In this episode Bec is joined once again by Emrys Goldsworthy to explore the critical role of the vagus nerve in brain function, focusing on symptoms like brain fog, concentration issues, and memory. 

Emrys explains how the autonomic nervous system influences these cognitive aspects, highlighting factors like toxin exposures, diet, and lifestyle impacts. He emphasises the importance of the vagus nerve in body detoxification and suggests strategies for optimising its function, including outdoor activities, balanced nutrition, and light exposure. 

Discover how our modern lifestyles can disrupt vagal health, what signs to look for, and what steps can be taken to bring more balance to this vital nerve.

Key Takeaways

• The vagus nerve plays a critical role in brain health by regulating neurotransmitters, the glymphatic system, and toxin elimination.

• Lifestyle factors, including exposure to toxins like microplastics and metal contaminants, significantly affect vagus nerve function.

• Natural interventions such as sun exposure, outdoor activities, and specific dietary choices can improve vagal tone and brain health.

• Hyperactive and underactive vagus nerve conditions are both indicative of nerve damage but manifest differently in symptoms.

• The autonomic nervous system, linked intensely with survival and repair functions, is crucial in understanding and managing brain fog and cognitive issues.

Timestamp Summary

00:00 |  The Vagus Nerve's Role in Brain Fog and Concentration

05:01 |  The Hidden Dangers of Microplastics and Toxins in Everyday Life

08:38 |  The Vagus Nerve's Impact on Brain Health and Delusions

17:58 |  Understanding Hypervagatonia and Its Impact on Fatigue and Health

22:33 |  The Impact of Sunlight and Outdoor Time on Brain Health

27:42 |  Enhancing Brain Health Through Nature and Vagus Nerve Stimulation

32:47 |  The Impact of Diet on Vagus Nerve Health and Function

38:38 |  The Vagus Nerve's Impact on Hormones and Circadian Rhythms

46:22 |  The Role of Autonomic Systems in Inflammation and Healing

50:51 |  Exploring Vagus Nerve Health and Lifestyle Interventions

Podcast Transcript

0:00:00 - (Bec): In today's episode, we're going to once again dive into the vagus nerve. Now you might recall that we've spoken about this previously with today's guest, Emrys Goldsworthy on the topic of the, of the vagus nerve and how it impacts our gut function. If you haven't listened to that interview, you might want to go back and listen to that one first because this interview is going to be a really great follow on from that where we dive a little bit deeper into some of these functions of the autonomic nervous system.

0:00:27 - (Bec): So without further ado, I'm going to go and hand it over to Emrys. 

Emrys, welcome back for another chat with us about the vagus nerve. Today we wanted to touch on something I think affects a lot of people and that's around the issues of brain fog and concentration and memory and how the autonomic nervous system plays into that. So where would you like to begin with that? Because this is really fascinating.

0:00:54 - (Emrys): Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah. I think a lot of people aren't aware of the role of the autonomic nervous system in the brain in particular with some of these sort of or, you know, difficult-to-nut-out symptoms like brain fog, loss of concentration with the non-specific. Right. And they, you know, from a medical perspective there are a lot of diagnoses that can fit into those symptoms.

0:01:18 - (Bec): Yes.

0:01:18 - (Emrys): And so, but I think starting with brain fog is good because it's one that I think, you know, you know, I think at least 30 to 40 of the population knows what that is. Yeah. And any loss of concentration is part of it often. And it's almost like a very, very mild dementia. Feeling of mild dementia and not necessarily constant, you know, transient. Yes. Some people will use a number of things to get out of it like caffeine and nicotine and so on.

0:01:48 - (Bec): Yes.

0:01:49 - (Emrys): But it doesn't appear to resolve it long-term. Some people, they get it after a brain injury like a knock to the head or a whiplash injury, traumatic brain injury. And those can be particularly problematic and related to the brain, its actually brain injury and the brain fog is associated with that. We'll get on to that. Others it's more chemical, I think, and more the, the reason why autonomic nervous systems involved is to do with both of those because one of the main two things that autonomic nervous system does is survival and procreation. Those are the two main things. And within survival is repair. And repair is critical.

0:02:34 - (Emrys): The autonomic nervous system is sort of essential in order for repair to occur. A lot of people think that's to do with the immune system, blood flow and things like that. But a lot of that is just regulated by the autonomic nervous system. So, you know, as a sort of starting point, thinking autonomic, you'll actually see a lot of problems if people aren't healing. And in the brain is particularly the case because the vagus nerve, which is my area of particular expertise, is so intertwined in its connections with the frontal lobe, the parietal, temporal, all the main brain regions, including the limbic system, which is the emotional center.

0:03:12 - (Emrys): And it seems to regulate neurotransmitters, astrocytes, which regulate the blood-brain barrier. It's also involved in the removal of debris and toxins and things like that through the thing called the glymphatic system.

0:03:26 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:03:27 - (Emrys): And also outs outside out through the astrocytes into the blood. So if there's a problem with your autonomic nervous system, sometimes people can have brain fog just from that because they've been exposed to chemicals that the autonomic nervous system would have got onto and removed, and they are basically being bound into fat tissue to neurons of the brain, causing symptoms. And brain fog is the most common.

0:03:55 - (Bec): Okay. Yeah.

0:03:56 - (Emrys): So, you know, most people will find. We'll stay with the chemical because I think it's the more common, because most people haven't hit their head and got brain fog. And, um, that's definitely a category, but it's not the most common. So some people will say, oh, it's dietary and things like that. But a lot of those things are just exacerbated. They're not really the cause. So. And even we'll say it's mast cells, but again, you'll see a lot more mast cell activity if there's a lot of toxicity.

