Why You Need to Stimulate the Vagus Nerve Daily for Brain and Gut Health | Dr. Navaz Habib

Dr. Habib: [00:00:00] We're calling inflammation a root cause when in reality it is a process that is required by our body to enable the healing process to occur. It's supposed to protect us from a threat to our survival. The immune system has very specific tasks that need to be involved, and there needs to be signals that come into the immune system cells to tell them to shut off the inflammation when the time is right.

And that happens primarily through the vagus nerve. 

Dr. Brighten: Not all inflammation is bad, we need inflammation because there needs to be that breakdown, there needs to be the defense. who is coming into repair. So you talked about who's going to help with that recovery. 

Dr. Habib: Dr. Navas Habib 

Dr. Brighten: known as the vagus 

Narrator: nerve doc is a pioneering voice in functional medicine, unlocking the secrets of the body's most powerful nerve 

Dr. Habib: as the best selling author of activate your vagus nerve and upgrade your vagus nerve and the host of the health upgrade podcast.

Narrator: He's on a mission to help people optimize their health from the inside out. 

Narrator 2: After transforming his own well being through [00:01:00] functional medicine, he founded Health Upgraded. 

Narrator: An online clinic dedicated to harnessing the vagus nerve to reduce stress, inflammation, and improve overall wellness. 

Dr. Habib: 70 percent of our immune cells, by volume, are located in the lining of the gut.

That is the thinnest barrier that we have within the body. It's a single cell thick. So when that barrier breaks down, we have this issue that will pop up virtual. 

Dr. Brighten: How can we start taking care of the vagus nerve? How can we start utilizing the vagus nerve, the science behind it, to dampen the inflammation in our body, to protect our brain, protect our organs?

Dr. Habib: My favorite part about this is 

Dr. Brighten: welcome back to the Dr. Brighten show. I'm your host, Dr. Jolene Brighten. I'm board certified in naturopathic endocrinology, a nutrition scientist, a certified sex counselor, and a certified menopause specialist. As always, I'm bringing you the latest, most up to date information to help you take charge of your health and take [00:02:00] back your hormones.

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Don't forget to subscribe, leave a comment or share this with a friend because it helps this podcast get out to everyone who needs it. All right, let's dive in. Navaz, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have this conversation. 

Dr. Habib: I am so excited to be here with you. 

Dr. Brighten: Okay. So we've got to talk inflammation.

We've got [00:03:00] to talk some easy, quick ways to drop inflammation today, but we should start by defining inflammation because I feel like everybody and their mother and their brothers out there, you know, how social media influencers are and they're like inflammation, inflammation. And, and I don't think everyone knows what that means.

Dr. Habib: No. And in fact, I, I, I almost despise the way that we talk about it because we're calling inflammation a root cause when in reality it is a process. Inflammation is a process that is required by our body to enable the healing process to occur. It is initially a protective process within the body. It's supposed to protect us from a threat to our survival, right?

So something that's there that protects us. potentially could be knocking us down, causing harm to ourselves, causing harm to our function. Inflammation is going to be the first response. It's the response of the immune system in a situation where there's a threat to our survival. So we create this initiated response of inflammation and we bring more [00:04:00] cells.

We essentially call the firefighters to come into an area and recruit more cells to essentially kill off the threat or get rid of that threat. Over time, Inflammation needs to be controlled, because once the firefighters have completed their role, we want the firefighters to go away, we want the repairmen to come and fix the Uh, damage tissue, the firefighters are not specialized in repair, and that's where inflammation becomes problematic.

If we have the firefighters continuing to be there a long time, what then occurs is more tissue damage rather than repair of the tissues of the immune system. has very specific tasks that need to be involved, and there needs to be signals that come into the immune system cells to tell them to shut off the inflammation when the time is right.

And that is the process by which inflammation needs to be kind of managed and regulated, and that happens primarily through the vagus nerve. 

Dr. Brighten: Okay, so I want to talk more about the vagus nerve, but I [00:05:00] do just want to highlight, I love the firefighter analogy because they are the first responders. And not all inflammation is bad.

We need inflammation and I think so often, you know, people think like, oh, if I get in injured, you know, for example, like I need to shut down all inflammation as soon as possible, which is a little bit about like, you know, kind of like that Western medicine mindset of like, there's NSAIDs, baby, just like take them, suppress them.

But we need that inflammation because there needs to be that breakdown. There needs to be the defense. Who is coming in to repair? So you talked about who's going to help with that recovery. 

Dr. Habib: It's still the immune system. So I think we've siloed the immune system into being the repair or being the, uh, the killers, essentially the ones that are there to stop the damage and to kill off the threat to our survival.

When in reality, it actually comes down to the immune system does both. The immune system actually is the killer. They're through our development, through our growth, through our maintenance, and through our repair processes, as well as the [00:06:00] protective processes. It's just a different set of cells within the immune system, and it's signals that are sent to these cells that dictate whether they're in firefighter mode or in more of the repair mode.

Mode and these signals have to come through very specific channels. These are the anti inflammatory quote unquote anti inflammatory Signals that regulate and put it into that repair mode So this is where we can almost talk about the autonomic nervous system having an effect to dictate whether we're in firefighter mode or in Fixed mode.

