm like, oh, okay. That really explains a lot around, like why my cup is so full. So thank you for that. And the other part of that is, you know, for our children, you and I have kids who are around the same age. Being born in today's moder. Are they set up at a disadvantage, would you feel?

I think there's ways to look at it as a disadvantage, but also ways to look at it in advantageous fashion. Right. We, you're an 80s baby. 70s, 80s babies. I think we had it a little bit differently because we know how to use technology, but we also know what it's like to not have tech.

Yeah. We're the last generation to remember that.

Right, right. And what that means is we know what it means to physically disconnect from tech. The disadvantage for kids that are born over the last 20, 30 years is that they don't know a world without it. And so they feel incredibly disconnected when they're not on their devices or they're not with their technology. And I think it's on us parents to start to teach them how to disconnect really effectively. So something I love doing with my kids. I have two daughters, they're seven and three, you know, and for me, I love going camping with them. I love taking them on bike rides. I love going and experiencing nature sans technology with them and showing them that it's okay to be bored. My 7 year old hates being bored. She says, I'm bored. What can I do? And I say, go get your coloring book, go outside and hit a baseball around or do something with your friends. Go experience that. I think the disadvantage is they don't know it, but the advantage is we know that those moments are so powerful. And as parents, it's on us to try to instill those, those moments into them going forward. Because the, the children that are given those opportunities to learn how to exist without technology, I think are going to thrive down the road.

I love that you said that. My son hates being bored. And sometimes at night what I'm trying to do is like leading with intention. Like, what do you want to dream about tonight so that we can just get into this Right. Brain creativity zone where he practices using his imagination. Because, like, it's not very often that we're setting up forts in the house and putting on costumes and putting on plays. As much as I would love to.

Do that, I don't know about your house. I have forts happening every weekend.

Yeah. And like we're out in nature all the time. That's our thing. But I think that if we engage in that type of conversation to get people to get our children just using that creativity side of things, it just helps them unplug.

And it's funny you brought this up. One of the best ways to turn on the vagus nerve, and it's actually the last chapter of my book is Creative pursuits.

Yes.

Right. It's turning on this ability to use your imagination to do something or to build something or to create something. And that creative pursuit is so powerful because you cannot be creative when you don't feel safe.

You got it.

And when you implement these creative moments with your kids, they instinctually feel safe in those moments, and they'll fall back on those later when they get into lives of greater levels of stress down the road. These are going to be the tools that they then utilize to ground themselves, to get themselves back into that feeling of safety. We need to teach those things now. I love that you're doing this already. What do you want to dream about? What an amazing concept. What a great tool.

Yeah. If anyone listening? If you have a kid who might be a little anxious or just a little sensitive like my son, you know, last night it was. We were going to become birds with, like, Technicolor coats that could eat on chocolate marshmallows and just like something completely outrageous. But even for me, it instantly puts a smile on your face. And I could feel my nervous system shift at the end of the day. Right. Which is so powerful.

That's exactly right.

So intuitively then, is there a way for us to tell, you know, when I look at inflammation with my clients, I need to look at blood labs, biomarkers. I'm looking at their cortisol levels through saliva test or a stool test, intuitively, and of course, using data. How are you checking for vagal nerve inflammation?

I look for the inflammatory triggers in the exact same way that you do. I think functional lab testing, understanding what's happening with the microbiome, understanding what's happening with the hormonal pathways. Right. Is there adrenal fatigue or is your cortisol through the roof? What's going on there? The blood markers are so powerful. All of these go back to this concept of what is inflammation in the first place? Inflammation is not a diagnosis. Inflammation is not a disease. It's been misnamed. Inflammation is a process, and it's a good process when it occurs in small amounts and in acute moments. But it needs to be controlled. We can't go into excessive levels or long term uncontrolled bouts of inflammation. What that then leads to is chronic disease. So what I'm looking for when I'm talking about vagus nerve is I'm looking at how effective is your body in shutting down the inflammatory process? How good are you at being able to push the brakes? Because the inflammation is the accelerator. The vagus nerve is the Brakes to that inflammatory process.

Wow.

That's what I'm always looking at. So when I'm looking at markers now and we have wearable technology, which I think is so powerful and something that we can utilize on a day to day basis to create such massive, profound change in people's lives. If nothing else, it's an empowerment tool to tell you your HRV is low or you're not doing so well on your readiness score or whatever the algorithm that your chosen wearable device is providing.

Got it too.

I love having that feedback. I love knowing that I'm getting close to my goal of 10,000 steps. I love knowing that my heart rate at night was 58. Right. Or 52 or whatever it is. I know. I love seeing that recovery occur. And I'm not simply looking at hrv. That said, we'll get into what HRV is and I think it's probably the most important biomarker that we have on wearable technology to understand the balance of the autonomic nervous system, the vagus nerve, specifically, HRV is king. But there's so many other markers that we can utilize that it doesn't cost a ton of money to have a wearable device that helps to provide that feedback and that empowerment to say, I'm going to strive for better today, period.

