Activating Your Vagus Nerve with Dr. Navaz Habib

Friends, and welcome to perfect practice. Today I have with me a dear friend, a colleague, and somebody who has been a big part of my life in practice and a big part of my life personally. I have Dr. Nawaz Habib Nawaz. Welcome. Thanks for joining me today.

It's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Well, I want to give people some context and would love to share kind of the vision and the mission that you have for helping people upgrade their health. You know, you're a functional medicine practitioner, and you've been doing this for many years. You've helped countless numbers of people, executives, entrepreneurs, athletes, help help them feel their absolute best. And now you've actually begun the process of, you know, blazing a new trail in the world, in the. In the functional medicine, and I would say functional neurology and really, you know, chiropractic world by helping people re. Establish a relationship with their vagus nerve. So lots of cool things you've been up to lately, and I'd love to bring people up to speed. And why don't you start by telling us what's new in your life?

Yeah, so I'll dig back a little bit because you mentioned functional medicine. Obviously you were the one that brought me into that realm. And it was my meeting with you, our wonderful chance encounter years ago, that led to many positive changes in my life overall, both in my personal health and in our ability to work together and support the health of many, many people all over the world. So you are a major piece to that puzzle for me and to that journey for me. So thank you for being a major piece to that.

Thank you. It's my honor.

So in 2019, I released a book called activate your vagus nerve. And that book was, at the time I was writing it, I was. I was under the impression that I knew a lot about the vagus nerve and was sharing information that people needed to hear. And I continued to hear that feedback from a lot of people that weren't particularly aware of the importance of the vagus nerve. Since that time, I have learned that I know very little about the vagus nerve. And I think what's really cool is it's a lot of wisdom understanding that you don't truly know anything. You. The more you think you know, the more you realize you don't. And for me, I'm. I'm learning more every single day, which is really quite exciting. And what I've been learning is that the vagus nerve, as we consciously think of it, or more commonly think of it, I guess is that it is a neural connection, it is a brain connection to the body, and that it controls things in the same way that other nerves do. But it is actually, and you mentioned functional neurology. And so I'm going to kind of get to that because I think what the vagus nerve is, is bridging the gap between functional medicine, functional neurology, or just understanding how the body functions overall and how the brain has a way to control and support how the immune system and inflammation functions within the body. And the vagus nerve is that pathway.

Hmm. Yeah, it's, it's such a great rabbit hole to go down and you know, excited because I know you've been, you've been diving down this rabbit hole for many years, even before actually writing the book. And of course the book is impetus to going further down. And then that's, you know, opened up a whole new world for you. So it's pretty cool to see, uh, how powerful this information is, how simple it can be to apply and, and put into action. Uh, what I love for, for you to answer perhaps is why do, why are people not getting as much stimulation in their vagus nerve, do you think, as they used to? You know, what, what, what's, what's happening that's causing the decrease in stimulation?