Dr. Brighten: Absolutely. I think There's a lot of people in my audience listening and they're probably going to be like, I thought the immune system was bad because I have autoimmune disease. And what we're going to talk about today can help with autoimmune disease, endometriosis, adenomyosis, with really any chronic inflammatory condition.

You said autonomic nervous system. Not everybody knows what that is. So let's break that down for them. 

Dr. Habib: Think about all of the automatic processes that happen within your body. We need to think about things like digestion. I'm not [00:07:00] consciously thinking about digesting the food that I ate for lunch. I'm not consciously thinking about detoxifying and eliminating the toxins through my liver and through my gut.

I'm not consciously thinking about beating my heart. These things are all happening automatically. 

Narrator 2: Yeah. 

Dr. Habib: So the autonomic nervous system is the pathway by which we regulate those automatic processes within the body. That's what's key to making sure that we have the signals going to the right cells to turn on particular processes and to shift us between these two states of the autonomic nervous system.

So we can either go into the fight or flight state, which we know as a sympathetic nervous system, or we can go to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest, digest, and I'm adding recover. 

Narrator 2: Yeah, 

Dr. Habib: and that's that repair process. That's where the vagus nerve resides in that parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

So when the sympathetics turn on, this is when there's a threat to our survival or we perceive that there's a threat to our survival. There may not actually be a threat, but [00:08:00] something is causing us to feel as though it is a threat and that's where problems can arise. So, sympathetics will turn on, they'll send signals to immune system cells plus to the gut because, you know, if there's a bacterial infection, who cares if we're digesting food right now, we need to shut that process off and shunt energy towards protecting us from that bacterial infection.

So we need to ensure that we have, uh, The resources allocated to the immune system cells to do that particular job, to fight or to run away from the threat. In the case of the immune system, it's always to fight, right? There's no running away in the immune system. Specifically, flight is more of a human response.

On a macro level, we run away. So, the fight or flight system has that particular branch to it. But when we're in a rest, digest, recover state, we're sending blood flow to the gut. We're sending blood flow to the liver. 

Narrator 2: We're 

Dr. Habib: sending information to those cells to turn on those processes, and make sure that we're [00:09:00] doing these processes more regularly and more efficiently.

Dr. Brighten: You've talked about the immune system, inflammation, and the sympathetic nervous system all being a way of your body protecting you. And I really think that is something so important for people to take home because I think when you are stuck in that sympathetic overdrive, where you're like wired, tired, you're feeling on the edge of burnout, or maybe you're already there, You feel like your body's betraying you when you feel inflamed, uh, when you have an autoimmune disease, you know, a lot of these conditions, we can feel like our body's betraying us.

And what is actually going on is that your body is fighting very hard to protect you. The problem is we're in an environment that constantly signals the need to protect ourselves, correct? 

Dr. Habib: It's exactly that. the fishbowl analogy, right? When a fish is sick, you don't medicate the fish, you clean the bowl.

Narrator 2: You 

Dr. Habib: change the environment in which that fish is living. And ultimately health will be restored because we're providing inputs [00:10:00] to that Fish that the environment is healthy and really the driving force behind all of this is are you feeling safe? Safety is the driving factor of whether we shift towards fight or flight or towards the rest digest and recover state Safety turns on the vagus nerve now safety can be looked at in a psychological standpoint Anybody who's been the victim of a crime experienced adverse childhood events Um, had like significant trauma that they've experienced or even little t trauma that have built up over time.

We feel as though we're unsafe from a psychological perspective, but what about biochemical safety? What if we are constantly being exposed to toxins like herbicides, pesticides, all of the processed sugars that are showing up all over the place, the flame retardants all around us, these chemicals that are all around us.

We're sitting in the stew of biochemical. Un safety or a lack of safety, right? There's danger all the time. So biochemical safety and then physical safety. [00:11:00] Do you feel physically safe? Are you moving? Are you moving enough? Are you moving too much maybe? Right? So we need to find this balance point where we feel safe in all of these different aspects.

Safety then tells us that yes, we're in a good state and we're no longer in danger or under threat. And we can shift towards that rest, digest, and recover. So one of the things I recommend to people as they're doing this is uncover the areas where you feel unsafe, really do a good inventory to understand.

Is there biochemical safety? Are you having any toxins that are entering your body through, I don't know, the cookware that you're using or through the food choices that you're making, right? Those are going to be toxic burdens. Another biochemical, uh, space where we need to look at is do we have enough of the right nutrients entering the body?

What about the microbiome? Right. Are we dysbiotic when it comes to microbiome? What does 

Dr. Brighten: dysbiotic mean for people who don't know? 

Dr. Habib: So when we talk about the microbiome, we can have kind of a healthy state of the microbiome, [00:12:00] which is an ideal balance of the good keystone bacteria, the commensal bacteria that are present in the gut, and ideally minimal, if not, Uh, no opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria.

These are the bad guys, the ones that like to overtake this space. When they do show up, that's what causes it to become dysbiotic. Right? So this is where we provide things like probiotics or whatnot. But assessing that is really powerful. Getting a good stool test to tell us what's going on in the gut provides an important piece of information because The interface between the microbiome and the gut immune area is so important to understand.