Yeah, it's, you know, as you're speaking, I had mold exposure two years ago and I didn't know it until I did a fasting protocol and I got sick. But my HRV was tanking. Like it got down to the 30s and I had no idea what was going on. But using it was my OURA ring that gave me the greatest data. And then again, through hormonal shifts, I noticed my HRV completely shifts once again. And I'm going to be totally honest, as somebody who is a type of. I sometimes really enjoy being in that overdrive state. And you know, coming from my old life in the corporate world, I think I got used to living in that sympathetic state to the point where it felt good, like I was accomplished, I was doing more, I was moving in the right direction. And then I would burn out. Right. And like, no more of that burning out. So I'm able to catch myself now. But boy, does it feel good living there. Sometimes when I do spend too much time there, and this might resonate also with listeners, the amount of time that it takes you to relax. So how often have you been on vacation? You're like, oh my God, you know, day seven, gotta go home. I just relaxed today, right I had a.

Just a quick story because I think it really resonates. I went on a cruise with my wife. This was like on our. Right after our first anniversary and this was our first real vacation. I bought a chiropractic clinic right after we got married, like three weeks. So there wasn't really a moment to chill out. And we had booked a cruise in the Caribbean. This was a great opportunity for us to simply unplug. And our flight was the day of the cruise taking off. And we're coming from Toronto. There was snow and it took an hour and a half for them to de ice the plane. And I was stressing out because if we don't get on that cruise, we're not getting on that cruise. We don't have anywhere to stay. We like. It just wasn't an option. And I remember we barely made it. We got on the cruise. I think it was 45 minutes before the time hit. And it took me four days to de stress from that couple of hours of stress of not being or potentially not getting onto the cruise. So that is a real thing. How quickly are you able to rebound? How slow or how fast do you rebound? And that is a sign of resilience. And resilience. This is the entire concept of what the vagus nerve truly does. It creates the ability to bounce back. I'm a bit of a linguistic nerd. From time to time. The word health comes from the root word whole. To become whole again once again. Right. To create health is to become whole once again. It's kind of a funny misnomer when we talk about holistic health because we're talking. Talking about becoming whole. Holy. Which is really funny. But becoming whole or becoming one again, what that comes down to is how quickly can you bounce back? What is your resilience? Are you able to recover from the breakdown that occurred due to whatever that stressor was? That's what the vagus nerve sends signals out to the immune system to do. So what's really unique about the vagus nerve is its connections to every single organ that I've mentioned earlier. Those connections are not connecting to the organ only they're connecting to the immune system cells that are present in each of those organs. It's gathering the information from those organs. 80% of the information on this nerve is coming up to the brain to tell the brain what's happening. And then 15% of the information comes down to those immune system cells present in those organs, telling them it's time to rebound, it's time to bounce back. It's time to rebuild from the breakdown that occurred due to the stress. The job of the vagus nerve is to make you whole again. It is the pathway to health.

What a miracle. We're walking around with this wisdom within our bodies that is designed to tell us when we are not who whole, and yet we ignore our symptoms and continue to push in the opposite direction. Right. We'll do things that are harder to try to come back in, or we'll biohack to come back. And I think this is where ancient wisdom, they knew before they could study any 5,000 years ago with practices like yoga and meditation and qigong and gosh, acupuncture even. Right. Like when I think back to yoga practices, there's something really specific with the lineage that I grew up with, the Shivananda style of yoga. Because after each asana, so each pose, you are putting your body into a stressful situation. You're holding it, you have to deal with the thoughts that come up. I'm not doing it right. This is hard. My muscles are burning. But after every pose, you go into Shavasana, into corpse pose. So it's not going through a 90 minute class. Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Then relax. Oh, my God. Thank God, we're done. It's pressure release, pressure restore. Like that's magic. I would say, like they knew about the vagus nerve and its impact. It's training on the mat 100%.

And even something so simple as humming, the vibration sense of the sound Om, that creation of the vibration that occurs at the laryngeal muscles and around the vocal cords. That om vibration is the vibration that stimulates the vagus nerve. They found this, they figured this out and they utilize this tool, something so simple, to calm us down, to bring us back to source, to bring us back to a sense of calm, to help with that restorative process. Something so simple as simply humming at this particular frequency with this particular sound creates that opportunity for your body.

I've never even thought of this with the ashram. Also, whenever we go into 30 minutes of meditation in the morning and at night, we start by chanting om 10 times. And I always thought it was the Swami trying to bring everyone's attention in, but there's actual strategy around that.

Yeah, it's a vagus nerve activation strategy. And in combination, it's controlling your breath while you're humming om, you're exhaling the entire time you're taking a breath in. And you're doing that for a long, extended period of time. What's really cool is our breath actually is the tool that we utilize to push the accelerator and the brakes. So when we breathe in, we're pushing the accelerator, we're going on to the sympathetic fight or flight state, right? You can imagine somebody cuts you off in traffic. The first thing you do, you go, right? Or you hear a loud, startling sound. You go. You take this quick breath in. What happens with that is your heart rate actually increases. Your heartbeats get closer together. Then when we exhale, the heartbeats actually separate. And what that separation creates is variability between the beats of the heart in terms of the number of milliseconds. If we exhale for longer, what we're doing is we're pushing the brakes with the exhale. We're turning on the vagus nerve during that exhalation time. So inhale is fight or flight. Exhale is rest, digest, and recover. Now, if we pair an exhale with a humming sound in combination, imagine just how powerful the vagus nerve activation is during that moment. Om is one of those tools. Gregorian chanting is one of these tools. Singing, humming. There's. Every religious denomination has some form of vocalization. Humming, chanting, singing hymns, some form of creating this vocalization in this long exhale that is actually meant to calm the body down, to bring you back to rest, digest, and recover state.

Incredible. Something we can all do every single day. So we'll go back to these modalities, and thank you for bringing this back to hrv. You know, what are the numbers that somebody should be looking for with hrv? What's optimal, what's not?