It's a great question, and it really does go down to how our lifestyles have changed over the last 40 to 50 years. We've gone through many revolutions, and the industrial revolution being one of them, the agricultural revolution being another one, and lastly the technological revolution. We've essentially gone from being outdoors farming or taking care of our own land, to indoors sitting and eating generally more processed food than what we used to eat over the last many years. What that essentially means to me is our bodies are in. We, we don't evolve in 40 years. Our bodies adapt to what we are capable of. A single lifetime is not enough to create evolutionary change. And we know that it takes millions of years to evolve in a certain way. But techno, our evolution and our, the changes that we've experienced over the last many years have happened relatively rapidly. And so our bodies haven't had the ability to evolve accordingly to create thriving bodies while we are under these new stressors, these new stressors of being less active, of being indoors and constantly comfortable, not living in areas where there is a little bit of stress, a little bit of pushing us in either direction. And what that's done is essentially create an opportunity for our bodies to be primed for an inflammatory response, slightly more so than we were 50, 60 years ago. And if we think of it this way, we've got two sides to how we kind of manage our inflammation within our body. And we've got two sides to how our bodily state is essentially dictated and that is controlled by what we call the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is going to send signals from the brain to the body and body to the brain as well, telling us as to what's going on outside with regards to like thermostat of inflammation, stressors, toxins, presence of nutrients or lack of nutrients, getting that information up to the brain. And then that brain is going to control and say, okay, we've got issues here, we're doing well. There's going to send attention to this particular area in this moment because we need to thrive, we need to be able to do better. And so it's going to shift our state in either a sympathetic direction or a parasympathetic direction. This is almost on a seesaw type of scenario. It's a little hyper simplified, but we'll keep it simple for the purpose of our conversation today. And that is the sympathetic side of the nervous system is fight or flight. It is going to react to stressors that are occurring acutely. Something that's come up right now that we need to take care of and it's a threat to our survival. We either are going to fight against the threat, we're sending blood flow to our muscles, we're sending blood flow to our legs so we can run away. We're narrowing our focus to understand where we need to go. And really interesting, our gaze actually plays a really important role in which state we're in. Something that we can talk about as well. With regards to the technological revolution. The other side of this is the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is what we generally know as the rest and digest system. I've added recovery or repair to that piece of the puzzle as well. Rest, digest and recovery is where we can go. On the opposite side of this or on the other side of the seesaw, if we're not under immediate threat, then ideally we're sending signals via, via the parasympathetic nervous system which is mediated by the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve. It's the only nerve in the body that doesn't go directly to a muscle and only have a single connection. It goes to essentially every single organ and sends a branch to every organ within the thorax and the abdomen. Every organ within our body gets signals from the vagus nerve directly. And then there's other pathways that indirectly we are able to send these signals out to the tissues that don't get direct signals, like the bone and the skin and visceral fat, et cetera. So signaling is going to be there, but it's that sympathetic, parasympathetic, autonomic nervous system balance that dictates where the blood flow is going to go and what state our body is in. And that's going to drive inflammation, depending on where we're at. And we can dig into that a little bit.

So the vagus nerve is different types of nerves, right? There's sensory nerves. The nerves ascend for pain and touch and cold and all those things. What type of information is the vagus nerve carrying?

Yeah, 80% of the information on vagus nerve, 81% is sensory information, but it's in a slightly different way. It's creating sensation from the skin of the ear, but that's the only sense of the five senses that we know of that goes through the vagus nerve. And that's only 1% of the information. Like I mentioned earlier, there's that kind of thermostat of what's going on inside the rest of the body, what's happening in the gut, what's happening in the liver, what's happening in the lungs and the heart and every other organ that's innervated by the vagus nerve. That information is being passed up through the vagus nerve to the brain. That. That makes up 80% of the information. This is what we call the afferent information from the body up to the brain. So the vast, vast majority of information is going up. It's a sensory type of nerve, but it's not sensory in the traditional five senses that we talk about.

Okay, good to know. And it's. It's like, it's really cool because the one thing I love about the vagus nerve is that it's kind of the holy grail that we've been looking for. Right. Imagine you could push one button and every cell, organ, tissue and system in your body heals simultaneously. It's almost too good to believe for people. And it's too good to believe because it's also so simple to address. And the simplicity of it, I think, is what eludes people or makes them maybe not take it as seriously as they possibly should. So there's so many ways to stimulate the vagus nerve. I would love for you to share what are some of the top recommendations or ways that you encourage people to stimulate their vagus nerve.