70 percent of our immune cells, by volume, are located in the lining of the gut. That is the thinnest barrier that we have within the body. It's a single cell thick. So when that barrier breaks down, we have this issue that will pop up, which will initiate and perpetuate an immune response. And that's where these issues really, in the long term.

Dr. Brighten: [00:13:00] When you speak about safety, I think this is so much at the crux of why women develop autoimmune disease at a higher rate. We know there is everything, so you know, 13 plus products applied to our body over decades at a time. So talking about environmental toxins. Talking about hormonal shifts that happen, how we have more robust of immune system, but I think we forget so often this safety component.

And so I appreciate you bringing that up because I think a lot of women listening to this are going to recognize that like, yes, I don't always feel safe in these certain regards. And to your point about the microbiome, we know that as women age, our microbiome diversity declines as our estrogen declines.

It becomes more matched to our male counterparts. So as you talk about that safety component as well, I'm like, wow, that it's like really feeding into this dynamic of what is happening with the immune dysfunction, the immune chaos that [00:14:00] can ensue, especially as we go through hormonal changes. You've brought up the vagus nerve a couple of times.

I'm sure people at this point are like, tell us what this is. So what is the vagus nerve? 

Dr. Habib: So the vagus nerve is the pathway by which our brain controls inflammation within the body, but also gets the information as to what's happening within all of the bodily organs up to the brain. So the vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve.

We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves. These are the nerves that begin in the brainstem and remain primarily in the head cavity. The vagus nerve is unique. It's the 10th one and it's the only one that leaves the head cavity. But it's called vagus because what it is is a wandering nerve. It has a vague, uh, anatomy, essentially.

This, obviously, the naming convention comes from not seeing the, the histology and not having the science that we have today, but it looked vague. Yeah, it's back 

Dr. Brighten: in the day, 

Dr. Habib: naming convention. So, It looked vague because really what it was doing was it was going to essentially every organ within the body.

Continues down through the neck once it [00:15:00] comes out of the brainstem, beside the carotid artery and the jugular vein, continues down into the thorax where it then attaches to the heart and the lungs, continues along the esophagus, goes into the abdomen, And it attaches to virtually every single abdominal organ directly.

No other nerve in the body does anything like this. It's such a unique nerve to any other nerve that we have. So that's really what drew my attention to it. When we were studying it and learning more about the vagus nerve, we realized that 80 percent of the information that passes on the vagus nerve goes from body to brain.

It's actually getting that information up. So when this nerve becomes dysfunctional, we're not getting good information as to what's happening in the organs up to the brain. In the same way that if you don't know what's happening in your bank account that you're not going to make good financial decisions.

Narrator 2: Yeah. 

Dr. Habib: The same exact thing is going to happen if we don't know what's happening in our gut, in our liver, in our lungs, up to our brain. The brain can't make a good decision about whether we need to send anti [00:16:00] inflammatory signals down or pro inflammatory signals down. So it perceives threat. And so it tends to shift towards a sympathetic side.

And so it pushes other signals down to turn on that inflammatory process. We need to get that information up. So the vagus nerve is so important in ensuring that that good information gets up and then it relays down to all of those organs, but very specifically, The main primary target of the vagus nerve within each of those organs are the immune system cells that are present in those organs.

We have tissue resident macrophages. These are the important immune cells that are present in every single organ of the body. They make up between 5 and 15 percent of all of the cells within each organ. Wow. And those are the regulatory cells. Those are the ones that when there's an issue, they call the firefighters.

But when there isn't an issue, they're the ones that are doing the repair process. So when the vagus nerve has it signaling down to the [00:17:00] Those organs, it signals to them to turn on the repair process. So we're coming full circle here. Essentially, the brain can control the immune system by sending these signals via the vagus nerve.

When the vagus nerve is dysfunctional, we can't send these signals as effectively, and inflammation becomes chronic and uncontrolled. 

Dr. Brighten: What leads to vagus nerve dysfunction? 

Dr. Habib: It really has to do with the compounding of stressors. And we like to talk about stress as kind of psychological or daily stressors, right?

You know, you go talk to somebody and they say, Yeah, I'm not stressed or yeah, I'm feeling really stressed right now. Everybody says that. 

Dr. Brighten: Everybody, every patient I'm sure you see. No, I don't think I'm stressed. And then we start to take inventory and it's like, Oh, actually, yeah, everybody's got some level of stress coming in.

Dr. Habib: Exactly. And I've alluded to kind of the areas of stress. So, um, I'm going to talk a little bit about stress, and I'm going to talk about stress a little bit before, but physical stress, emotional stress, day to day financial stress, relationship stress, kids, you know, all those things, they add up, they compound, they build up.

We almost have this bucket [00:18:00] of how much stress we can handle. And when that bucket slowly fills up, psychological stress adds in, right? Biochemical stress adds in, and these things cause the bucket to essentially overflow. When we get into a state of overflow, that's when the immune system can't regulate effectively, and that breaks down the vagus nerve.

It's essentially acting as though the brakes in the body have been burnt away or are worn down. So if your brakes aren't functioning well, then you're not going to be able to slow the car down. 

