A YouTube interview (Sep 22, 2020) between host Josh Trent and Amy Brannan about the vagus nerve’s role in stress regulation and a non‑invasive auricular stimulation device from Nuvana called the Zen. The speakers describe clinical and anecdotal observations of vagus nerve stimulation (including implanted VNS for epilepsy), the ear branch used for non‑invasive stimulation, safety considerations (left-ear focus), and potential acute and daily-use applications for stress management and wellness.
Chapters
The vagus nerve. The vagus nerve runs all the way from the brain. It connects through the ear, and then it innervates down the spine. It goes to literally every organ in the body. How did you even come across this work? You're an RN for 20 years. You met the founder of the product. Can you walk us through your discovery of you personally and also Dr. C's discovery of the vagus nerve and what it actually does for our stress?
Sure. That's a big question. Because in medicine, when you're trained clinically and formally to be a registered nurse, to be a physician, the vagus nerve is not focused on. For stress relief, for sleep, for anything like that. So 20 years ago, ish. When I was trained, I just knew that there was something about the vagus nerve. It was this giant nerve, and it was a communication pathway that was really about it. Now, most of my history in the hospital, that's all of my background in nursing has been in the hospital, in the ICU. And that's where I came across Dr. Cartledge, who is a cardiac surgeon and also a mechanical engineer, and he's invented numerous medical products.
Sounds like an overachiever.
High overachiever. And you talk about so stress, really intense personality. Go, go, go all the time. So he started. His brother, actually is also a physician, and his brother had experience with patients in his pain clinic with an auricular stimulation device, so like an electrical acupuncture on the ear. And it was doing wonders for pain. So that's really where the story starts is what's going on here. You know, it seems really weird. You put needles in your ear, and typically, traditional medical professionals don't really believe in acupuncture. It's got to be something deeper. So that's where the discovery of. It's the vagus nerve. So it started as really a physical medical thought. And then seeing as, you know, I'll Refer back to Dr. Cartlidge, you know, he considered that over time, he'd been reading papers about implanted devices about the vagus nerve. You know, they wrap around, literally, an incision is made in the neck, and this coil is wrapped around the vagus nerve in the neck, and this little pacemaker device is implanted to stimulate it. And that's for people with epileptic seizures that don't really respond to medicine. But he remembered seeing that those people had a profound effect that was lasting, that was a better mood and a better quality of life. So regardless of the seizure improvement, they actually felt better overall. So as Putting the pieces together, the aha moment came about that people really need this.
A big piece of that, too, is 2014, six years ago, the awareness was totally different than now. He was seeing a lot in the literature that was coming up where when people were having their vagus nerve stimulated, and by the way, we're gonna talk about this too, there's a very special way you stimulate it. It's not transcranial direct stimulation. It's not like you're literally going into the scalp. This is non invasive, which is really important to talk about. There's a huge body of research out there that transcranial direct stimulation, which is totally different than what we're talking about today, has some deleterious effects at times. Anytime you're breaking the skin, you're risking things. Right? So what I love about this device, and again, if you're just tuning in, we're talking with Amy Brannan. She's from a company out of South Florida, Nuvana, and they make this device called the Zen. This Zen goes into your ear, and it directly affects the way that your body has a relationship with stress. This is non invasive. Can you talk about how it can be so effective but without it being so non invasive? Because in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, this is a surgeon, this is a physician. He's used to going into the body to help people alleviate this. How does this work? By just going on the outside of the body versus inside.
So the vagus nerve, you described it perfectly. It starts at the brain stem, it travels through the chest, it reaches every major organ system in the body. It also happens to have a little branch that pops out of the ear. So not out of the skin.
It's just the left ear too. Right.
It's actually in both ears. There are two nerves that come off the brain stem on both sides. But the majority of the research out there is on the left because there's a theory that, well, the right side actually has more points of innervation to the heart. So that makes people nervous. But there have. There's a huge body of literature that tests both sides just to make sure it's safe, and it's proven to be safe. But because all the research is on the left, we all stay on the left. Right. We're all just trying to work together in science, but that's how you get to it without having to cut open the body or do anything crazy like that. It's literally just an electrical stimulation through the skin at the ear. And we do it with earbuds.
Let's say we had a moment during the day, maybe for all the moms out there. Like your kids are screaming, you're like, oh my God, someone please give me a break. Would this be something you could use for acute stress management or is this also just more for general wellness? Is it both? Like, how does that work as far as cycling this device and using the device on a day to day?
Right. Great. Super great question. So for acute situations, especially when people are really off balance. Right. That the stress level is through the roof. I always say I can feel my carotids. They just feel like they're gonna come right out of my neck.
Yeah.
So those moments, you actually will feel a more profound effect because you are so far in the sympathetic state that you getting the vagus nerve to engage even a little is palpable. You can feel yourself, you feel the wash come over you. Okay. So normally vagus nerve stimulation is pretty subtle. It's a lot like, you know, if you start with breathwork, if you start with vagus nerve stimulation, anything that is stimulating the vagus nerve, it starts off pretty subtle. As you, as the brain recognizes what that relaxation feels like, it's so much easier to get there and stay there for a longer period of time. And that's because the brain is neuroplastic. Right. So it's learning new things or remembering things. So I've seen many, many people that it's taken them two weeks before they can even appreciate what the effects are and be able to describe it. And I really, my theory is that they've never been relaxed before, they probably have never been there.
