High Stress – Daily Tools To Help

In over 20 years of practising Functional Medicine I have never come across a patient for whom stress has no impact on their health. The hyper-stimulated lives we live are part and parcel of modern living. Our ability to switch off is increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

Human physiology is geared up for the stress i.e. ‘fight or flight’ response. In fact, it’s our body’s number one priority every second of every minute of every hour. Be safe first, worry about everything else second. We explore our environment through our senses and our brain interprets the messages that come back and decides how much of a stress response is needed, if indeed needed at all.

Some of us create a bigger stress response than is necessary for a given situation. This may be due to genetics and/or early life stressors. For example, if mum was stressed, depressed or anxious during pregnancy she passes and imprints the message onto the baby’s DNA that it’s really tough out in the big bad world. This situation creates the false impression that a heightened stress response will be beneficial to protect the baby.

These signals from mum are in a sense how she is organising the balance of the baby’s systems – think of this a bit like a business. She concentrates more on the ones that will work and protect baby, whilst others miss out. In balancing the books, science shows these babies (with a heightened stress response) are born with lower levels of feel good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. We call this epigenetic imprinting.

This can also be seen with emotional or physical trauma, especially in young children whilst their nervous systems are still developing. Their nervous system gets rewired to a heightened level as a protective mechanism from the trauma and they carry this with them into adulthood where it continues to play out.

Much of this signalling is controlled by the Vagus nerve and getting this nerve to work optimally is a key to a more relaxed mind, body and soul.

The Vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body. Its name is Latin for “wanderer” and this nerve wanders and connects our brain to many different organs such as the heart, lungs and gastrointestinal tract. This nerve also has a key role in the part of our nervous system that deals with rest and digest. We can measure how effective this nerve is by measuring Vagal tone or how well the nerve can activate and relax us from stress. A high Vagal tone reduces heart rate and blood pressure, stimulates digestion, helps immunity and even social biology. In effect it promotes overall health.

One way of measuring vagal tone is to look at heart rate variability. I have tracked this with hundreds of people over the years using quite sophisticated (but inexpensive) technology and apps on the iPhone.

I also use computer programmes designed to teach people how to improve vagal tone. Fear not, however, there are very simple techniques that can be done anywhere and with no equipment.

Here are some simple techniques you can do yourself to improve Vagal tone:

• Belly Breath: Letting your belly rise out as you breath in and making a long and slow breath out really works wonders. Do this for 2 minutes twice a day as a simple method for retraining your nervous system.
• Gargling: The Vagus nerve is connected to the muscles and structures at the back of the throat and it has been found that gargling, humming, singing and chanting all stimulate and increase Vagal tone. Gargling in my experience has been the most successful simply because it can be performed as part of another daily ritual, brushing your teeth.
• Scientists are now discovering that some foods and gut bacteria can signal to the brain via the Vagus nerve. This is quite the hot topic in medicine especially as we are finding out that certain species of gut bacteria are changing stress hormones and neuro-transmitters, resulting in less depression and anxiety. I would strongly recommend reading ‘The Psychobiotic Revolution’ by Cryan & Dinnan who are based at the APC Microbiome Institute in Cork, Ireland. A brilliant read around this emerging topic in science. A quick tip to help you create a healthier microbiome is to eat a fibre rich diet. A diet high in fibre encourages your gut bacteria to produce feel good hormones such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA. These feel-good buddies improve mood by stimulating the Vagus nerve.
• Being exposed to cold has also shown to activate the Vagus nerve and help with the stress response. Rather than walking around in the winter with virtually nothing on or bathing outdoors here is a simpler technique which most of my patients can do. Get up in the morning and take a shower. Towards the end of the shower turn it to cold and have it so that you cannot catch your breath for about 5 breaths. Increase your time with cold water as you get used to it. Although it can be somewhat challenging (no one likes the cold) the shock will wake you up in the morning but also make you bright, more relaxed but more focussed for the day.

Part of the human condition is a nervous system that is geared up for continuous flight or fight. This is perfect for a life in a hyper-stimulated world but only for a while. A world were our brains misinterpret stressors as life and death situations when they are not. We have the foot permanently on the accelerator and eventually run on empty, only to be helped with stimulants and others to bring us back to and altered normality. Our nervous system gets trained for flight or fight and forgets how to relax. We end up medicating ourselves in the morning with stimulants and alcohol at night to bring us down, with our health suffering in the long term.

The Vagus nerve like your muscle can be trained, the more you train it the better you become at allowing the rest and digest part of your nervous system to work. Train it! Start with the examples above, I have used these with hundreds of patients over the years. They work and take no time to do, but you need to train. Go to it.