Yeah. So shifting our state to parasympathetic is literally what we need to be doing more often. We are in a state of sympathetic overdrive all the time. We're sitting here on our computer in little gaze, narrow gaze, for eight hours a day, or we're then staring at our cell phones for hours on end afterwards. Right. And we're, we're generally in, in a general public sense, not getting our gaze to be wider as we do would if we were farming or out in nature and going for a nice walk. So I'll just kind of allude to one of those quick, easy ways to shift your state is by shifting your gaze. Go outside, get off the computer, go for a walk, spend some time outdoors. It'll actually shift things a lot more than you realize. Your gaze does play a major role here. And, and so how you are staring at a screen is actually driving inflammation. It's driving you to that sympathetic state. The next area, and something that is basically the absolute kind of everything revolves around this with regards to your state is your breath. How are you breathing? Are you breathing effectively or are you breathing ineffectively? A really simple tool or task that I have my patients do is to put one hand on their chest and one hand on their belly. And I have them take a deep breath in and I'll ask them which hand is moving first. Is it the hand that's on your belly or is it the hand that's on your chest? Essentially, if you're going to take a full deep breath in, both your hands are going to move, but your belly should be moving first. That's a sign that you're breathing using your diaphragm. If you're using your diaphragm, then you're likely not in a state of stress where you're dealing with a fight or flight or some threat to your survival. You're calm, you're relaxed. This is why before people get on stage, they say, take a deep breath. Or if you're stressed out and you're in an emotional situation, somebody will say, take a deep breath. And that'll actually help you get into a calmer zone where you start to think a little bit more clearly. And that's actually shifting you to parasympathetic rest, digest, recover and think more clearly during that state. Breath really is the key to all of this. If we can help create a society that breathes better, will be a whole lot healthier. It's quite astonishing what you can do with something as simple as a breath.

Yeah. As you know, I'm a big, big fan of breathing mechanics. And, you know, the thing that you mentioned, just want to close that loop is I. I love. I love that really simple way of assessing if you're breathing correctly. It's a great place to check in for a lot of people and then bring awareness and consciousness. You know, we take 23,000 or so breaths per day. How many of them are conscious? How many of them do we have awareness of? Because with awareness, we can really shift our physiology. And you made a good distinction about breathing through your kind of intercostal muscles and shoulder muscles. Those are secondary and tertiary breathing muscles, which are often activated when we're in a fight or flight state, running away from, you know, something that's chasing us. So we're missing that deep, you know, corrective breath that takes us into that parasympathetic state, and we're activating muscles that stimulate a sympathetic response. So we're actually. Our breath is working against us. It's not even just neutral. It's. It's actually working against us.

That's exactly right. We get a funny email from somebody and we say, oh, my gosh. We take this short, shallow breath in our lungs, and we have these tight traps from being in poor posture for hours in the day. We're both standing right now, but most people are sitting at their desk for hours. Right. These are challenges that are going to drive a lot of that stress response and keep us in that sympathetic space.

I'm curious. You know, you bring up a really good point. I don't know if this has been studied, so not. I'm not trying to put you on the spot here, but I'm just curious as to whether standing or sitting. Which one is more. Which one creates a more sympathetic drive? Because I would assume that if you're standing, your body like you're in an anatomical position where you're positioned for fight or flight. Right. Whereas when you're sitting, I wonder which one is more parasympathetic inducing. Any thoughts on that?

I haven't seen studies. What I will say is that the best research shows that you shouldn't be in either position too long. So shifting between the two is really what's going to be key to being able to shift your state. Because postural dysfunction will occur whether you're sitting in that poor position for six hours at a time or standing for six hours at a time. That postural dysfunction, that creep that's occurring is Creating inflammation locally that that inflammation is going up via signals like the vagus nerve up through to the brain, saying, hey, there's stress, there's pain. There's a challenge going on here. Postural dysfunction is kind of a precursor to becoming more stressed or pushing you towards a more stressed state. So I would say that it's likely to be, and that's my hypothesis, likely to be best to shift between sitting and standing.

I think that's really sage advice. And that feels good. Right? It just kind of makes sense as well. Not. Not predominantly standing or predominantly sitting. Have a balance between the two. I think, like, you know, with the vagus nerve, there's many different ways to stimulate it. What are some of. One of. What are some of the key ways that people can stimulate it?

Yeah, I go through a bunch in the book, and I've learned many more since the basic ones all revolve around the breath and making the breath a little bit more difficult, a little bit more challenging, and teaching you to breathe through your diaphragm even when you're under stress. I'll allude to a couple here. Gargling, humming, deep breathing exercises, anything that helps activate the vocal cords. I mentioned there's 81% of the information that's going up to the brain via the vagus nerve. There is motor components to the vagus nerve as well. These are signals coming from the nuclei in the brainstem through the vagus nerve to different muscles. And those are the pharyngeal and laryngeal muscles. These are the muscles that maintain a patent good open airway in the back of the throat. And then the ones that go to the vocal cords, actually tensioning and lengthening the vocal cords to create pitch and tone. So that's the reason I can go really, really low or really, really high with my voice, because I have that pitch and tone that I'm able to do based on the tension the laryngeal muscles on the vagus nerve. I'm under a little bit of sinus issues, so my pitch isn't great right now. And that is a sign that my vagus nerve is not optimized at the moment.