There is a very important thing to note when it comes to hrv, and everybody is entirely different. There is not a goal number that we should strive. This is the one thing, like with heart rate, you have a goal. You want to be between 50 and 65 for a general, healthy person, right? For breath rate, you want to be in that 10 to 13 breaths per minute. With heart rate variability, there is not a number because there are too many variables that need to be taken into account. And genetics is a huge piece to that puzzle. So the way that I like to look at this, I have a lot of my clients utilize wearable tech, wearable devices. The HRV that I strive for them to hit is better than yesterday. Can I, over time, increase my average hrv? Can I try to get my HRV slightly higher tomorrow than I did today? The goal is better than yesterday. That's the number for hrv. That's what you want to strive to hit.

I work with a Lot of marathoners. And I'll say the days that their HRV is higher is the day to go for it 100%. Right.

Because their ability to bounce back is way better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's incredible news because there's no more goals to achieve. Just notice when it's going up or going down.

Exactly. It's trend data entirely. HRV is purely based on trends, based on where you start and when you feel really good, that HRV should be as close to the goal as possible. And when you feel terrible, you'll notice it because your HRV will dip accordingly. So know what the trend is. I think that's a really powerful takeaway for anybody listening. There is no number you have to hit.

Have you noticed if you're on screens before going to bed, your HRV will drop?

All the time.

All the time.

Same every single time.

If I eat out too late or eat too close to bed, guaranteed tanks. If I ever have alcohol, which I stop doing because I just. It's not worth it anymore from HIV to take so much.

Totally. Alcohol is one of the worst.

Yeah. Okay. There you go. So what I'm hearing you say, then, like your HRV or. Sorry, your. Your vagus nerve connected from your brain. It's connected to the brain, to the heart center, to the gut microbiome. Right? These like vital organs. So let's talk about digestion first. Vagus nerve and digestion. How is it related to gut health?

It's the. The vagus nerve is how we know what's going on in our gut. Okay. So our consciousness, as we've kind of determined it to be, comes from our brain, but we have a second brain in our gut. How do these two brains talk to one another? How do we communicate between our gut and our central nervous system, brain? The answer is the vagus nerve. The vast majority of information that comes from the microbiome. The hundred trillion bacteria that are living in your large intestine, helping to digest your food, helping to break down your macronutrients, helping to get those nutrients across into your portal system and get it into your bloodstream and get those things through the resilience of your gut lining, the epithelial lining in your gut, the peristaltic motion of the intestine, small and large, all of that is directly connected through the vagus nerve. When the vagus nerve is dysfunctional, we result in situations like gastroparesis, where we don't have a stretch reflex in our stomach, and so we don't have a pumping Result. And so we get into this paralysis of the stomach muscles situation. We get into a situation of a lack of migrating motor complex or a lack of peristaltic motion. So food doesn't make its way through the entirety of the intestinal tract.

Effectively your transit time would be affected.

Your transit time is entirely affected. And so having an optimal bowel transit time, something that I talked about in the book, will tell you whether this is working effectively or not. So it's with regards to how the vagus nerve is intrinsically linked to the gut. It is entirely linked to everything, microbiome, motion patterns and just overall resilience of your gut to handle the insults that will come through. Because we're going to eat foods or we're going to have microbiome dysbiotic moments. Yeah, that's bound to happen. Can you bounce back from that? That's the determining factor and that is what we're going to then be able to determine or say our vagus nerve is strong or not. How quickly can we bounce back?

This is so key because especially now because of, you know, social media and it's incredible that functional medicine is trending but with that is coming a lot of products to try and use, a lot of diets to go on a way of eating that for a lot of people seems completely unsustainable. So can you, or would you say then that if you want to heal your gut and your digestion, one of the first places that you should start, obviously take away the bad and the things that are causing inflammation, but start with the vagus nerve.

I think it's the easiest way to have a big win without really potentially causing some, some challenge or creating such a difficult situation that it's hard to get out of. Right. Like we see all these dietary based trends. It's been happening since the first book on any diet was produced. We've seen sugar be good and sugar is bad and carnivore is good and vegan is bad. And it like there isn't a perfect diet that's out there. That's right for 8 billion, 9 billion people on the planet there isn't. What we do know is that breathing effectively, what we do know is that humming, chanting, spending time in nature, getting your vagus nerve working is across the board the most important thing that everybody can do. I think that's a perfect place to start.

Well, it's going back to safety 100%. So in Ayurveda, when we talk about optimizing digestion, we're sitting down, we're likely outside in nature. We're sitting in community, there's no stressful distractions. We're not eating in the car, we're not eating while scrolling, we're not eating while working. If the vagus nerve feels safe, the gut can relax. The gut can cue all the right enzymes and you know, digestive enzymes in order for you to take in the food. It's also sending a communication to your brain, right? If it's that two way communication stream, which means that you're setting the stage for optimal digestion.

That's exactly right.

So you have to set the stage first.

That's exactly right. And I think it's so overlooked. We look at food because food creates a dopamine reaction. We almost have this. It's weird to say this, but there's a sexiness factor around the type of diet that you have or the type of food that you're eating. Right. And it's not necessarily sexy to breathe effectively, but those things that we do that keep us grounded, that keep us rooted, those basic boring things that supposed to do every day, those are the things that are the game changers when we do them regularly and we're often out of balance because we're not doing those things regularly.