0:04:26 - (Emrys): And the only reason you do is because histamine mast cells are all involved in the elimination process. So, you know, histamine alters the blood flow. Mast cells have also got a fantastic capability of helping remove… To remove debris, but also remove toxins. Now, the toxins that can be… There are so many toxins now, and, like, I have real trouble listing every single one. But, like, the main ones of concern now are microplastics and nanoplastics.

0:05:01 - (Emrys): And I think that's probably the most concerning because we don't know how bad it is.

0:05:06 - (Bec): Yeah, we’re the canaries in the coal mine, aren't we?

0:05:09 - (Emrys): Yeah. And like, a lot of people don't realise how often they're consuming them. Like, for example, you go out and you get a coffee and in it like it looks like a paper cup that's lined with plastic and they'll say, oh, you know, it's phthalate. Which, phthalates are a type of plastic toxin. You could say, yeah. And then you have. And this is no BPA, but there’s other types of bisphenols that are toxic and even more toxic, they're more. Newer forms.

0:05:42 - (Bec): Yeah, bisphenol A was the first one with baby bottles, wasn't it? 

(Emrys): Yeah.

0:05:49 - (Bec): When it really hit the, hit the kind of mainstream and it's, it's a.

0:05:54 - (Emrys): Real shame that, you know, a lot of people get told they're crazy or like over the top about plastics, but the truth is they are a severe issue. I've done my best to completely eliminate plastics from my food and you know, things like that, the environment as much as possible. But those coffee cups, because they heat that plastic, the microplastics are an exceptional high levels and they've done readings on it.

0:06:20 - (Emrys): I can't remember the numbers, but it's way above the acceptable levels. And it's the same for bottled water. You go to the shop and you buy a bottle of water and they'll say, no, it's BPA free, it's fine. It's not, it's still plastic. So unfortunately we do need to make sure that our water is in glass. And you know, unfortunately if we've been filtering our water in plastic, then we have another issue.

0:06:44 - (Emrys): So the filtration process is another one and if we can get that right, I distill water so that it's 100 clean and there's no plastic touching it the entire length of the process. So then it goes into glass and then it goes in, I drink it. So I have a lower risk. Yeah. And you just got to do your best to avoid the other one. I will mention and I'm going on about it, but it's important is takeaway containers, hot food in a takeaway container. That plastic degrades real fast and it's going to be full of microplastics.

0:07:21 - (Emrys): And the same goes for all refined processed foods. They're the highest in microplastics and nanoplastics, which is a new one of concern. So then beyond plastics we have lead, cadmium, mercury, you know, the usual suspects, heavy metals, not just those others are coming in now that testing is getting better. Things like thallium, lithium and others. There's a lot of tests that can be done now through her mineral Analysis, which I think is probably the best, at least getting the long term analysis.

0:07:55 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:07:56 - (Emrys): And we're, we're seeing some pretty frightening things. Even nickel is a problem. And nickel is on our, you know, in a lot of our stainless steel. It's in things in our body, like often like braces and things like that and a lot of other things that are like supposed to be fine for us, but turns out we're getting nickel at high doses. So there's lots of little things like that and then others things like PFA S's and other kind of like forever chemicals and VOCs. So we're constantly getting bombarded with chemicals that can get into our brain, get into the fatty tissue of the neurons and essentially start the process of demyelinating them.

0:08:38 - (Emrys): Because the body, although that seems to be, you know, initially not a big deal because the body wants to store toxins that it can't get rid of in fat because it's a great way to get it out of the blood and stop it from causing all this oxidative damage and cell damage. But if that happens over a long period of time, you know, that storage device becomes redundant and that neuron starts to die. And neurons are unfortunately a storage for toxins in the brain for all that's worth. I don't think that's great long term.

0:09:10 - (Emrys): So coming into the autonomic nervous system, the vagus nerve appears to regulate this process of healing neurons as well. Because the crazy thing about the vagus nerve is, you know, how, how many things can this nerve do when they stimulate the vagus nerve? This thing called brain derived neurotrophic factor goes up by 70% in animal models. You can't do it in human models because it's. The animals die in the process, unfortunately.

0:09:36 - (Emrys): So. Bdnf. I know. I mean, look, it's, it's the science of, of figuring things out. We use rat models and, and pig models all the time and mouse models. Rat models tend to be the best. And you know, they're sacrificing them through this whole process. I mean, it's a real problem. But unfortunately that's the only way we're going to know because human models don't exist. You can't do it in this way. You can't test a process like this and then test the brain tissue after and see what happened.

0:10:10 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:10:10 - (Emrys): You know, so just be aware that a lot of the stuff that I talk about are with animal models, but it does correlate really well with humans. So the, the, the brain Drone neurotrophic factor is required for a lot of new neurons and new connections. And so when your brain is in brain fog state, you want to, you know, kind of adapt sometimes and get new connections and build them up.

0:10:35 - (Bec): Yes.

0:10:36 - (Emrys): And you need BDNF and nerve growth factor. It's a secondary one.

0:10:40 - (Bec): Yep.

0:10:40 - (Emrys): And the vagus nerve, when it's electrically stimulated, shoots it up 70. That's amazing. And it's. And it's more or less 70 on average throughout the whole brain.

0:10:50 - (Bec): Yes.

0:10:51 - (Emrys): And the most important area for most people with brain fog is going to be the frontal lobe. So that's where our consciousness is predominantly. That's where all of our thinking happens. And so if someone's like, oh, you know, I'm finding it hard to learn new things, you can start thinking maybe low bdnf. And that could be attributed to a problem with their vagus nerve.

0:11:11 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:11:12 - (Emrys): And then you take a step back with the chemicals I've already mentioned. I know this is a long-winded explanation, but those chemicals get in the way of that process because not only do they affect the brain.