So interesting. Like, so stimulating. I know one of the things that I heard is gargling with water in your mouth. And you want to get to the point where you're tearing up a little bit because the vagus nerve inserts right next to the brainstem, where we stimulate tears from. Is that correct?

Yes, that's absolutely right. So the lacrimal glands, where we have our tears come from are innervated by a different cranial nerve. We don't need to get into the numbers and stuff right now, but the brainstem, essentially, when it lights up, it can light up not just the nuclei of the vagus nerve when we're gargling, but other nuclei around. And so the tearing from your eyes is a sign that the electrical activity in your brainstem is strong enough when you're doing that gargling, that it is creating an electrical response that's far greater than simply vagus nerve activation. It's the whole brainstem is being essentially lit up. So gargling to the point of tearing is a very, very good sign that you are in that parasympathetic state or you're promoting that parasympathetic state. And the reason gargling is really good is gargling with water in particular is really good, is what it's doing is it's making breath a little bit more difficult. You've got essentially this water, the bolus that's sitting in your mouth, that's sitting in the back of your throat. You don't want to aspirate that. You don't want that water to go into your lungs. You don't want it to go to an area that it's not supposed to go. You want to be able to swallow that, but you're holding it in the back of your throat. So that holding pattern is activating the pharyngeal muscles. You're also then, as you're gargling, breathing out. And if you're doing so correctly and effectively, you're using your diaphragm to push out. And if you're audibly gargling, you're activating the laryngeal muscles, almost like you're humming. At the same time, these are also innervated by the vagus nerve. So the combination of those is making breathing slightly more difficult. But that is hermetic stress. It's adding just a slight bit of stress above what your normal breathing pattern should be, making you a little bit better at doing it under slight amounts of stress. We're creating resilience.

I love that. Great explanation. How about laughing? I know when people laugh a lot, they. They tear up. Is that the same mechanism that we're.

Very similar mechanism? Yes, exactly. And. And laughing is huge because laughing also has kind of a social aspect to it as well. And we know that social connectedness is heavily involved with overall health, with vagus nerve function. There are some really great research studies out There showing the HRV levels of those who spend time with friends, go out to comedy clubs that watch funny movies from time to time, and that laughter is actually a very positive drive for social connectedness, but also a very, very high correlation to HRV levels that are higher. Meaning IHRV is a direct sign of vagus nerve function that's more optimal. So there is a lot of good research showing that that is a huge piece of the puzzle. Laughter will have those same mechanistic patterns with laryngeal and pharyngeal muscle, but add the social piece on top.

Do you think that because we're sending more emails now than ever before and text messages now than ever before, do you think that has anything to do with decreased stimulation of the vagus nerve?

I think there's going to be multiple points to this. We're not meeting people nearly as often. You and I are doing this over zoom, where if technology wasn't as advanced as it was, I would have to drive to your place to do this with you in person. So technology is certainly playing a role. That said, there's circumstances outlying this as well. If you were in Los Angeles and I was in Toronto, me flying to meet you for a 30 minute conversation isn't exactly feasible. But we do have this social connectedness. There is a different piece when you're physically in the room with people. There's a whole immune system piece and a whole social and energetic piece that we can get into. And I think that's maybe outside of the realm of our conversation today. But I certainly believe that there is something to being in the room with somebody. Um, the first time we all saw somebody, after some of the lockdown stuff kind of ended, I still remember just having this like overcome feeling of joy and happiness and hugging people again. It was one of those moments. So I imagine there's, there's something there.