I think that's also ancient wisdom, right? You know, for a lot of us who come from religious or spiritual backgrounds, I know at the ashram it's very common, we do a chant first. We bless the food, we take a moment to take in the colors and the smells and the aroma to just like appreciate. Going into gratitude that I'm sure brings vagal tone 100% right.

Gratitude shows safety, right? When we're grateful for something, we feel safe in its presence. We feel that it is nourishing us, it's keeping us safe that creates this opportunity for us to then be in that state of rest and digest and recover. That digest function is so powerful, it's so important. We're not going to be able to pull good nutrients from good food food if we're not in a state where we can digest it effectively to begin with. So how clean your diet is if you're not breathing, if you're not calm, if you're not humming, chanting, gargling, singing, doing something that gets you into a state where you're able to then digest the food, you're not going to get the benefit of those nutrients effectively.

I love that you said that. This is the first time where I've never worked with so many people who on paper are doing all of the right things. But when I talk to them about their stress, their worry, their anxiety, those are all big red flags. And of course, those modalities are not going to work. Genius. Okay? So stop and breathe before you eat, please.

100%.

Now let's move up to the heart. So the vagal nerve was never even mentioned at the time of my heart surgeries. Now, this was 20 years ago. But I just, like, I'm so curious now, looking back, and had my doctors had taught me how to get into a certain state, how to open up around the stresses and the sadness and the emotional things that were happening in my life, because I know after I went to the ashram to heal, my heart palpitations stopped. And I'll just throw this out kind of as a disclaimer. So I get reached out to people by people every single day. What do I do about my heart palpitations? You had heart palpitations? Should I have the surgery? Should I go for the ablation? Every person's different. I think the biology of your heart really matters. The point is, find a doctor who's your partner in uncovering the root cause. But how is the heart associated with vagal tone?

It's such a strong link. And what's really interesting is the link actually is also intertwined with the gut. There is a gut brain, heart connection that is almost this triad of we've got the gut is where the nourishment comes from, the brain is where it's analyzed, and the heart is where it then goes through.

Beautiful.

The heart is this wonderful, powerful, constantly functioning piece of architecture inside of us. And I think let's give a moment to forgive the doctors because they probably just weren't taught what to do. And that's commentary on our medical system, which is not today's episode at all.

Yeah, you'll come back.

What I want to say is now that we have this information, now that we are able to go back to this wisdom, let's start looking at what are the things that we can do, what are the challenges that we can look at from a different perspective to create a positive shift in our heart? Heart function comes down to looking at your heartbeat and your heart rate variability. Hrv. Right. So your heartbeat is number beats per minute. If that's elevated, that's telling us that we have dysfunction. If it's. If we're seeing that there's some sort of palpitation type of issue, like an atrial fibrillation or whatnot. These situations are a sign that there's disconnection that has occurred. And you almost want to look for other areas of disconnection in your life that are causing that stress to occur. Where else do you feel disconnected? Where else do you feel these challenges? I have a story about this. I have a client out of Minnesota who has been my client for many years. And her health situation became significantly worse, obviously, following the death of her son. She lost her son in a car accident. It was a very unexpected, very challenging time for her, for her family. She had two other children, and she blamed herself for this challenge, for this situation. She thought that she should have been there as the mother to ensure that this situation did not occur. And it happened now, I believe, 13 years ago. And so for the last 13 years, on the anniversary of her child's passing, she had palpitations occurring, but she did not realize that that was associated. It was one of her doctors that said, hey, isn't this the month or the anniversary month of your son's passing? And she. That was the moment where this. This realization of the disconnection occurred, that this was the source of the stress that created that palpitation that she had to deal with. We started working on her gut, we started working on her metabolism, we started working on her vagus nerve. And this past year, she sent me a huge note, and she said, this is the first year since his passing that she did not have palpitations because we've been working on vagus nerve. Getting the vagus nerve working correctly to the point where that she said the sadness was still there, the emotion was still there, but plainly written out in this. She said, I finally feel like my body is healing. That was the biggest moment for me. I have goosebumps telling the story because those moments, those instances where we're able to uncover this root cause of psychological stress that actually was a trigger for a physical symptom. And then being able to create this opportunity for repair and for closure in some sense allowed her body to go into a state where she was bouncing back. That was a huge moment for me. I remember that very, very distinctly.

So that's an incredible story. I'm so happy you shared it. Because the way that I see it is you basically were. It's like a forest, right? A fire that burns a forest down. Nature will rebuild herself, right? But I think as a human, when you go through something so traumatic, you don't know that you have the capability to build yourself back up again. And of course, there's always going to be sadness and pain, but if no one is Guiding you on how to get back to a base point, to cultivate an environment within you for things to come back on track, for you to heal. It's not going to happen for me. I would have continued to go down the route like, like doctors didn't know that I had a broken heart. I was sad all the time. I like lost my dad. He's still alive, but my parents were divorced. Like there's so many emotional things happening in my life. My siblings were gone. I felt isolated, I felt alone. I didn't have connection to anyone but me. Listening to media, I chose well. I gotta fix this. So to nourish my body or nourish my broken heart, I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna go on a hardcore diet. I went on the Atkins diet. I'm gonna work out harder. Started with 60 or 90 minutes at the gym. I'm going to be more restrictive. My girlfriend's called my house the house of free carb free, sugar free, this free, fun free. It was like brutal. Then I went to the ashram and all of a sudden it was safe for me to let go of my emotion. Me go on my yoga mat every day. Not only did I feel the physical release going into that restorative pose after every asana was like, oh, my body can finally relax. I can let go. I don't have to be like this anymore. So I think you really gave that woman her life back.