0:11:22 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:11:23 - (Emrys): Unfortunately. Damage the vagus nerve too. And here we have a little vicious cycle.

0:11:27 - (Bec): Bit of a roadblock.

0:11:28 - (Emrys): It's a real roadblock. Toxins are like, you know, they're the devil when it comes to recovery because they can damage the vagus nerve. Because the vagus nerve is in one of those unfortunate situations where it's at the interface where you get exposed to them in the back of the throat, it's in the digestive tract and in the airways, and it's all vagal fibers. And if you breathe in or you swallow toxins, you know you're going to damage your vagus nerve over time or if it's an acute dose, pretty immediately.

0:12:01 - (Emrys): And that's why a lot of symptoms which don't make, you know, they made. They make sense when you know that.

0:12:08 - (Bec): Yep.

0:12:09 - (Emrys): So the brain, it's going to be affected by chemicals. We need that vagus nerve intact. We need it working. There are other factors with the vagus. Never mentioned in a lot of my videos about a thing called vagus nerve entrapment where it can get entrapped in the neck. And a lot of that's to do with neck weakness and loss of stability in the neck.

0:12:31 - (Bec): Doing this.

0:12:32 - (Emrys): It can be. Look, it actually is mostly from a sedentary lifestyle. Right. A lot of people will think it's from. There's a. There's a lot of people online talking about craniocervical Instability and what that is, and you'll hear this a lot in the groups for vagus nerve and other conditions associated is that the upper cervical spine, the upper two segments are moving around a lot. And so much to the point where they're crushing the brain stem. I mean, this is pretty serious and it's not that common.

0:13:07 - (Emrys): And I very rarely see it as the major cause of vagus nerve, but it can. But the majority are actually just weak necks. And you know, there are some people that are more susceptible. There's people who are hypermobile. They might have a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a hypermobility syndrome.

0:13:25 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:13:26 - (Emrys): And they are more susceptible. And women are more susceptible too, because they are inherently more mobile.

0:13:32 - (Bec): Yes.

0:13:33 - (Emrys): And men, you know, you don't see them as much. So I reckon at least 80 to 70% of vagus nerve problems are female when it comes to the neck, and the rest are male. So there's still men that have it. Now, if that's the case, that there's a problem in there, A lot of the, a lot of these people will need neck rehabilitation. And they do get better. You know, like some of them have gut problems, they do neck rehab and they get their gut back to normal function.

0:14:01 - (Emrys): And most people don't look at it like that. And I think that's missing in the discussions out there. But coming back to the brain, there's lots of these undercurrent of undercurrent things going on that are vagal in origin that result in the brain behaving badly. So, you know, brain fog, loss of concentration, those sort of forgetfulness, you know, and those, those states need proper vagal function. So some people can get started, they can start improving their vagal tone.

0:14:36 - (Emrys): There are, there are cases and, and this will often come up as a question, you know, what if my vagus nerve is hyperactive? It's actually the opposite.

0:14:44 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:14:44 - (Emrys): And there are brain states where, I'm noting where the vagus nerve is hyperactive. In fact, hyperactive and underactive vagus nerve problems generally are the same problem. They're still nerve damage. And you don't get biology.

0:14:58 - (Bec): Grand.

0:14:59 - (Emrys): Yeah, I mean, the, the body will always. If it can't compensate, it won't, because it'll just decline. And that's what you have, underactive vagus nerves. But if it can compensate, it will become hyperactive. And it will. And it does that in all nerves. Like we know that from studies with carpal tunnel. People get increased sensitivity in their hands for a time and then increased Pain. And increased pain is actually high sensitivity.

0:15:25 - (Emrys): And so, you know, those are. Those apply to the vagus nerve as well. And so there's a really interesting case where the brain behaves often, you know, slightly similarly to underactive vagus nerve when it is the case that it's hyperactive. But there is an interesting thing that I see, and it's that delusions start emerging with hyperactive vagus nerves.

0:15:54 - (Bec): How interesting.

0:15:55 - (Emrys): Yeah, I know. And I only ever see. And there's got to be a good reason for this because delusions are associated with a number of things, including hormones as well, not just schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and all these sorts of things. But. And whatever those really are, you know, the question might be to. Because a lot of people in schizophrenic research are looking at the vagus nerve as a potential.

0:16:15 - (Emrys): But the vagus nerve seems to have a big role to play when it comes to, you know, being able to understand reality.

0:16:25 - (Bec): It's that sensing of the world around them.

0:16:27 - (Emrys): I said, yeah, I know, we don't fully understand it. They'll say it's something to do with neurotransmitters like dopamine. Because when you activate dopamine, when you activate the vagus nerve, you increase dopamine output. We know that. And that's another reason why it works on the brain as well. But, you know, so dopamine networks are heavily involved in ability to better focus, as you see with adhd. Like dopamine's a big part of that.

0:16:50 - (Emrys): And so when your vagus term is more active, you have more dopamine. That's a general rule. It's not a very accurate way of explaining it. But from. For the people who don't understand neurology to the level where they need to understand that kind of greys of how this works. Increased dopamine is linked to delusions. So, you know, if we have excessive dopamine, we're going to get, you know, delusional states. And that's what, you know, antipsychotics, lower dopamine, so that there's a role to play there. And I think a lot of these cases aren't actually schizophrenia. They're actually just vagal.

0:17:26 - (Emrys): And that's what I found in clinic, because a lot of people will come to me with those symptoms and they're difficult. But look, hyper. Hyperactive vagus nerves are really difficult to kind of get your head around because sometimes these people are severely fatigued, like they are in a state, what's called hypervagatonia. Which is where you're in chronic fatigue. But it's like if you've had a big meal and you get postprandial malaise, which is like tiredness after eating.