Yeah, I think, I think I've noticed that my HRV always spikes when I'm around people. Like just hanging out with friends, with family members, seeing people for the holidays, or just having a good, good old time with people that you care about. You know, I think is a great way to stimulate so many different systems in your body. Right. Not just the vagus nerve, but the immune system, you know, the endorphin system. Like everything gets stimulated with regards to, you know, the vagus nerve. I know there's a variety of different ways that we can stimulate our own vagus nerve and I know that there's devices that are also available to us now and you're working with a company that has developed a device to stimulate the vagus nerve. I'd love to switch gears and talk about that.

Yeah. So there's a really important distinction here and I utilize external tools to help support patients that need a little extra push on their vagus nerve. And these are people that are generally dealing with significant health dysfunction, whether it's pain dysfunction like a migraine or cluster headache. Gut dysfunction, because we know that there is innervation to the gut. So gastrointestinal type disorders, breathing disorders, challenges that are more autoimmune in nature. This is where we often can add a little extra support. It's not just enough to do the gargling and the gag reflex and the deep breathing exercises and jumping into a cold shower, which is another one we need to add on a little extra piece. There are devices that have been developed over many years in understanding how do we help modulate pain, how do we help reduce inflammation within all of those different organs? Because the effect of the vagus nerve going from the brainstem down to those organs is actually to reduce inflammation. It utilizes this pathway or it is the pathway of the cholinergic anti inflammatory pathway. Basically what we're able to drive is an anti inflammatory or lowering of inflammation response simply with the efferent pathway of the vagus nerve to send signals to the immune cells that are resident within every single one of our organs. These are called tissue resident macrophages. It'll also affect the mast cells, the histamine based eosinophils and basophils that are circulating. The acetylcholine that is sent out through the vagus nerve is going to down regulate the immune system to stay in a maintenance homeostasis, checking to see what's going on state rather than an attacking state. That's really important. What we can help do is drive that response to become stronger using something like electricity, electrically. What we can do is utilize a tool like this guy right here. This is one of my favorites, the Gamma core sapphire from a company called Electricore. And what this is an electrical vagus nerve specific stimulator. It's got two electrodes on the top here. What we do is we put a little bit of electrolyte gel, basically like an ultrasound type of gel or a conductive gel. We find our pulse anatomically. The pulse is right where we will find the vagus nerve. We've got our carotid artery, our jugular vein and our vagus nerve rolling together within the neck. If you just go to the Area where you might find your pulse right behind this big muscle, your sternocleidomastoid or right in front of it, excuse me, go and find your pulse. You've essentially found the exact area because those three tissues stay together and they're on both sides. It's the same right and left. What we do is we essentially turn this device on, put it right onto that spot, the top lead where you found your pulse, the bottom just below in front of the muscle, and you turn the device on and you increase the intensity of that stimulation within a two minute stimulation. We found that significant improvements in migraine pain, cluster headache pain, significant improvements in inflammatory control in many other conditions. There's research out there for things like Parkinson's and gastroparesis and IBS and ibd. What we're seeing is that not only are two minutes of stimulation on the neck enough to help in the acute scenarios where the inflammation is out of control, but it's actually phenomenal as a preventative tool to ensure that we don't even go down that path, even either again or ever. Which is really quite exciting about this. And so something like this is a great add on that we can use in our practices to help our patients take that next step when they're often either hitting a plateau or just haven't had those initial results that we're looking for because they're just in such dire straits. And we all have patients like this where the issues are just so severe, the inflammation levels are so high that making a couple of changes to their diet, adding a few supplements here and there, and they're just not having the response that we're looking for. Something like vagus nerve stimulation is often the missing piece to help get the inflammation level down and get it under control and get them moving in the right direction. This is something that I am a big proponent of is that missing link between what we can do lifestyle wise and actual symptomatic relief in the acute and preventative scenarios.

