{"id":23775,"date":"2025-12-06T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naturalwomanhood.org\/?p=23775"},"modified":"2025-12-06T09:46:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:46:43","slug":"reinitialisation-du-nerf-vague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naturalwomanhood.org\/fr\/vagus-nerve-reset\/","title":{"rendered":"Devriez-vous essayer une \u201cr\u00e9initialisation du nerf vague\u201d ?\u201d\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It all started with a three-minute video my pelvic floor physical therapist friend uploaded to her practice\u2019s YouTube channel. In it, she attaches a TENS unit<\/a> to her ear in an effort to stimulate the vagus nerve for stress reduction and calming effects. \u201cWhat?\u201d was my initial thought. A week later, I saw an Instagram reel about humming (yes, humming) for a \u201cvagus nerve reset\u201d to calm down the body. While stress reduction is relevant to both men and women, women are disproportionately affected by anxiety and depression. Interestingly enough, an informal poll of my social media contacts suggests that only my female friends were seeing \u201cvagus nerve reset\u201d content in their algorithms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My only previous reference point for the vagus nerve was from nursing school fifteen years ago, and the single thing I remembered was that the vagus nerve innervates the diaphragm, meaning that it influences its contraction and expansion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could all these things be connected, I wondered, and (knowing the pitfalls of our digital age) what was fact versus fiction<\/a>? Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve since learned about the vagus nerve, including what most health and wellness influencers get wrong about its function, and how stimulating it might actually help a wide variety of health conditions, including all the most common causes of death.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the vagus nerve?<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve all heard of nervous system regulation (or dysregulation), and terms like \u201cfight or flight response\u201d (and even more recently, \u201cfight, flight, freeze, or fawn response\u201d) and \u201csympathetic nervous system\u201d are rapidly imprinting on our cultural lexicon to, arguably, the same extent as \u201cthe mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,\u201d (the oft-repeated phrase most of us learned in fifth grade).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But from a more precise biological perspective, let\u2019s recall that the nervous system comprises our brain, spinal cord, and nerves that send and receive signals all throughout our body, including 12 pairs of cranial nerves<\/a> that originate in the brain. The cranial nerves transmit sensory information or<\/em> motor information to and from the brain. The vagus nerve is cranial nerve 10. Like I wrote above, since each cranial nerve is paired, there are actually two vagus nerves, one on either side of the neck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman\u2019s podcast<\/a> episode on the vagus nerve, he noted, \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a nerve of many, many different pathways that both receives and provides information from essentially all areas of the body down to the base of your pelvis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s why the vagus nerve is special<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Huberman differentiated the vagus nerve\u2019s function from the function of all the other cranial nerves, continuing, \u201cAnd that stands in direct contrast to the other cranial nerves, which tend to receive information from restricted areas of the body, most specifically the head and neck areas, and tend to provide connections to the head and neck area.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most health and wellness influencers miss this key point about vagus nerve function<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After clarifying that his goal isn\u2019t to throw shade on health and wellness influencers or your local yoga instructor, Huberman explained, \u201cMost of the time when you hear about the vagus nerve out there in the general world\u2026 it\u2019s about the vagus nerve being a \u2018calming pathway\u2019 that\u2019s involved in transmitting information about the sensory milieu of the body\u2014so, you know, heart rate, acidity of the gut, how comfortable we are in our body\u2014to our brain. And people will say, \u2018You want to activate the vagus nerve because you want to calm down.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huberman affirmed, \u201cWell, that is true,\u201d before clarifying, \u201cbut it\u2019s just one small fraction of the functions of the vagus nerve.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vagus nerve has both sensory and motor functions<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is because, Huberman elaborated, \u201cThe vagus nerve is both<\/em> a sensory pathway and a motor pathway\u201d (emphasis added). While it is true, as the influencers attest, that \u201ca ton of sensory information is coursing up from the organs of the body into the brain, through what we call the vagus nerve, there\u2019s also motor information coming from the brain to the body.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This matters because \u201cit turns out that if you want to access the calming aspects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the energizing effects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the immune enhancing effects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the ways that you can improve learning <\/em>using vagus nerve activation, you need to know whether or not you\u2019re trying to activate a sensory pathway or a motor pathway within this vast set of connections that we call the vagus nerve\u201d (emphasis added). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt turns out that if you want to access the calming aspects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the energizing effects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the immune enhancing effects<\/em> of vagus nerve activation, versus the ways that you can improve learning <\/em>using vagus nerve activation, you need to know whether or not you\u2019re trying to activate a sensory pathway or a motor pathway within this vast set of connections that we call the vagus nerve\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As pioneering vagus nerve stimulation neuroresearcher Dr. Kevin Tracey explained in an op-ed,<\/a> you have 100,000 nerve fibers in each vagus nerve: that\u2019s 200,000 total. And every single one is technically a unique nerve.<\/em> So the question we should ask when influencers or others who insist that they\u2019re stimulating the vagus nerve via deep breathing, ice baths, humming, or something else, is \u2018which one?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could the vagus nerve potentially impact so many different kinds of conditions?<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve written before about red light therapy<\/a>, specifically answering the question of how one type of therapy could possibly offer hope for the treatment of a whole variety of conditions, some of them with little to no obvious connection, overlap, or crossover. In that article, I wrote, \u201cTurns out that when you help your cells\u2019 mitochondria work smarter, not harder, you experience reduced inflammation and faster injury, wound, or other tissue healing. And those effects happen to impact many, many modern health conditions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we zero in on one word from that quote, we get the answer to why vagus nerve stimulation appears to have equally disparate potential benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That word is inflammation<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vagus nerve stimulation triggers the inflammatory reflex<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Stimulating the vagus nerve, Dr. Tracey noted, appears to trigger the inflammatory reflex<\/em>, which down-regulates the effect of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the body. We\u2019ve all heard that inflammation is directly related to the most common illnesses that plague modern man. In a wide-ranging, two-plus-hour-long interview<\/a> (the transcript is here<\/a>!) on the Tim Ferriss show, Dr. Tracey<\/a> connected the dots between inflammation and the current top causes of death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stimulating the vagus nerve, Dr. Tracey noted, appears to trigger the inflammatory reflex<\/em>, which down-regulates the effect of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the body. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He said, \u201c60 million people die on the planet Earth every year. And 40 million of them die from heart disease, stroke, neurodegeneration, Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and cancer. So two thirds of the people that die every year on the planet Earth die of those conditions. And that\u2019s according to the WHO [World Health Organization]. Those conditions all have one thing in common: they\u2019re either caused by inflammation or made worse by inflammation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This may explain how you can hear about the proven effects of cranial nerve stimulation for chronic pain<\/a>, as well as treatment-resistant epilepsy and depression, stroke, migraine<\/a>, and even mood regulation and improved learning in healthy individuals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n