0:17:58 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:17:58 - (Emrys): Imagine that on steroids. That's the state. Because that's a very, that's a vagal state. That, that post meal malaise is you're in full vagal activity. Like, that's, you're digesting, right?

0:18:11 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:18:11 - (Emrys): So if someone is in a hyper vagal state, they're like that all the time.

0:18:18 - (Bec): What a horrible feeling.

0:18:20 - (Emrys): Yeah. So like a lot if it's constant.

0:18:22 - (Bec): Like, I mean, we've all, we've all felt the effects of having a large meal like that.

0:18:26 - (Emrys): And I mean, it' it's not, you know, you don't have the bloated part. You just have the feeling of the fatigue and inability to move.

0:18:34 - (Bec): It's like a, it's like a, an energy of wearing down. Like, oh, I'm melting.

0:18:39 - (Emrys): That's right. I mean, that's what these people have. And sometimes it's so bad, you know, like that nothing works. Like caffeine doesn't work. Yeah. Caffeine actually often is a vagal stimulant. So there's all these things that you would normally do to get out of it that don't work. And like there's another type of fatigue associated with hypo vagotonic stage, which is actually to do with more. They can't get the nutrition, so they're not able to process food, the right enzyme production because they can't produce enough.

0:19:11 - (Bec): The digestive system is low.

0:19:13 - (Emrys): Exactly. So they're essentially kind of like anemic or, you know, whatever it might be, and they just can't get the blood sugar up.

0:19:19 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:19:20 - (Emrys): And so their liver is constantly churning out. And sometimes they can actually become, because they're in a constant state of higher cortisol, they can develop diabetes from this hypovagotonic state. And so as a kind of diabetic fatigue as well is associated with that. But hypervagatonia is very different. You know, it's nervous system fatigue, brain fatigue, all of the above. So brain. That could be what the brain fog really is.

0:19:49 - (Emrys): And it's actually just a hyper vagatonic state. This is why it's never one thing, you know, and, you know, talking to a patient, you figure it out, you know, oh, you've got all these other symptoms. You, you don't have a very good sympathetic nervous system because it's stuck in rest and digest. And some People, all we ever hear is someone stuck in fight or flight. The truth is there's a whole bunch of those that have been misdiagnosed and they're actually stuck in parasympathetic.

0:20:18 - (Emrys): And so I. Yeah, one day we'll get to, you know, figuring out how to get that information out to clinicians. But you know, because that's often why the same thing that works for these people with adaptogens doesn't work for these that are hypervagotonic because they're not the same, even though they look similar.

0:20:36 - (Bec): Yeah, it's always good to explore some of these avenues when you don't get an expected outcome. Like what's the why? Maybe vagal tone. I'm going to add that to my list now. Sometimes I'm thinking genes as well or functional pathways.

0:20:49 - (Emrys): So one of the things that does tend to work really well as a sort of symptom relief. Right. Because you know, here's a good example of hypervagal asthma is. Hypervagal.

0:20:58 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:20:58 - (Emrys): Asthma is bronchoconstriction. Right. And mucus production. Those are both vagal activities. And the vagus nerve is hyperactive in an asthma state. And what do we give people with asthma? We give them adrenaline, things that are analogs of adrenaline or corticosteroids. Again, both things that are produced by the sympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system is essentially when you stimulate it, you get out of the symptoms. But of course, long term that doesn't fix asthma.

0:21:27 - (Emrys): But coming back to something like a hypervagatonic state, tonic state, people often will find things that stimulate the sympathetic. I've mentioned caffeine, but that's not actually a good version of stimulating the sympathetic. Anything that kind of stimulates sympathetic will actually make them feel better briefly, but they'll tend to crash because often over time they lose a lot of. It's called sympathetic tone.

0:21:54 - (Emrys): And that's just their sympathetic nervous system is essentially undertrained. It's like unfit.

0:22:04 - (Bec): Yep.

0:22:05 - (Emrys): And so you go to use it, it can't last very long. One of the great things to do for someone in that state is to get lots of sunlight because sun exposure in and around their retina, outdoor sun, like real sun, not like lights, although they work a little bit, is to get 20 to 30 minutes of direct sunlight and you should get seven to eight hours of cortisol in increase and sustained. That's on a healthy autonomic nervous system.

0:22:33 - (Emrys): So very useful if someone, you know, it doesn't work for everyone, but it can work.

0:22:39 - (Bec): Is this like the premise as well, for there's these certain brain clinics that are supporting like a range of brain conditions. But obviously, and I know you know about this is the, the, the red light and those light therapies that go like through the cranium. Is it the sort of the same kind of thing?

0:22:58 - (Emrys): Yeah, so that's called transcranial photobiomodulation. I use it in my clinic. There are other things associated with this which they're mainly to do with melanocytes. So you know, you've got melanocytes, these are the ones that give you a skin color. But melanocytes are actually in the, in a lot of tissues in the body, the areas where you wouldn't expect them. And all medicine ever says about that is that they're kind of misplaced. And the truth is nothing is incorrect. Everything is there for a reason.

0:23:27 - (Emrys): Melanocytes are in the retina. Okay. So those melanocytes have connections to other melanocytes. They have almost like their own neural network. And those melanocytes talk to other melanocytes in the midbrain and down the brain stem. So that's essentially what that means is, is that the vagus nerve is having some interaction with light through melanocytes and brain as well. Well, I mean, we don't really know. We just know that light is doing something in the brain through the cells, through the melanocytes. There's a lot of thoughts that's to the mitochondria mostly that's theoretical. There's a lot of beliefs around it.