Well, I mean, you know, there's a, an embodiment of intelligence in the nerve, right? That the supplements are going to be like the hardware, the food is like the hardware, and it's going to provide obviously some information to the body, but it's how the body interacts with what is coming in, right? So if somebody's vagus nerve is not working adequately or not responding or functioning the way it should or optimized, at least, then they can't even fully digest a meal that they're having, right? So, you know, so changing Their diet may not provide the greatest full possible benefit to them because their system isn't even capable of fully digesting what they're eating. And so you could lose people that way, right? They're like, oh, I changed everything. And, and you know, I, I didn't feel any better. And it's because that vagus nerve may not have been activated or stimulated enough. And you know, as you're saying that for some people, the who are, who may have a chronic, chronic health challenge, that vagus nerve is going to be significantly compromised and they just can't hum enough or do enough to, you know, to get it to start back up. And the stimulation of that device is going to help them. So it kind of begs like a few questions come up. One, is it, is it painful or uncomfortable?

When it's on there entirely pain free, what's really cool about it is it's a very, very high frequency, very low voltage. And that's kind of what's ideal about a device like this is it's only affecting the A and B fibers. It's not affecting the C fibers, which are the pain fibers. So it's not going to create a muscle contraction that is tight and tense like a tens unit or a TENS unit would create, for example, or IFC would create. So it's not looking to increase muscle contraction. It's particularly focused on creating and electrical stimulation along particular fibers of the nerve only. So it's not painful at all.

Okay, good. So can you, can you feel it? Does it feel like something's happening?

Yeah, you'll feel a bit of stim around some of the more thin muscles in and around. And it's not directly related, but what we're kind of looking for to see that we've got to a good level of activation when we're increasing the intensity is actually a bit of a pull or a feeling of a pull on your lips. It's a slightly different muscle. It's not uncomfortable by any means. It just looks a little bit funny, almost like you're going to drool out that side. But that's about it. What we're essentially looking for is a mild stimulation over that area, but zero pain.

Okay. And then what, if any contraindications are there?

Yeah, if anybody's got an implanted metal device anywhere kind of above the shoulders, a pacemaker, cervical spine kind of implants or something along those lines, then we would not recommend utilizing this device that would be a contraindication metal. Obviously above the shoulders is kind of the, the key thing but outside of that, there's not a lot of contraindication at all.

Okay, and how young can anyone use this?

It hasn't been. What's the best way to say this? It hasn't been studied on children in research, but there are people like the inventor of the device who have utilized it on family and themselves with very, very positive results. The way essentially that he. And I'm sure it'll be fine with me kind of sharing this. His daughter was dealing with really, really bad eczema, which was driving her nuts. And she was about 8 or 9 years old. Her teachers were saying she's so distracted in class, she's quote, unquote, never going to amount to much because she just can't focus. And when he invented the device, he had her utilize it. And within a couple of months, her symptoms were entirely gone. And in fact, she became one of the brightest students in the class. And now, years later, she is on on Ivy League track and stims every day without fail. So anecdotally, age is. We're not certain as to where you could start, but in terms of medical device use, it has only been studied in adults.

What's your favorite case study? What's something that you've witnessed that has just kind of blown your mind?

I had a patient that was an elite athlete years ago, continues to have a bit of a physical job and as an elite athlete had many falls. She actually was a skater and many falls, meaning potential and confirmed concussions, tbis. And she also had some challenges with regards to weight when she was younger. So she actually had a bit of an eating disorder during her younger years, came to me with digestive issues, mild depression, and just overall inflammatory autoimmune type condition. With Hashimoto's diagnosed, we did a bit of work with regards to the traditional functional medicine approach where we did the testing, we checked to see what was going on in her gut check to see what was going on in the cells. And we made some changes and she noticed some results, but wasn't overwhelmingly positive. Very early on in our therapy, she actually had another fall and a concussion. So that actually slowed our ability to support her because she wasn't able to comply with everything early on. That was around the time that I became aware of this particular device and I had her start to utilize it during her concussion recovery. And what she noticed was when she started utilizing this device, this was the quickest she had ever rebounded from a head injury. She had about eight prior to this. So she's experienced it she's never rebounded as quickly. She started having improvements in her digestion really quickly. Her pain levels were significantly better. The key one for her was that her mood and her sleep shifted completely in a very, very positive direction. She no longer. She only realized she was depressed after coming out of the depression, which was really interesting. And that only happened when we were stimulating or about six weeks into her stimulation where everything kind of just shifted. She said there was like a light switch that went off. And she realized that everything that was happening was created by this heavily inflammatory state. And then after that six weeks, she started noticing all of the different positives. She was getting seven hours of sleep to eight hours of sleep every night without fail, comfortably. The pain from kind of the migraine suffering that she was going through secondary to the concussions and the TBIs was essentially null and void. It was gone. And it was just the quickest anybody has ever recovered. For me, that is probably my favorite case study of somebody that came out of something. And we tried other things and we just needed that extra puzzle piece. In addition to the dietary recommendations, in addition to the lifestyle recommendations, she started meditating because now she wasn't dealing with headache, pain and so spirituality and energetically she was able to build a stronger foundation. What was really cool was she has an OURA ring as well. Her HRV levels went up from the low 20s up to the mid-50s relatively quickly, which was quite cool.