What's really interesting, and I love this concept of creating a stressor, experiencing a stressor, but then teaching your body how to recover from it, Giving your body the opportunity, the space to bounce back. What's really interesting is what exercise, what yoga, what these practices do is especially like, I like weight training and I'll go and I'll push for three sets of 10 reps of something, but between you stop and you give your body the opportunity to recover. That's what good stress is. Good stress is going into a situation that is stressful. But teaching your body to come out of it, teaching your body to bounce back effectively, that's what we need to start implementing into our day to day lives. That's what we need to start implementing into these moments of. I feel stressed, but let's take a moment, step back, shift our perspective ever so slightly. Right, the forest fire analogy, the forest has burned down. Oh no. Like, it's a terrible moment. But what we now have is a blank slate. And what can grow from that blank slate? Something so beautiful, so powerful when we shift our perspective. And this is Something that's really close to my heart. We had these sad forest fires in Jasper recently and a major area of the Jasper town burned down. And we know forest fires are happening all over the place. Have you ever noticed how quickly we as humans and nature recover? How quickly a forest grows back?

Absolutely.

Have you ever seen those pictures of a burnt down forest? But there's a beautiful green plant that's popping up from that and how quickly that occurs, that tells us resilience. That is what resilience is. How quickly can we bounce back? Because inevitably there's going to be these moments where we have challenge, where we have distress, where we go into a state of challenge. But can you bounce back? And if you believe that you can and you create the opportunity for your body to do so effectively, there's no limit to how quickly you're going to be able to bounce back.

I put a post up about this today. Like, what if as kids we knew that just like nature, our bodies were that resilient and as kids we knew that we had to talk to ourselves the right way, feed ourselves the right way, nourish ourselves in the right way and life was going to happen and we're going to fall off track, but we didn't have to give it so much meaning. And my God, just don't go and punish yourself. Right. And I think that in our minds it's so easy to just normalize the negativity that we're going through, the intensity that we're going through. We almost get stuck there. So this conversation is just so refreshing because it's just like it's affirming so much more. And I think that this is a wisdom that probably should have come alive a long time ago, but maybe now is when we need it more than ever.

I think it's been around for a long time.

Yeah.

It just hasn't been something that we've talked about over the last 10 or 20 years. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to rediscover that wisdom that's been there for so long. None of the practices that I'm going to talk about are only present today. Right. Like breathing has been there since the beginning of time. Right. Humming, chanting has been there since the beginning of humanity. We've, we've learned how to create health and to create resilience. These are practices that we should be doing on a day to day basis. And once we do, then whatever positive whole food style diet you choose, whatever source of creativity you choose to express, you're going to be able to do it fully, you're going to be able to absorb those nutrients entirely and share your wisdom and your expertise and your message with the world more effectively.

So let's put some of these together. We've talked about quite a few of them, but at the end of the book, you're really great at grouping some simple rituals that we can practice every single day. Right. So we talked about creativity, using our imagination, getting into that free play. What else?

One of my favorites, and this is. It's something that's kind of a cool biohacking thing right now, but it's temperature therapy.

Temperature therapy.

We are so accustomed to being in room temperature, right. We're comfortable in that 72 degrees house temperature. Whether it's, you know, freezing outside, snowing, or it's boiling outside, we like coming back to our comfortable temperatures. Humans did not live in this. We never adapted. Right. We've. This is a pretty recent situation that we've come into that we have access to temperature regulation, stressing ourselves ever so slightly with sauna therapy, with cold plunges. These are moments to go into that stress. The same as a yoga pose, but in a different way, really. Getting into an ice bath. Anybody who's done it knows it's an immediate stressor. Nobody likes getting into an ice bath, but you teach your body to breathe, to handle the stressor of that temperature being dysregulated, to allow your body to experience it, to realize it's not that bad and to pull yourself back.

But you go from thinking, my God, I'm going to die, to throwing your hands up and they're like, oh, my God, this is incredible.

And it's the best feeling you've ever had, right? So temperature therapy is one of these things that's really powerful. And it, I think, think what we need to do is realize that all of the therapeutic tools that we're going to be discussing, all of them come back to your breath. Because when you're in that cold plunge, what you actually need to do is teach your body to breathe in a parasympathetic exhale, focused, nasal focused manner. Right? Diaphragmatic nasal exhales. Those are the three things we want to do with our breath when we do those. And we teach ourselves to handle the stress of being in the cold really effectively. The cold doesn't become this major challenge anymore. We feel capable of handling the stressor and we feel safe.

Your body knows it's safe. Yeah.

Creating that sense of safety. Same with the sauna. I generally don't like being in heat. I don't like saunas. I don't like hot tubs. It's just not my thing. But I'll do it. And I'll teach myself to breathe effectively and learn how to positively impact my body accordingly.

All right, so play temperature therapy, which we should all be practicing because I think that that's going to help us out in the world afterwards. It's all right. The same aspect of using something that's training your physiology to adapt to the stress in your life. You can hum.

Humming is great anywhere. Yes.

Right. In your car. I hum Happy birthday to my kids before bed sometimes.

I love it.

Right. Or chanting. We talked about om.

I get my kids to buzz like a bee before we eat.

Oh, great.