Dr. Brighten: How does this relate specific to women's health? 

Dr. Habib: What's really unique is The you mentioned the estrogen levels declining as we get into perimenopause and menopause perimenopause We know it's a bit of a rollercoaster.

I 

Dr. Brighten: like that you say we I'd like that a lot 

Dr. Habib: I'm married

Experience it secondhand the As we have that declining estrogen level, we actually decline the amount of acetylcholine that is present [00:19:00] as well. And acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that is utilized by the vagus nerve. It's the only one that the vagus nerve uses. So as estrogen declines, acetylcholine declines.

What that means is, the signaling capacity of the vagus nerve decreases as well. This is why we're When a lot of women, as the stress levels increase, as they're having children or they're getting into that perimenopausal state, that's when the inflammatory issues, the chronic inflammatory conditions really start to kick up a notch.

That's when the diagnoses happen, because we're not able to regulate effectively. So acetylcholine is really important here to understand, and we need to support the acetylcholine levels within the body to ensure that we can get those vagus nerve signals where they need to go. 

Dr. Brighten: I love that you brought up acetylcholine because I feel like dopamine and serotonin get so much play, and rightly so, right?

When you see new onset of anxiety and depression just skyrocketing in this population. But, when it comes to what we're seeing, and a lot of people are saying it's like a [00:20:00] trendy phenomenon, it is not. Uh, that the 40 plus year old women being diagnosed with ADHD and autism, it comes so quickly. so much down to the, you know, what that dysregulation is.

So being dysregulated and that plays in to the acetylcholine picture as much as dopamine. So I really appreciate you bringing it up because I feel like this is the neurotransmitter that never gets talked about in neurodivergent brains. And for people listening, like definitely stay tuned. We're going to give you some tips here on what to what to do about these things.

But, you know, with The vagus nerve having that dysfunction, that dysregulation, you've found some really interesting research when it comes to inflammation, how it affects the brain. Can you say more about that? 

Dr. Habib: Yeah, I talked about those tissue resident macrophages. These are those immune cells that are present in every organ in the brain.

They're called the micro glial cells. And when the micro glial cells become hyper activated, just like the other immune cells are, In every other organ of the body, they [00:21:00] become hyperactive and they become firefighters far more and they break down the tissue of the brain, which happens to be neurons and neuronal connections and synapses, which is then going to cause us to experience initially things like brain fog and lack of clarity and anxiety and Noticeable mood changes, but over time it leads to 

Narrator 2: neurodegeneration.

And 

Dr. Habib: that breaks down function entirely and we get into a state where we can then diagnose. So I see this all the time, right? Patients come in, I can't think clearly, my memory is less, like I'm just not capable of handling the stressors that I used to be able to. What's going on, doc? And we go and we look, and usually there's something wrong in the gut, and that gut to brain connection is so important, and the vagus nerve makes up that gut brain connection.

So we know that we've essentially stressed out or strained the vagus nerve function entirely, so those signals can't get up to the brain effectively. Then the acetylcholine levels are decreasing, and there's these issues that are popping up [00:22:00] that are not allowing the vagus nerve signals to get into the brain and to regulate brain function.

microglial activity. So the microglia have turned on and they're hyper activated. So this is the connection piece is when there's inflammation anywhere else in the body, primarily starting in the gut, it's going to result in decreased function or excessive immune activation within different tissues, particularly those microglial cells in the brain.

And acetylcholine is the signal to shut those down, to put them into that fixed state rather than the fight state. 

Dr. Brighten: And if at this moment people take away nothing else, it is to not ignore brain fog, not to be like, Oh, I'm in my thirties and I just can't multitask anymore because I'm getting older because sometimes their doctors say that to them.

Oh, this is just a part of getting older. Until it's something that gets a diagnosis, until it has an ICD 10, until there's a medication to prescribe, and we really want to prevent all of that and go upstream. So how can we start taking care of the vagus nerve? How can we start utilizing the vagus nerve, [00:23:00] the science behind it, to dampen the inflammation in our body, to protect our brain, protect our organs?

Dr. Habib: My favorite part about this is we're, we're finally realizing that old world wisdom is actually the way to make this thing work. It's so exciting to see what, what it all comes down to. Um, my big takeaway from all of this is we cannot heal when our bodies are sending out signals of fight or flight. Our body can only heal in a rest, digest, recover state.

So healing has to happen through a vaguely activated state. So how do we turn this thing on? Number one, without a doubt, is the breath. 

Dr. Brighten: We 

Dr. Habib: need to learn how to breathe effectively. 

Dr. Brighten: Oh, but you just said that's automatic. 

Dr. Habib: It is automatic, Fortunately, conscious control over the breath. And that's where we can start to put our mind over our subconscious or automatic processes.

We can't [00:24:00] directly control our heart rate, but we can directly control our breath rate. So, this is key. So, we want to start doing three different things with our breath. We need to check to see where we're at, so check to see if we're breathing more with our chest, more with our belly. Ideally, it should be more belly because our breath should be diaphragmatic.

Second thing, we should be breathing through the nose. The nose is the breathing tube, the mouth is the eating tube. We don't have teeth in our nose, we don't have nose hairs in our mouth. There's a reason we have them. We should use them effectively. So we filter, and we humidify, and we warm, and we clean the air as it comes in when we breathe through our nose.