Yeah. For anyone who wears an aura ring, you know how difficult it is to raise it 30 points. That's like no small feat. Especially that's, you know, over 100 improvement, right? So I love that, you know, brings me back to this kind of awareness and understanding and philosophy that I know you and I both have, which is like nothing can fix the body better than it can fix itself. And we're just, you know, learning about how amazing our bodies and how capable they are. And it's lovely that we can get a kind of a nudge from ancient wisdom, right? So this awareness that we have of how the body works and then, you know, bring it up to speed with modern day technology and stimulate it, you know, to get even better, faster results, to deal with the levels of stress that people are under these days, right. And stress, as we all know, comes in different forms, right? It's not just mental and emotional, sometimes it's environmental, sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's, you know, a whole bunch of other things that are going on in the world that are, you know, stressing us out. And you know, so I think we all need some sort of, you know, contingency plan to deal with the stressors that we're under. At an absolute starting point, people should stimulate their vagus nerve and then for a certain subset of that population who's maybe struggling with chronic health challenges, or maybe somebody who's seems like they're doing all the right things but not having that breakthrough that they expect that they should have based on the work that they're putting in, it could be something as simple as this. So how can people learn more about your services and how to connect with you if they're interested in learning more about this.

Yeah, if you're interested in learning more about the device, I recommend going to the website gammacore.com, g a m m a c o r e dot com. If you are interested in learning more about how I utilize it in practice, go to vagusnervebook.com or you can reach out to me on Instagram. That's probably the easiest way. My handle is Dr. Nawaz Habib and I can direct you into, if needed, booking time to chat about it a little bit more in your practice or for you personally if you're a patient.

Wonderful. Thank you. Devaz, really enjoyed our conversation today. Thanks for all the great work that you're doing.

Thank you.

I do want to mention the book one more time, if you may. Where can people get their hands on a copy?

Yeah, book is available everywhere called activate your vagus nerve. Amazon or your local bookstore should all have it. And yeah, it's been doing really well. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah, it's an easy read for a lot of people.

Amazing. Yeah, I see lots of great feedback on the book and. So excited. Actually I just saw somebody was reading it and. And she tagged you in. In, in the book and it was a picture of the forward.

Yeah. So that was your forward. That was. Right.

Yeah. So I was like, well, wow, what a full circle moment. I get to interview Navaz today and, and a lovely message that we got in the morning. So awesome. Matt, keep all the great work. We'll. We'll be sure to share your information in the show notes so people can connect with you. And is there anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap things up?

No, I think you hit the nail on the head. Nothing can heal our body better than we can heal it ourselves. We just need to give our bodies a chance to do that. I think setting a strong foundation, setting a strong baseline for our bodies to be able to go into that parasympathetic state more readily and giving it a kickstart when need be, whether it's electrical stimulation or acupuncture, potentially something like that can have a very profound effect. I think that's where true healing can occur, is only when we go into that parasympathetic state. And that's what the vagus nerve is all about.

Absolutely. Great point. Awesome, man. Well, have an awesome rest of your day and thank you all for tuning in today. Hope you got some value out of our conversation. And please be sure to check out Dr. Nawaz Habib. Learn more about the work that he's doing at his clinic, but also in helping people stimulate the vagus nerve and really activate that deep inner healer that lays sometimes dormant inside each and every one of us.