While working towards optimal gut health with many patients in the last decade, I realized one thing: it’s often not about the food, but the environment that the food goes into. I commonly see dysbiosis and overt gut symptoms downstream from trauma, chronic stress, and working or living in toxic environments. Why this connection? Look no further than the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve is one of 12 cranial nerves that controls mechanisms in the body that don’t require thought, such as breathing, digestion, and more. It directly connects the brain to the gut, amongst other organs, and is a perfect example of how your organ systems do not exist in silos. 

There is currently a lot of “healing the nervous system” talk on Instagram and TikTok, and a large part of this is improving vagal tone. If vagal tone is decreased, you may feel increased heart rate, short, shallow breathing, poor stress resilience, restlessness, and overt gut symptoms. If vagal tone is increased, you may feel that you have more ownership over inflammation and gut health, you can recover well from physical, mental or emotional stressors, and your default is slow, deep breathing. One way to track your current status or progress with vagal tone is looking into your heart rate variability via wearable technology. 

Improving your vagal tone can be a journey in itself, and methods range from simple and completely free to fancier and more expensive options. Like everything in life, find what is sustainable and works for you. 

Here is a pretty comprehensive list of methods to improve your vagal tone that I’ve seen:

• Yoga. For me personally, I noticed a very low vagal tone and all of the symptoms associated with it in college and grad school. In the middle of my dietetic internship, I decided to commit at least one hour a week to yoga amongst my very busy schedule and started to slowly notice deeper breathing and increased body awareness in my everyday life.
• Humming. This you could do on your own or could be a part of your yoga practice.
• Cold water exposure. This could be dunking your face into cold water in the morning, joining a new cold plunge/ sauna facility, or ending your shower with 30 seconds of cold water. 
• Breathwork. Look into online or in person breathwork classes. 
• Gargle. Look into doing this consistently twice a day. 
• Vagus nerve devices such as Palsetto 
• Laughter. An obviously free one that most of us don’t get enough of
• Time in nature. I often encourage clients to take Sundays for nature walks and change up the scenery. 

I encourage you to experiment with all of these to develop a toolbox to improve your vagal tone. 

If you would like to discuss your individual gut health further, simply fill out this application form and we will be in touch. During my free consultation, I deep dive into a “My Symptom Questionnaire” to take all of this to another level and really help you understand your body. All visits are telehealth and I do have insurance options.