Humming. Or it's kind of that same concept that we're going. We're calming ourselves. We're getting out of that fight or flight of running around outdoors and having our kids kind of be in this aggravated activated state and bring them back to a calm state. So that's a really cool tool. Kids love doing that. Just calms them right down. So that's a really good one. And there was one that was in my head, and it's just kind of lost for a moment. I'm sure it'll come back. Gargling is a huge one. I love gargling. My funny joke about this is my.

Dad gargles three days to gargle every single day. And I would see people at the ashram doing it. And I'll do it. You know, when we get sick, I'll pull out some salt water. Tell us about gargling.

Gargling is this really unique one because it's incorporating the pharyngeal muscles and the laryngeal muscles and the vocalization all in one. So I love the idea of a salt water warm gargle that occurs. And when we stimulate the gargle reflex, what we're doing is we are making sure that the water doesn't go into our lungs. We're not aspirating that water. We're vocalizing to create this exhale. You can't gargle and inhale at the same time. So it's an exhale that's prolonged, which is vaguely activating, which is pushing the brakes for a longer period of time. And we're also cleaning out our microbiome ever so slightly. Right. We do it when we feel sick. Why don't we just do it regularly? I used to laugh at my dad for doing this every day. I would Just be like, why are you doing this? But he's 76 and like healthy, thank God. But like it's this practice and whatever his other practices of self care are that have maintained his health for this long. And for me, that I think gargling is so cool. It's so unique. And if you do it effectively, when you gargle really hard to the point where you start tearing from your eyes, that's a direct sign that the electrical activity in your brain stem is strong enough to get your vagus nerve fully activated.

Wow.

The points where the vagus nerve comes in the nucleus tractus solitarius and the dorsal motor nucleus of vagus, where they come out, those two areas, they're located in a very specific area next to the nucleus that drives the lacrimal gland, which is the tearing gland. So when you gargle hard enough and you get that tearing that occurs, that tells us that the electrical activity is strong in the brainstem.

Fascinating. Okay, so you do this once a day? Twice a day.

I do it personally once a day, but I would recommend it, especially if you're having digestive issues. This is a huge one for gut issues. Gargling is so powerful.

Incredible. Okay, so we're all going to get some cups, steel cups. Keep them by your bathroom 100%. After you brush your teeth, scrape your tongue, hopefully. Yeah, you're going to start gargling.

Exactly.

Are you putting anything into the water?

I like salt, personally. Just a sea salt is a great option. Or a Himalayan is a great option. Anything that helps to break up the mucus at the back of the throat, I think that's a really great tool.

And I'm imagining so for people trying this new, they'll just practice a few rounds, see how long they can do it. You're eventually going to get to a point where you can cause the tear to happen, and then you're training yourself in how to do it effectively.

100% brilliant.

I love new tricks. All right, so we've talked a lot about these ancient practices, things that all of our ancestors have known. Talk to us a little bit about the science then, like what are you excited about with, you know, scientific knowledge or findings about the vagus nerve?

Today, when we finally realized that the vagus nerve was involved in the inflammatory reflex, in controlling that inflammation, this was a huge finding. Kevin Tracy at the Feinstein Institute was the one who kind of discovered this. It was his lab that determined this cholinergic anti inflammatory pathway that runs through the vagus nerve. And since then, they've been trying to figure out, how do we get the vagus nerve working better in situations where it's become incredibly dysfunctional? We're sitting in a state of disease or something along these lines. And the idea came about because it's a nerve. Why wouldn't we use electrical activity? Why wouldn't we use some sort of electrical stimulation to get that nerve to work better? And there's been some very positive things that have come over the last 20 years in this particular area. Number one, implantable devices were utilized. This actually goes back to a practice that occurred hundreds of years ago, carotid massage. When we massage the carotid artery, we're not massaging the carotid artery. We're not having an effect because the carotid artery is too strong to really fully have your thumb create a compression. We're within millimeters of the vagus nerve. We're physically stimulating the vagus nerve. So if we were to use electricity, would it do something similar? Ultimately, the answer is yes. So when they started implanting devices, they started to realize that they could control inflammatory reflex things like allergies. Right. Peanut allergies were able to be eliminated. Asthma, completely able to be eliminated by these tools of the asthmatic reflex of inflammatory reactivity. The histamine reaction that occurs in the. In the macrophages of the lungs, the alveolar macrophages. We're able to shut that down almost immediately when you stimulate this. So they said, okay, well, implanted devices are great. And they started utilizing it for certain conditions. Epilepsy was the first that's created this really understanding of when we stimulate, we don't get these epileptic seizures occurring. And so these devices are on for one minute every five minutes.

Right.

So every five minutes, it'll turn on for one minute and it'll shut off or prevent seizure activity from occurring in epileptic patients. What a unique tool. Well, retrospectively, they've gone and looked, and these people have better bone density.

Oh, my God. Why my brain is just firing here?

Because.

Hang on a second. So it just makes sense. When I first thought of this, like, why would I want to put something electric to my body? But we're made out of electricity. Your heart rate is electricity. So these studies that you're mentioning, what about autoimmune diseases, then?

It's very strongly linked. So there's the control of these inflammatory processes, these immune hyperactivations comes through the vagus nerve. And autoimmunity is one of those areas that needs to be studied. Further, there have been thousands of studies and what we're realizing is it's not the end all, be all, because it's not affecting the root cause, but it's allowing your body to recover more quickly or putting your body into a state where recovery is more possible.