0:24:10 - (Emrys): But my, my belief is that it's a tuning thing. It's all about tuning the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is our master clock in our brain, which tunes to the time of the day so that we know when we're meant to do things. This is our circadian rhythm and our vagus nerve is a circadian nerve. Right. So it behaves differently during the day than it does at night. Right. And so many of you people have heard, many people would have heard of time restricted eating or feeding where, you know, Sachin Panda did a lot of this research where the nerve is stimulated, the body is stimulated by food.

0:24:51 - (Emrys): Could be coffee, can be any food, and then it has about a 12 hour window which to consume all the food it needs for the enzymatic processes are diminished. Well, every single process that he's referring to is vagal. So the vagus nerve gets activated by the introduction of something in which stimulates the liver. Coffee is one of them. Any food is going to stimulate the Liver. Okay, so that's how you know the vagus nerve has been activated. It's got a 12 hour clock, but only in the gut.

0:25:24 - (Emrys): That's something to be aware of. It's not a simple system where the entire thing activates. It's only specific to the gut. And so we need light to tell us what time of day it is. It can really help tune behavior in the nervous system. So for people who just don't want to think about it too much, just get your sunlight during the day, during midday, 11 to 1. Around that time, get a good amount of time in the sun.

0:25:50 - (Emrys): That will solve a lot of the problems.

0:25:51 - (Bec): When we're often told to stay out of the sun.

0:25:55 - (Emrys): Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's a whole other thing, isn't it?

0:25:57 - (Bec): I do notice, just a little bit off topic, but I, I do notice with dogs, they will have almost like specific times of the day where they know just to go and they'll sit out and they'll sunbathe and, and do. And they seem to have this inherent ability to understand the cycles of the day, like if your child's coming home from school or whatever. And so there's obviously something like it doesn't have to be that we have a watch or a clock on the.

0:26:22 - (Emrys): Watch on the wall.

0:26:24 - (Bec): Like we, we've got this inbuilt ability to do these kind of things with our biology.

0:26:28 - (Emrys): I think it's all to do with being indoors. You know, like, because we're indoors, we have this artificial light, we have this artificial environment and also with temperature as well. So, you know, we don't really know what time of day it is. We know because of the clock, but we don't know at an autonomic level.

0:26:44 - (Bec): Yeah, cellular level.

0:26:46 - (Emrys): Exactly. So I think that's really important and you know, tying it back to brain health. Well, if you want these systems to work, you've got to give them their natural environment in which they work their best. And so light is one of them. The other one is actually outdoor time because they're, you know, there's radiation that comes into the earth from the app, from outer space. And that radiation is heavily correlated. The amount of radiation that your body takes on is heavily correlated with the amount of vagal tone you have.

0:27:19 - (Emrys): So the more time you spend outdoors, not indoors, because you don't get that radiation, it's filtered.

0:27:23 - (Bec): The light becomes filtered.

0:27:25 - (Emrys): It's all filtered. None of it's like normal. Right. It's only if you're outdoors. And so it could even be in an Urban environment. It's not even really necessarily that it's nature, although of course nature would be the, you know, the best. But even just being outdoors in the city could have a positive effect on your autonomic nervous system.

0:27:42 - (Bec): I was reading research about this actually about how the, that brain health has such a close connection to like people who have, who live near to like big green spaces. So if you're in an urban neighbourhood, but you live right near a park, you're gonna have better brain health outcomes than someone who lives, you know, 10 kilometres away or so. Your proximity to it matters. And you're also. Then on top of that, you know, we, there's tons of research about spending time in nature that it's not, it's not esoteric anymore. Like it's very fact-based.

0:28:16 - (Emrys): It's not. And you know, the fact that they're, they're measuring like there's a study I posted on one of my Instagram posts on they, and this is what I'm referring to. They measured HRV of people who spent more time outdoors. And it's just the hrv, which measures your vagal tone and your autonomic health was so much higher in the people that spent doors, outdoor time, more outdoor time compared to the ones indoors. And it's, it's also, we haven't mentioned grounding, but grounding is another thing on top of that, which, you know, there's like layers of this is good, this is better, and this is even better.

0:28:49 - (Emrys): And so like the best would be outdoor time, barefoot on the earth in nature and clean air, obviously with good sunlight. Good sunlight. And all those things actually tune our nervous system to perform and behave better. So if we've got a nervous system that's not working, the first thing is what are our first principles? Well, our body is tuned to nature, so why don't we put it into its natural environment for a while and see if we feel better.

0:29:20 - (Emrys): Okay. But there are cases that that doesn't work and those are the ones that have damage and those will heal better in nature. It's true. Like Florence Nightingale always, you know, used to bring her patients outdoors for sunlight and outdoor exposure. They got better, faster for a reason. It's the same for anyone with nerve damage or brain damage. And often they're, you know, hard to distinguish the difference between vagus nerve damage and brain damage. Although there are some critical things that you can use clinically to know that.

0:29:51 - (Emrys): Um, but they're often tied together and we need people to not do things that harm the process you know, like sedentary behaviour. Exercise is great for the brain. We know that's an obvious one. Walking, running, all of the above. Anything and everything activity-wise. And I think a lot of, unfortunately a lot of clinicians in my field made others really scared, particularly ones in chronic pain, to like, be careful of movement, be careful of this. And the truth is all forms of exercise are good. There's no bad exercise and there's no good. It's just exercise. And you need to do it regularly every day.

0:30:30 - (Emrys): Just start walking, you know, and if you can't do, just, just go for 500 steps. If you can't do more than that, try 600 the next day and seven. Build it up over time. Yeah. So then air quality, getting outside, all those things that matter. And then we haven't even got onto water and food, you know, but those things need to be there. That's what I found clinically.

0:30:54 - (Bec): Yeah, you can't. Yeah, you can't out intervene that.