So nasal, diaphragmatic, and longer exhales. So when we're inhaling, we're turning on or we're pushing the accelerator, and that's shifting towards sympathetic fight or flight state. When we are breathing, breathing out. When we're exhaling, we're shifting towards parasympathetic state. We're turning on the vagus nerve.

So assessing your breath, checking to see where you're at. Are we doing those three things? And if we [00:25:00] are, let's teach ourselves to do it even better. Let's teach ourselves to do that nasal diaphragmatic longer exhale breath when we're under stress. So can you do it when you're in a cold plunge? Can you do it when you're in a cold shower?

Can you do it in a sauna? Can you do it when you're exercising? Can you do it when you're under stress? Purposeful, good, positive stress. Not all stress is bad. Teaching ourselves to handle stress, that's what hormesis is. That's a really good thing, right? So, Purposefully creating positive stressors that teach us how to handle those stressors.

But all of them come back to, can you breathe effectively while you are under those stressors. 

Dr. Brighten: Okay, and now you have to teach everybody how to breathe effectively. My favorite 

Dr. Habib: practice for this is the 4 7 8 breathing practice. So four seconds of inhale through the nose. 7 second hold, 8 seconds of exhale.

If you can get to that and do that for anywhere between 5 and 10 breaths, you'll be able to fall [00:26:00] asleep better, you'll be able to shift towards this state far more effectively, and you're making sure that you're doing that diaphragmatic breath. So I like to have patients put one hand on their chest, one hand on their belly, and do this breathing practice with me.

And more often than not, we tend to do it right at the beginning of their, Session and they're calmer and they can tell me more about what's going on and they actually are able to use their executive function far more readily So that four seven eight breath is my favorite But if you have somewhere where you're starting and it's just too much to do a four seven eight three seconds in Six seconds out is another really simple way to do this and if you can create that routine on a day to day basis You're gonna have huge positives that you notice.

Dr. Brighten: Mm hmm I like that you give us like the intro level as well. So because I think sometimes you know, I When you when you hear about something and you get excited you're like, I'm gonna go all in I'm gonna do the big thing And then you get discouraged if you can't so starting with the three and six seconds It's fantastic.

How do people know they're actually breathing [00:27:00] with their, like, pushing their diaphragm down? How can they gauge that? 

Dr. Habib: So when we inhale, what we should notice is that the belly expands with each inhale. It's important to note that the diaphragm is so intimately connected, and we talk about the diaphragm as being the regulator of the breath.

Dr. Brighten: What is the diaphragm diaphragm is 

Dr. Habib: the big muscle that separates the chest area from the belly area. The Thorax from the abdomen and what it is doing when it's contracting, when it's actually working is it's creating a vacuum to pull air into the lungs, which is really important, obviously to initiate that, but it's also directly attached to all of the organs just below it, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, the spleen, they're all directly attached to it.

When the diaphragm is going up and down with our breath, we're actually sending regulatory information to those organs. That we can turn on and pump the food through the gut. That we can pump the liver and get the toxins out. That we can push the bile into the gut. [00:28:00] All of these processes can happen effectively when we're in that breath pattern.

So then we get that feedback mechanism up to the brain through that 80 percent of information via the vagus nerve when we're breathing effectively with our diaphragm. The diaphragm is not directly innervated by the vagus nerve. It's the phrenic nerve that does that, but the vagus nerve is so reliant on diaphragmatic activity to send information up.

So when that muscle is working and we're breathing effectively, we're noticing that with the inhale, the belly is expanding slightly. And as we exhale, the belly is coming back down. So having a hand on there to check that as a beautiful feedback mechanism, a low tech, it works really well. feedback mechanism.

I think that's the easiest way to do that for sure. 

Dr. Brighten: Yeah. And when you look at the anatomy, so the diaphragm is a dome on the top, and then you've got the pelvic floor, which is is opposite of that. And you will hear so often physical therapists saying when you learn how to breathe correctly, you have a healthier pelvic floor.[00:29:00] 

That is so important, important for anyone who is dealing with incontinence, who maybe is dealing with prolapse, Um, even digestive issues, having a healthy diaphragm and healthy breathing can also lend to a healthy pelvic floor as well. What else can we do for, so there's the breathing piece, which I think is, is enough in itself, but for the vagus nerve, what I actually want to ask is, um, vagus massage, does it actually help?

Dr. Habib: Yes, but, and so there's a big asterisk sitting there beside this, you, this is where vagus nerve stimulation really kind of kicked up a notch, is massage. The problem with vagus massage, particularly within the neck, is it's directly beside the carotid artery. And if we're massaging the carotid artery, it can cause you to pass out.

So, note, Disclaimer, do not do this regularly, but this is 

Dr. Brighten: really like a lot of pressure. You don't, you can do a gentle one. 

Dr. Habib: Yeah, you can absolutely even like a tapping [00:30:00] mechanism can be effective in that area to calm things down, but excess pressure can be too much. 

Dr. Brighten: And would you say never, never bilaterally?

Dr. Habib: It would stick to one side. 