Right.

So stimulation with autoimmune disease is a tool on the path, but we still need to eliminate the causes. We still need to address the gut, we still need to address the potential inflammatory biochemical triggers that are around us. We still need to address the psychological and the physical stressors. It can't just be a single. Stimulating the vagus nerve is the answer to everything. It's not vagus nerve stimulation. Vagus nerve activation is a tool to facilitate a shift from sympathetic fight or flight into a state where we can heal. We cannot heal when our foot is on the accelerator. We can only heal in a parasympathetic rest, digest and recover state.

I'm just thinking for the amount of people that are living out there with an autoimmune disease or even epilepsy, if their bodies are becoming accustomed to living in a sympathetic state outside of sitting to do breath work, which for some people, when you're in pain, sitting to breathe and meditate feels impossible. So this is something else to really cultivate the feeling of a safe body so that their body can at least step into an area where they can heal.

That's exactly what, that's exactly what my patient in Minnesota was experiencing was her body was finally capable of overcoming. Regardless of the fact that that stressor was still there and the memory was still there, the body was able to recover. The recovery can only occur. Healing, becoming whole again can only happen when you put your foot on the brakes.

Okay, so you're practicing a lot of these natural modalities every day. Are you using a device every day also?

Yeah. So over the last 10 or 15 years, non invasive vagus nerve stimulation has come into play. And this is a really interesting, wonderful tool, particularly for people that are suffering from mental health struggles, suffering from difficulty sleeping, suffering from gut dysfunction, if you have some sort of dysfunction that your body is dealing with on a chronic basis. I have found in my practice that nothing accelerates that healing process nearly as fast as implementing non invasive electrical vagus nerve stimulation, particularly on that cervical trunk. We know that auricular stimulation is powerful, it is a great tool, it takes longer, it's tough to get into a day to day life, but if you can stimulate your neck for two minutes twice a day and have powerful results Come from it. Why wouldn't you do that?

Absolutely.

That's so easy to plug into your day to day life. Yeah.

It's kind of like the one tool that I can see that, hey, if we're going to keep living at point, this pace in this life, then this is something that you should be doing daily.

I think it's such a powerful, such a unique and important thing to start bringing into our day to day lives.

Would you recommend people listening, like, where do they go? Is there. I'm sure there's so many out there and there's going to continue to be.

Disclaimer. I do speak on their behalf, but I love the Truvega device. I think it is the easiest one to use. It's the easiest one to travel with. I brought it with me here.

That's what you tried with me, right? At the conference?

Yes.

Okay. So when I saw you very briefly at this conference, I was on like sensorial overload. There's lots of people. It's just not my environment at all. And so you pulled me over and it was just like a couple minutes of breathing and we didn't even sit down. I was holding it up and I could feel just a little bit of something and it felt like a. Like I just took this exhale. I remember that. Yeah.

I'm not gonna lie. I stimulated before I came and sat here with you.

Genius.

I made sure to calm myself down to make sure that I can get into a state where I can communicate effectively. There's some really cool findings that have occurred over the last little while. From this we have improvements in cognitive function, the ability to learn more quickly. The Defense Language Learning Institute, and these are CIA operatives, were able to learn languages 25 to 40% faster when they stimulated.

Oh, my God.

Another study literally came out, I think a week ago, showing improvements in memory in Air Force pilots and ability to manage fatigue more effectively. It's not just about getting back to good. It's about becoming better now. Which is amazing because when this nerve is functioning effectively, I don't think there's truly a limit to how powerful it can be.

I just think that we are living at a time where we need all the help that we can get. And the reason why I think it's so powerful for you to share these stories also is because I think for a lot of my clients, they think for them to be able to go into a mindfulness practice. Oh, I just need to get Mona on a call. I just need to hear, you know, guided meditation. I need to sit. I need something else outside of me to get into a mindful state. It comes with a level of training. Like, even for me coming into this podcast, sometimes it takes me a while to drop out of my busy head and then into my body and in my heart. It takes practice, it takes training. Some days are easier than others. So for people listening who maybe don't have that connection to mindfulness yet, like, for people who haven't had the release on the yoga mat, for people who haven't had an amazing meditation session, for people who are like, yeah, this breathwork thing is really cool, but, like, I just don't get it yet. Right. Like, it's gonna happen. You have to keep practicing. But here's something else that you can incorporate for your body to shift into that parasympathetic state.

I think this is a great way to accelerate that process using electrical tools, using devices. And this is, for me, the, the game changer that has shown up over.

The last decade, because that state is our birthright. Yes, some stress is okay, but not this constant stress that we're dealing with every day.

Exactly.

Okay, I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. We're going to start to wrap things up with some rapid fire questions. But is there something that really excites you about the direction that you're going with? You're going to go speak tomorrow at a conference.

This conference in particular is on pediatrics. And we're seeing, obviously, children's health and pediatric health deteriorating at a level that has never occurred before in history. For me, I think it's supporting that next generation to ensure that they don't have the health struggles that they're currently aligned to have. What excites me is vagus nerve stimulation, vagus nerve practices, and they don't even need to be vagus nerve practices. These are lifestyle practices that happen to stimulate the vagus nerve or function through it. For me, this is where we need to go back to. We need to learn to be better humans, be more human. And what that means is getting into that rest, digest, recover state so that we can again be whole. And if we learned it when we were kids, it would be very easy for us. Right now. I want to make sure that my kids have this particular tool for their entire lives. This and how to manage money, those are the two things that I feel like they need to learn. But when you have this tool, the sky's the limit.