0:30:58 - (Emrys): No, no, you can't. And, but then you bring in all the clinical things I use, like I've mentioned before, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation, it's like the, this is like the gold standard treatment now for vagus nerve. It's what's researched the Most. You go to PubMed and you look up transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and you'll find so many trials have been done, so many reviews, meta-analyses, all that.

0:31:24 - (Emrys): And it's amazing what's being done. And we're, we're honing in on the best approach. I've got my own approach based on my own experience, so, you know, that's what I do. But I use the same print, same therapy. And then I've added in other things like direct vagus nerve treatments for, to help it repair better using light therapy. We've mentioned infrared or just red light. You can use other therapies like ultrasound and shock wave as an adjunct to that.

0:31:50 - (Emrys): Even things like electroacupuncture help a lot along vagal pathways. Yeah, they're very effective. And to anyone who's an acupuncturist, you know, the pericardium line, that's also known as the median nerve, that is almost certainly a vagal line. We don't know how, we haven't got the pathway yet, but that appears to be the case. And so there's all sorts of other ways you can work on the vagus nerve as in a clinical setting that can really help people.

0:32:17 - (Emrys): But people can't forget the basics, you know, like that's the critical thing here. So a lot of people go on my program, they say, you know, you need to do these things, you need to do your homework to get better. And that would be the case for any brain-based problem, you know, that, you know, implement brain-based treatments like light therapy, you mentioned that. And brain-based nutrition. It might be changing your diet towards something that's interventional diet rather than just healthy eating.

0:32:47 - (Emrys): You know, like is there specifics when.

0:32:49 - (Bec): It comes to diet that, that interrupt vagus nerve or, or it's just.

0:32:53 - (Emrys): Well, the vagus nerve really activates in the presence of fat. So you know, that's probably why the ketogenic diet at least in part is so effective. But also carnivore diet. Yeah, like carnivore and the keto diet. The reason why I think Carnival works so well is because meat and animal products have some of the lowest toxin levels of all foods. Grains and some. A lot of vegetables have a lot of heavy metals by exposure in the ground.

0:33:22 - (Emrys): Fruits don't have as much, but those actually have the most. And processed foods. If you remove all these toxins and you just start having lots of meat which has the lower toxin levels. And even dairy because the more you consume dairy. There's a study that came out, they found that people, the more people consumed dairy in their diet, the less serum heavy metals they had. So there's some weird connection between dairy consumption and low heavy metals. And I don't really understand it, but a lot of people hate dairy. Fine, whatever do you want? But I like dairy.

0:33:55 - (Bec): Modern day dairy, it's probably not that great but.

0:33:57 - (Emrys): No, maybe not. Maybe go raw dairy. If we can get more of that one day it won't be illegal. But I, I like cheese and butter and things like that cream. But I don't particularly like milk. But that's just from historically not drinking.

0:34:10 - (Bec): The same I would have.

0:34:11 - (Emrys): I don't know why. I don't know why. Yeah, yeah, but dairy's not bad. Like I don't think it's a bad thing. I think we're learning more about what really causes problems. And I don't think dairy on average is the caus. And there's a lot of health, particularly for people who are vegetarian, that can be garnered by having a lot of dairy. So then, then you know, so diet, it does play a huge role with vagal health because you need good fat levels, you need good protein for cytoskeleton structures of nerves. You know, nerves are actually full of proteins as well, not just fat.

0:34:44 - (Emrys): And I mentioned the fat. And the reason why the fat stimulates the vagus nerve is because fat activates the release of cholecystokinin CCK. CCK is the most potent hormone in the gut that stimulates the vagal response, vagal activity in the brain, the whole body. Yeah, that's a pretty low-grade research because it's very hard to analyse. I would say, I would take it as sort of a something to consider, but not something to hang your hat on yet.

0:35:18 - (Emrys): But definitely fat seems to stimulate the vagus nerve and be helpful for nerves. Anyway. We know that. I mean, yeah.

0:35:26 - (Bec): Exterior and the messages carrying.

0:35:28 - (Emrys): Yeah. So myelin is made of fat. So you need insulation. You want to repair myelin. You need really good structured fats. I particularly like animal fats. You could also use coconut oil. But saturated fats are great for neurons because they're a bit more, a bit more hearty. But also of course, your omega 3s and you need a good, you need a good spectrum of fats. Of course. But yeah, yeah. So diet's a big role, but I think, you know, because there's a lot of people out there who aren't eating enough food and that's, you know, that's at the base level with you. Some, you know, we think about like specifics about diet, but some people just don't eat enough, you know.

0:36:05 - (Bec): Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot myself lately, to be honest, about how much food has become demonized over time and you know, how much of it is really bad versus how much is it that we just think is bad. And then you start to have food avoidance, which means then you start to undereat. And that causes probably just as many problems.

0:36:23 - (Emrys): Well, if you don't eat, you don't stimulate your vagus nerve. Because truth is, one of the most important ways of stimulating vagus is eating. Because eating is the most common vagal stimulation.

0:36:34 - (Bec): It is a happy place. I can see how that would work.

0:36:37 - (Emrys): Yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty obvious. Right. And there are ways or you should.

0:36:41 - (Bec): Feel calm when you eat.

0:36:43 - (Emrys): Yeah. And, and that's why you've got to take your time because the vagus nerve needs time to activate and get into full activation mode. That's why eating slowly is important. Chewing, chewing food activates the vagus nerve even though the chewing action is not vagal. It's trigeminal tasting food, although partly vagal. You need time with food, you know, you need. It's like there's a whole system of nerves that are involved in eating, but they all communicate with one thing, and that's the vagus nerve. Because without that, you don't have digestion absorption.

0:37:14 - (Bec): I remember we talked last time about how much of an influence it has on things like stomach acid and enzyme production as well. So very important.