Dr. Brighten: Yeah, and that's because this is where blood is draining from your brain and going up to your brain. My toddler actually decided to piggyback, um, me. And then he decided to like, I don't know, like WWE squeeze my neck. And I was like, bro, my carotids. I actually had to get an anatomy book out and show him.

He's like, what are carotids? Mama, you need to know. Because this is not safe. 

Dr. Habib: It's funny you say that because my three year old did that to me this week. We 

Dr. Brighten: both have three year olds. I know. I know. It's WWE. Is it not? Oh my gosh. But 

Dr. Habib: she's like, she's never watched wrestling. She's very physical but she's never watched wrestling.

No. 

Dr. Brighten: Neither has our child. But um. My gosh, I could tell you stories off camera. We're going to talk all about it on camera. Let's talk about what the people need. So we were talking about, okay. So tapping can be helpful, massaging, keeping it to one side, really gentle, not something that you're going to do regularly.

There's also [00:31:00] machines. There's like little devices. Tell us about those. 

Dr. Habib: So vagus nerve stimulators have been out for about 10 or 12 years now with phenomenal results, especially when people are dealing with chronic inflammatory conditions. I find that vagus nerve stimulation is the. phenomenal little catalyst to push in the right direction.

The good thing about it is it's not going to affect the carotid artery in any way. They're very, very safe devices. Um, I forgot mine upstairs, but I have one that I use, uh, regularly and I love it because it's a two minute stimulation that has incredible, powerful effects. It's been studied very recently with the Defense Language Learning Institute to show crazy improvements in cognitive function.

People actually had improvements in memory and learned a language 25 to 40 percent faster. 

Dr. Brighten: Hold up. Okay, 25 percent was the bottom number of fast, up to 40%? 

Dr. Habib: Yeah, essentially, they learned, uh, this was done with these, C. I. A. uh, training operatives. Okay, 

Dr. Brighten: so [00:32:00] talk us through this. How does this work? So it's, you said two minutes.

Like, did they have a protocol where they were like, sit down, learn the language, do the stimulation, repeat the language? Like, what did it look like? It 

Dr. Habib: was two minutes before, and then they had a class of the language, and they did it, uh, Uh, for two minutes prior to each day of the lessons and the group that stimulated learned the language in about four days versus the group that didn't stimulate, took five days.

And the recall a month later was 77 percent higher in the stimulation group. 

Dr. Brighten: How long were the classes that they were in? 

Dr. Habib: Like an hour. 

Dr. Brighten: An hour long class? So two minutes before they go into the class, they sit there for an hour and they, how long did this go on for? 

Dr. Habib: They did it just for five days and then had that effect after 

Dr. Brighten: and then they checked the retention.

Wow. Okay. That's significant. It is. Okay. Because like, I don't know about your three year old, but my three year old is bilingual. My um, 12 year old is going on trilingual right now, and I'm in my 40s being like, [00:33:00] I barely speak English. Well, that's my first language. So I'm like, I'm going to use this hack.

This is pretty amazing. What's the mechanism there? What did they think was going on? 

Dr. Habib: This has actually been tested. And what's really cool is when you stimulate electrically, you're hyper activating vagal signals. So we're getting this massive release of acetylcholine and reactivating these neural pathways.

Remember the vagus nerve is a nerve, which means that neuroplastic rules apply to it. Neuroplasticity applies to it. What that means is we can increase the signaling capacity and the, uh, ability for that nerve to function. just by getting it to work effectively. So in combination of that two minutes of stimulation, I get people to do their breathing exercises and all the fun, other things, humming, chanting, gargling, singing.

We haven't gotten there. We're going to have to talk about that 

Dr. Brighten: everybody, because that's exciting too. 

Dr. Habib: When we do that, what we're doing is we're sending that acetylcholine [00:34:00] signal to the microglial cells. And what we've seen on, uh, fMRI studies is activation of the exact right areas of the brain. to turn on those mental clarity areas.

And, in fact, they even saw that it changes the shape of the microglial cells from a firefighter type shape to a fixed repairman type of shape, the regulatory shape. The shape of the cell actually changed. 

Dr. Brighten: That is amazing. So I'm thinking like, okay, so if you want to learn a language faster, we do the two minutes of stimulation.

You go in, you, you learn it, but you've got to be using it all the time. You do your belly breathing. I would say first thing in the morning and in the evening is what, because that's usually when we got space, right? Your alarm goes off. You're like, wait, I can breathe. Okay, and then before you go to bed, you can do the breathing, like as another way to stimulate the vagus nerve.

Um, you just mentioned a whole list of other things. So, so talk us through this and is more of, let's say, let me ask this first, because I don't want everyone out there to just jump on like everything. Everything all [00:35:00] at once, but is more stimulation better 

Dr. Habib: with the electrical stimulator? There is a dose dependent response.

So yes, it does do more. That said, most people will hit a threshold after about 5 to 10 minutes of stimulation. You don't need to do more than that. 

Dr. Brighten: And then what about throughout the day? If you're belly breathing and you're gargling and you're, you know, Stimulating and doing all the things that you've been saying, is that worthwhile to be doing?

