5 Ways Vagal Tone Affects Health ☝️
But first….what is vagal tone?
It’s the activity of the vagus nerve, which is the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) and counterbalances the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight).
You can think of it as the key to letting stress roll off your back.
The vagus nerve wanders from the brain to all the organs, branching off with thousands of nerve fibers. What’s really cool is the vagus nerve communicates in both directions—both to and from the brain!
Here are just 5 ways vagal tone affects health:
1️⃣ Heart Health
The vagus nerve directly innervates the heart, influencing heart rate and blood pressure. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a direct measurement of vagal tone, with a higher HRV indicating better vagal tone.
2️⃣ Metabolic Health
The vagus nerve communicates from the brain to the gut, liver, pancreas and then back again. It helps to regulate hunger, insulin, blood sugar, lipids, and inflammation. Studies have even linked vagal tone with diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity.
3️⃣ Mood
The vagus nerve is thought to affect mental health through mechanisms related to stress, the gut-brain axis, and inflammation. Vagal nerve stimulation has been researched in people struggling with depression.
4️⃣ Digestion
Gut hormones and neurotransmitters trigger nerve endings in the vagus nerve to send signals back to the brain. In turn, the vagus nerve regulates gut motility, secretions, and more. This is what we call the gut-brain axis!
5️⃣ Healthy Aging
Vagal tone may decrease with age, affecting everything from the heart to the gut to inflammation.
In functional medicine, we are all about looking deeper for the root cause and using the least invasive approaches for the most effective results. Vagal tone is not considered a “cause” of disease, but we are learning more and more about how it affects nearly every aspect of health. Plus, there are simple and free ways to improve vagal tone!
Like this post and follow for more on how to increase your vagal tone for better health.
References
Breit S, Kupferberg A, Rogler G, Hasler G. Vagus Nerve as Modulator of the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychiatric and Inflammatory Disorders. Front Psychiatry. 2018;9:44. [link]
Capilupi MJ, Kerath SM, Becker LB. Vagus Nerve Stimulation and the Cardiovascular System. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2020;10(2):a034173. Published 2020 Feb 3. [link]
Pavlov VA. The evolving obesity challenge: targeting the vagus nerve and the inflammatory reflex in the response. Pharmacol Ther. 2021;222:107794. [link]