0:37:21 - (Emrys): Any process you've got in the gut is likely vagal, like so any enzymes, enzyme release, any contractility, motility, movement of food, release of water, all of the above is vagal. Without the vagus nerve, it just doesn't happen. Even the decline of tissue. So you can tie back Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, sibo, ibs, although IBS is not decline of tissue per se, even celiac disease, although that. That's a bit more of a complicated picture, obviously because of the reaction to gluten.

0:37:57 - (Emrys): But these tissues actually heavy associate these problems have a heavy association with vagus nerve problems as well. And there's evidence to suggest that damage to the nerve precedes these conditions. So we don't know exactly how with every case because there's not one exactly the same case. And that's. It's important to remember that when trying to figure these things out that it's not always going to look identical.

0:38:24 - (Emrys): But vagus nerve damage due to toxin exposure, like I've mentioned, or compression, they're the main two. There are other types of. The main two are going to be the first things to rule out.

0:38:38 - (Bec): Yep. And I mean, obviously a lot of those vaguely oriented conditions also in and of themselves tend to have these things that we began the discussion with. You know, the, the hallmarks of brain fog or poor concentration, maybe some memory issues that it comes down to, you know, again, a range of things. The nerve function, the lack of or of digestion, the assimilation of nutrition, the, the cortisol and yeah, melatonin kind of waves and all of that. Like, it all kind of ties together, doesn't it?

0:39:12 - (Emrys): It does. I mean, melatonin, of course, is very circadian, as is cortisol. Cortisol's hydrating the day it goes away pretty much. And then melatonin rises. And we know that the vagus nerve now, we now know this, the vagus nerve increases melatonin levels and it makes melatonin rise at a more steady, fast like uptick rate, what's called tidal rise, which is, you know, all cortisol and melatonin have tidal rises. They look like. They look like a tide.

0:39:42 - (Bec): They look like a tide. The high Low tide.

0:39:43 - (Emrys): Yeah, yeah.

0:39:44 - (Bec): And they're inverse of each other when.

0:39:46 - (Emrys): Exactly. And they can't. They, you know, one. As one goes up, the other has to come down for the other one to go up, Right?

0:39:52 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:39:52 - (Emrys): So if the vagus nerve has a role to play in melatonin, which clearly it does, we now know that we already knew that it has a role to cut in cortisol. But weirdly, it doesn't just lower cortisol or something, it can. Right. It can actually raise cortisol. In cases where they're examining patients with depression, they'll test their. Their saliva cortisol, and they'll find that some cases of depression have low cortisol, some cases of depression have high cortisol.

0:40:21 - (Emrys): And what they found is that all the cases had normalised cortisol by the end. So the vagus nerve stimulation, that is the intervention that they were using, normalised cortisol, which is a. Basically means it regulates the system.

0:40:37 - (Bec): Yeah.

0:40:37 - (Emrys): It brings it back to homeostasis or a more appropriate rise and fall. And that would include melatonin, if they had tested for it, but they didn't. In that, what do you think?

0:40:47 - (Bec): There's a. There's. Perhaps we're starting to understand that there may or may not be a relationship between, like, screen time and cortisol and melatonin energy levels, sleep cycles, that kind of thing. Like, how does the vagus nerve feed into that? Is there a connection?

0:41:06 - (Emrys): Well, look, obviously blue light is problematic, but I do think that screen time at night is not the most important. Like, if people are going to fall asleep, they're going to fall asleep, if that's the factor. Right. And then we can measure other things like depth of sleep quality and all that. But let's just say what has. Like the vagus of. Is clearly involved in the release of hormones. Okay. The vagus nerve is definitely affected by light hitting the retina.

0:41:38 - (Emrys): It likes natural light to regulate it because that's what's in nature. Right. But it could be infrared, it could be one of these specific bands, but we haven't tested that. And so it regulates the vagus nerve behavior to the point where these hormones do the right thing. Then you enter things like screen time and do you turn off that vagal response? Because a lot of people will say these. These systems are hormonal, they're endocrine. Right. They're not neurological.

0:42:10 - (Emrys): But the truth is, we know that all endocrine are neuroendocrine. You know, there's no such thing as endocrine. There's only neuroendocrine. In other words, you have to have.

0:42:21 - (Bec): A sensory aspect in order for the endocrine.

0:42:23 - (Emrys): You need some feedback loop occurring. You need. You need a neurological structure. Hypothalamus, for example, pituitary gland is endocrine. Hypothalamus is neuroendocrine. So, you know, you need to have a neurological substrate. And maybe there's a substrate before all of that, and that is the vagus nerve. And that would make sense because the vagus nerve is involved in digestion of food, which is, you know, heavily regulated by circadian rhythm.

0:42:52 - (Emrys): And if it ties in a lot with things like the suprachiasmatic nucleus, our master clock, which is receiving all the inputs about what time of day it is and then sending information out, maybe they work together. This is hypothesis, this stage. They work together to regulate hormonal release. So if it's not working, you're going to get changes in hormonal release. And cortisol is a really important hormone. You know, like, if we don't have it, we get so many problems.

0:43:23 - (Bec): It's such a victim of bad press, isn't it?

0:43:24 - (Emrys): Oh, I mean, look, no one wants low cortisol. I can tell you now, anyone has come and said, look, I've got adrenal fatigue, or I can tell you now, it's just never that unless they've got, like actual adrenal pathology. You know, it's such a terrible term, adrenal fatigue. I'm not a fan. They're probably a hyper-vagatonic, really.

0:43:43 - (Bec): That's probably disrupted, that rhythmic rise and fall too. Like.

0:43:47 - (Emrys): Yeah, yeah.