Dr. Habib: The more you're capable of staying in that parasympathetic state and, or subconsciously being able to turn the vagus nerve on, the better it is for you. Essentially what it means is your brakes are working better. And that's what needs to happen. We need a car that has good accelerator and good brakes.

When the brakes burn out, we have this problem where the accelerator is constantly being pushed, even if it's not excessive, and the car is becoming a danger to society. So that's the same exact thing electric vehicle gone wrong, right? 

Dr. Brighten: I won't name any brands. 

Dr. Habib: Exactly right. Yes. Um, so essentially [00:36:00] what we want to do is we want to have these practices taking place through the day, but we want to start to notice when we're getting into a sympathetic state, when we're pushed into that fight or flight state, and then to learn or teach ourselves not to become reliant on the stimulator, but rather to become reliant on creating those positive breathing patterns.

And those are available to us all the time. And so those are the ones I'd like to stick to. But when people are dealing with a chronic inflammatory issue, I love the stimulator as the tool to help to catalyze that process. Where 

Dr. Brighten: they want to rapidly learn a language. Exactly. I'm very excited about this.

This is like, I think this is one of the most interesting things I've heard. Um, and I'm, I'm not being light about that at all. 

Dr. Habib: I used it with my daughter, uh, my, not my three year old, my seven year old, and, uh, we improved her vision. She had an issue with visual tracking and reading became a real challenge initially.

And we went through a vision therapy process with her, which was really quite nice. But [00:37:00] in addition to that, I started doing therapy. The Agus nerves stim with her, don't tell anybody. And what we found was when we went back for the reassessment at 12, uh, 12 weeks, they said we've never seen a kid progress this fast through the process.

And she then began reading like you wouldn't believe. She literally read a chapter book in a day and a half yesterday or this past week. So she's gotten to the point where she loves to read and it just means that her brain and these neurons. are working way better because the signals to those cells that regulate neuronal activity are functioning at a much better level.

Dr. Brighten: So I don't know if I've ever shared with you, but my son struggled reading because of his eyes tracking as well. So he would try to go left to right. And when he gets right, it would bounce back. And so we went through, um, A lot of neurological rehab with that as well. And we focused on humming a lot for a totally different reason.

So deep breathing, cause there's great kids apps for that and humming. Um, and it was because he had a autoimmune condition affecting his [00:38:00] brain. So that's why I went that route. But now I'm thinking about how, like, he went from like zero to like reading like so fast and I'm like, wow. Maybe we were actually stimulating the vagus nerve and all of that, contributing to that just unknowingly.

Dr. Habib: Absolutely. The breathing and the humming is huge. Kids love humming. That's something that I love to do. Making noise? What? They like making noise? But what it does when you're humming is you're extending your exhale. For a long time and you're vocalizing and what's really interesting is the muscles around the vocal cords get tensioned by the vagus nerve So the vagus nerve sends signals to and not just any the muscles that tension the vocal cords are vagus nerve So when we vocalize, when we create this humming vibration piece within the throat, that actually is very stimulating for the vagus nerve.

Gargling is another great way to do this, right? So my dad's been doing this for 70 some odd years, pretty healthy because he does it every day. He gargles, [00:39:00] brushes his teeth and gargles every day. Takes a cup of warm water, throws some salt in there and gargles as hard as he can. You know it's working when you start to tear from your eyes.

Yeah. That's a really positive sign. 

Dr. Brighten: Um, as both of us know, Dr. Jatish Kirrazian, he has his patients gag themselves with their toothbrush. Um, and when I had a head injury at some point and that was a regular practice of like putting my toothbrush back there and gagging myself, I will say that humming, singing out loud, especially when you're singing.

singing, you're like, just like belting it out. You're taking those deep breaths way more present, pleasant than gagging yourself. But gagging yourself is the way it's effective way when you're 

Dr. Habib: going full swifty. You're actually good stimulating your vagus nerve. I love it. 

Dr. Brighten: You heard it here first. That's amazing.

So for people listening right now, they're, I bet they're wondering like, how soon will I notice any benefits from this? Is it going to take a few months of practicing it regularly? Yeah, absolutely. 

Dr. Habib: Yeah, it takes some time, obviously, some people with stimulation with electrical [00:40:00] stimulation will notice an effect actually within a couple of days or within a week or so, but it does more often take a couple of weeks to a month to really start to notice these changes.

The reason is we're not conscious of these changes. effectively pretty quickly, right? Like, we're not going to become really aware of checking our breath on a daily basis unless we have reminders initially to do so. 

Dr. Brighten: Unless people are following you on social media. Exactly. Because you literally remind people every day.

Don't worry, we're going to like link to all of that in the show notes, but those are the like kind of reminders that help, but what are other kind of reminders? I'm like, if they follow you, you're going to end up in their feed. They're going to be like, I have to breathe. There's Dr. Habib telling me to breathe.

I got to do it. 

Dr. Habib: I also love the, uh, taking a look away from your screen every 20 minutes, if you can. So I have this fun 20, 20, 20 rules every 20 minutes. Uh, look at something 20 feet away from you for 20 seconds. So what that does is it changes your visual aperture. The [00:41:00] inputs from the eye stop straining on something that's generally pretty close to us.

