Simple Tricks to Support Your Stress Levels, HRV and Vagus Nerve

Stress literally ‘rusts’ us from the inside out (much like blood sugar spikes and inflammation), contributing to reduced longevity and health on all accounts.

Hence we want to make sure we keep our stress in check, in order to look and feel better, for longer.

How to go about it?

There is no one size fits all approach, as individuals find different things and activities relaxing. Our main goal is to switch from the fight-or-flight, sympathetic nervous system (ruled by adrenaline and cortisol) over to the rest-digest-heal, parasympathetic nervous system more often. One of the major players of this parasympathetic nervous system is the vagus nerve, which is one of the longest nerves in the body, and runs from the brain into many organs, such as the digestive and reproductive organs, influences heart rate, blood pressure and breathing.

The vagus nerve is our ‘Buddha Brain’, and when stimulated, helps our body heal, digest, reproduce, lowers blood pressure, and improves Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is a measure of the time intervals between heart beats. A healthy heart is not a metronome, but instead allows for oscillations to adapt to the constantly changing environment. A higher HRV and ‘vagal tone’ is associated with better health, self-regulatory capacity, adaptability and stress resilience (R).

Some simple tricks to turn on switch over to the parasympathetic nervous state, increase vagus nerve ‘tone’ and HRV include:

1) Breathwork 

Any time we switch to a slower and deeper breath, we turn on the vagus nerve. When we are stressed, we often breathe very shallow. Breathing through the nose appears to add extra benefit, by further modulating emotional processes (R).

Do this:

Place one hand on the belly, and one on your chest. Then inhale through your nose for a count of 4, letting your belly come out, instead of your chest, then exhale for a count of 4 (or 6, if you can, for even more profound effects!), letting the belly sink back towards the spine. Do that 3x for a quick reset. I often recommend to my highly strung patients to set themselves an hourly timer to remember drinking water, plus do 3 slow belly breaths to shift the nervous system out of fight-or-flight (R , R).

2) Saunas 

Saunas have been shown to increase HRV and parasympathetic activity (R).

3) Cold stimulation at the lateral neck region (R), but also cold showers and ice baths in general provoke a relaxation response AFTER the initial stress response to the cold

4) Meditation and mindfulness (R)

5) PEMF therapy (R)

6) Infrared light therapy (R)

7) Grounding (R)

8) Massages

9) Reading a book

10) Spending time with loved ones

11) Cuddles and physical touch have been shown to lower stress, and also increase oxytocin, a natural appetite suppressant (R). If they aren’t readily available, research suggest self-touch gestures like placing a hand on your heart can help too (R)

12) Spending time in nature (R) , and even simply looking at images and videos of nature (R)

13) Nourishing your body with nutrient dense whole foods will allow your body to break down cortisol and keep things in balance. Examples are vitamin C, omega 3s, magnesium and B vitamins found in colourful vegetables and a mediterranean style diet.

14) Work through emotional triggers that might keep you in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight. This doesn’t have to be full blown PTSD (ie ‘capital T trauma’), also small ‘t’ traumas can keep your cortisol on a rollercoaster.