You got it? I really believe that each and every one of us, we are our own healer. We're capable of becoming that in alignment with medical intervention when we need it, but just always remembering that we are the healer. So for people listening, whether you have children at home in the same way that our dads were imprinting these things on us, practice these things with your kids or with your loved ones or with people at work or when you're standing at the water cooler at lunchtime, like, let's just normalize this, this so that people understand it's like as essential as going for a morning coffee. Right. Make it that important. All right. To close things off, some rapid fire questions. What are the most common mistakes or misconceptions that you're seeing women make with their health?

It's a really good question. The most common mistake that I think women make is that they stress about their health and that in itself is creating more of a stressed state. This concept of health anxiety, becoming anxious about not feeling healthy to begin with is actually very deteriorating. It's actually a very negative challenge to our health. I see that more in females than I do in my male patients. I think that's a really important thing to start to understand that when you stress about your health, you're causing deterioration or you're causing damage to your health.

Such a good one. If we're to live up to media, social media's expectations of what it means to be healthy. It's already stressful and exhausting. What is one way that women are making healing too complicated?

I think we're looking for that next right thing and forgetting about all the wisdom that we've had for thousands and thousands of years. And I think if we simply look back to these ancient wisdom practices and implement and create regularity in these practices, we're going to be able to go way further than worrying about the next diet, the next thing that, that can.

Help us if we merge the worlds together. Thank you for being a western trained medical doctor. Right. Or chiropractic doctor. Who's who's doing this? What's your favorite ancient healing remedy?

I love sitting by the water and breathing. Water is this very unique thing for me. I'll bike by the lake, I'll often stop, sit and do a 10 minute meditation at my halfway point just in front of the water and watching the water and watching how the water remains calm or follows a certain flow. How it's the Bruce Lee quote, right? Water adapts to the, the container in which it is. If it's in a vast, massive container, it becomes vast and huge. If it's given gravity to Flow with it flows with that gravity. It takes the shape of the container that it is. So it creates this level of adaptivity. For me, it's just go back, look at the water and understand that it is adapting to whatever situation it's placed in in the best possible way.

I love that. That's so much. If you had to pick something about modern medicine that's exciting you, what would it be?

I think this move towards bioelectric medicine, understanding that there are tools that are out there that are very powerful in creating positive shifts towards this healing state. Not just vagus nerve stimulation, but the use of electric medicine, I actually think is very exciting. And I think as AI comes in, we're going to learn the best ways to utilize these bioelectric medicine tools in creating optimal human health.

Very cool. What are three things that we can start doing right now to optimize our health?

Number one is learn to breathe effectively. I kind of pointed to the, the three things, but that breath needs to be nasal, diaphragmatic, longer exhales. Number one, the breath is absolutely key to all of this. Part of the reason for this is the diaphragm is not simply the muscle that separates the top and the bottom, the thorax, from the abdomen. When the diaphragm is contracting and relaxing and creating the vacuum above, it's actually creating a massaging motion below the abdomen creates this ebb and flow contractile response. When we have this diaphragmatic contractile response. And so learning to breathe diaphragmatically, allowing the belly to actually expand with the inhales. Such an important tool. So checking your breath, the hand on the chest, hand on the belly, ensuring that you're getting that belly breath occurring and checking in on that every so often. That is, number two is checking in, checking where your breath is, checking where your diaphragm is, ensuring that you're in this state more often than not, becoming aware of how you truly feel. And I think number three isn't a prescriptive tool, but rather, let's look at giving each person an opportunity to determine what helps them feel their absolute best. Individual medicine, individual health. What does it mean to you to be healthy today? It might be different tomorrow. There isn't a simple prescriptive tool to being healthy.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Listen to the things that we've mentioned today and see what feels really good for you. Some are going to give you more of like an immediate exhale. You're going to feel the shift, make that your thing. Totally not the things that are our things. Yeah. If you could leave our listeners with just one takeaway that you're most passionate about right now, what would it be?

I'm going to repeat it again and again and again. But it's the breath, the breath. Everything comes back to the breath. We have conscious control over our breath, and our body will never stop breathing automatically. It has to happen. And it's something that we have control over. And this is how we determine whether we're pushing the accelerator or pushing the brakes. Learn to breathe correctly, period.

Do you know, when my dad took me to my first yoga class, it wasn't an asana practice. It was a breathwork practice.

That's amazing.

Yoga.

That's amazing. Yoga is a breathwork practice.

You got it. I love this conversation so much. For the audience who wants to get in touch with you, where do they find you?

Follow me on Instagram. Dr. Nawaz Habib. I try to put up as much good content as I can as my schedule will allow. Look up the books. Activate your vagus nerve or upgrade your vagus nerve. Both are great options. No real starting point between the two. Whatever resonates. And look me up@healthupgraded.com healthupgraded.com we're going.

To link out your books. I highly recommend whatever you want, whatever you want to optimize in your life. Reading one of your books is going to help you in every single area. So thank you for that gift. And I just want to thank you as a human being and as a doctor for, like, just shedding light on the remarkable intelligence that, that our bodies have while being so keenly interested in how the world of, you know, medicine and technology can support us so that it's just like really putting a positive outlook on the potential for our health in the future. Doesn't have to be about doom and gloom. It doesn't have to be about it's going to get harder. We can really just have a positive outlook on what's to come. Thank you.