We're all generally on our laptops or cell phones for, you know, 15 So we want to shut that down and we want to minimize the amount of time that we spend there, right? And so we want to be able to focus on something further away, which is a much more calming effect on the brain. So that 20 20 20 rule is a great one to do as well.

And you often, when you do that, you notice that your breath will shift. In those moments as well. It always comes back to the breath, but it's practices that you can utilize to shift the breath accordingly. 20, 20, 

Dr. Brighten: 20. You said for 20, every 20 seconds. 

Dr. Habib: Every 20 minutes. Every 

Dr. Brighten: 20 

Dr. Habib: minutes. Look at something 20 feet away from you.

For 20 seconds. For 20 seconds. 

Dr. Brighten: Okay. I just want to make sure that's super crystal clear for everybody. I love that. Practice as well. Can you speak though? Like sometimes people are like, Oh, I need to take a brain break from my computer. And then they go right onto their cell phone. What's the problem with that?

Dr. Habib: Because you're literally just shifting from one screen to [00:42:00] another and your visual changes are not, not taking hold. Yes. You're not looking at your stressful work emails that are popping up there, but you're going on Instagram and scrolling through like doom scrolling on reels or whatever. We need to shift to something else.

We need to completely change the environment. Often, we're in that same stressful work environment, just on a different screen. So I like to have people leave the office, or leave the space that they're in. If you're lucky enough to be able to just step outside for a few minutes, go and do that. Go for a 20 minute walk instead.

Like, get your brain out of the way. out of that space and allow yourself to experience something different because you're not going to feel the stress when you step out of it. You're actually going to eliminate some of that stress of being in your office space or wherever you're doing your work. 

Dr. Brighten: My son, um, my oldest, he will do his schoolwork.

He'll be on his computer doing his schoolwork and then it'll be time for him to take a break and he'll be like, Oh, can I like, Watch TV, or [00:43:00] can I play a video game? Of course, right? These kids are always trying to get screens, and, uh, the thing I tell them is, like, in all of this time, it's like you've literally been pooping in your brain, and you have to dump it out.

You have to go do something else. Explain to people what I mean, why I'm using that gross analogy. 

Dr. Habib: I love that analogy, though, but it makes a lot of sense. Essentially, what's happening is when we're under stress, and we're straining with the visual, Uh, cue of a screen, we're shifting our microglial cells, these tissue resident macrophages, again, to sympathetic mode.

So they're creating a bit of damage. Yes, they're going to shift some synapses on, and there's learning processes that will occur there. But if we don't shift to the parasympathetic state, we don't maintain those. So we start to become dopamine addicted. And that's where the issue really lies because those screens are producing so much, uh, just visual and addictive activation, right?

And when we step out [00:44:00] of that, that addictive activation ideally will go away. But those addictive signals that we get are, you know, Essentially that poop that we're creating in there, right? We're creating breakdown of important signals of safety, of calm, of everything around us, of being in an environment.

So when we step away from that screen, we're essentially cleaning out that. 

Dr. Brighten: Yeah. And not to mention the metabolic waste that comes from being in all of that. I think we often, we think about how like, how well, you know, like when you have to pee, you have to pee, right? Like you don't even have to like think about it, but we don't think about what's happening in our brain ever and how it needs breaks as well.

Like, you know, this is, It's part of why we talk about how important good sleep is, but also how important it is to take breaks. I love the 2020. I love all of the tips you provided for the vagus nerve for helping combat inflammation for educating on like, what is inflammation? What's good? What's bad?

What's you know, the ugly part of [00:45:00] inflammation because it can be a bad thing. What would you want people to walk away this conversation really? Owning like in terms of information that they can like they can share with a friend 

Dr. Habib: I think the biggest thing is that we just can't heal when we're in a sympathetic state, right?

When, when we're sending signals of fight or flight constantly, we're not going to ever be able to fix the damage that will occur. And I love that you brought up the metabolically, uh, the metabolic activity that is required. When we're in a sympathetic state, those cells start to rely on glucose, and they rely on it, and that creates more metabolic waste product.

And when we shift into that type of That parasympathetic state, that rest digest recover state, the type of fuel that those immune cells are using shifts towards fat, and it becomes far more efficient. And it doesn't create nearly as much waste, in fact it cleans up a lot of that other waste that was created.

[00:46:00] That metabolic shift is what happens there. So remember when we talked about the shape of those microglial cells changing, the metabolic activity of those cells changed as well. And so when they become more efficient, we then aren't burning through ATP as much, and we're not dealing with fatigue and tiredness and brain fog because we're using things efficiently.

We're turning on the cells with the most effective tools available. So healing can only occur in that parasympathetic, vaguely activated, rest, digest, recover state, and the breath is the key to turning that on. 

Dr. Brighten: This has been a fantastic conversation. That was so well said. I want to have you back. You guys know you drive the conversations here.

So let me know in the comments if you want to hear more. I think we could do a longer session because this was just a shorty just talking all about metabolic health in the brain, neurotransmitters. Like I have so many more questions, but we were just doing a quickie sesh today. [00:47:00] But I want to thank you for your time.

It really is such an honor to get to speak to you, get to share this information. It is. It's so life changing the work you do. So thank you so much. 

 

Dr. Habib: My pleasure. Thanks so much.