0:43:47 - (Bec): A lot of the time that's an assumption that someone's low or high. But what's happened is that rise has moved. It's either forward or back. So if it's moved back, then you're going to wake up early or wake in the middle of the night when you're supposed to be continuing to sleep. And if you wake in the morning and you're absolutely fatigued and you struggling to haul your butt out of bed, then you've probably moved that line this way. So I think that the rhythms stay, but the movement, the time movement has changed.

0:44:16 - (Emrys): Well, I think, I think what we have here is a situation of where is the starting point? Like, so there's a bunch of people who say, oh, you know, a lot of disease is to do with abnormal circadian rhythm. Okay, so maybe it is. Maybe it's all to do with light exposure and indoor being, you know, not enough, you know, appropriate light exposure, too much light exposure at night, indoors, not enough outdoors during the middle of the day. When you're eating. Things like that. All these, they're called zeitgebers, they're things that stimulate circadian rhythm.

But could it be that an abnormal autonomic nervous system precedes it? An abnormality there makes those things more problematic. And that's my opinion. My opinion is you need to have the… you have to have the disorder nomic state. You could say, well, just like abnormal autonomic function, whether it's from toxicity, other things that we've mentioned, the list is being added day to day, I'm trying to figure it out.

0:45:19 - (Emrys): And then you bring in something like disordered use of light or you know, sedentary behaviour, all these things. And then that triggers a downstream effect which results in hormonal imbalances, in fatigue-based conditions, in gut problems, which all could be direct from the vagus of anyway, but you know, or even conditions that aren't related to circadian rhythm, related to something else which have downstream effects from the autonomic nervous system would certainly explain why.

0:45:50 - (Bec): And I remember years ago reading this research and going, why this nutrient has this impact? But I remember reading that alpha lipoic acid, which as you know, is like a, a something that helps boost like glutathione levels. And I was like, this research is showing that alpha lipoic acid as an intervention could have an impact on circadian rhythms. And at the time, I don't know, this was like 15 years ago, I thought that's such a bizarre thing. Like why is that? But this would kind of explain it. Like autonomic systems rest, digest, detox and cleanse. It's probably having a crossover effect in that regard.

0:46:25 - (Emrys): And look, there is a lot of things that we think we know. The truth is we don't know it a lot. Like 99% of what we think we know is actually probably incorrect. But we can go by experience of things that work and try to make sense of it at, like at the face, at the, at the coal face. Because you know, you go and read a paper on the vagus nerve, right? I can give you a good example of how this can be and it will explain all these pathways. But what they don't tell you is none of those pathways are proven and they are completely speculation.

0:47:01 - (Emrys): And you know, when there's other evidence to suggest that components of that pathway which were considered to be like correct in neuroscience, are now being dismantled and actually being disproven, how Is it that can we can use that pathway as factual? We can't. And so what we can say is that the vagus nerve has an influence on inflammation. And the reason it does that, in my opinion, is it's a detox nerve, right? Without it, you cannot eliminate, you cannot detoxify properly.

0:47:33 - (Emrys): And so, you know, inflammation by and large is due to toxicity from my perspective. And anything to do with inflammation is not bad. It's an effect of inflammation trying to eliminate toxins. Inflammation is detoxification. Like a lot of people don't know that. You know, your macrophages are actually like Pacman, they eat metals. Look up macrophages and bioremediation or macrophages and heavy metals. And you know, there'll be some things that say that heavy metals increase macrophages, things like that. So that's the point, right? So the body will increase monocyte maturation into macrophages and you'll have more monocytes. And you'll say, your docs, they will say, oh, you've got this information.

0:48:19 - (Emrys): So that might be why you're sick. No, you're sick because of all those PFAs you've been as an example. And macrophages are eating up as an example of one thing within inflammation that does that, these other things. And so, you know, this is misinterpretation of data. Like, I mean, it's more complex than that. And for some people, that's too hard inflammation, just leave it at that is for what most people do. And unfortunately, I think it's the wrong way of looking at it. Like for example, red light therapy, you would probably say is anti-inflammatory. Right?

0:48:58 - (Emrys): It's not anti inflammatory, it's pro-inflammatory. And by being pro-inflammatory, it is anti-inflammatory because the net effect is the body completes its cycle of inflammation.

0:49:09 - (Bec): Faster, which is similar to the, to a lot of these kind of emerging therapies. Yeah, or pain states. You know, everything from the. What's that called? The acu needling, where it gets needled into assets to do with like a biofeedback loop.

0:49:24 - (Emrys): And it must cause trauma to create a healing response. Something that people are stuck without in their inflammation is insufficient. And so, you know, there are cases where the sympathetic nervous system is overactive and that suppresses inflammation. And that's why you need really good vagal activity to support healing because changes in your autonomic function will result in no healing. We know that by corticosteroid use, you know, if you have corticosteroids suppress healing, obviously we Know that. Right.

0:49:57 - (Emrys): And so that's the same for sympathetic activity. You know, stress response is going to suppress healing. And so we need our body, we need to understand that it's not just damage, it's toxicity too. And that the autonomic nervous system seems to be involved in nearly every single thing. And it makes sense though I mentioned first up, that the autonomic nervous system is involved in survival. In fact, it is the way we survive. Every single thing that's involved in survival, like heart rate, blood flow, you know, your breathing is autonomic, your digestion of food, your absorption of water, your fever response is vagal, vomiting is vagal, coughing is vagal, diarrhoea is vagal. They're all pretty much vagal or autonomic sympathetic nervous system.

0:50:51 - (Emrys): So, you know, it makes sense that it starts there. It kind of does make more sense. So we should look to that system and what's affected it rather than going all the way down the other end and focusing on the mast cells or something like that. Which it's not necessarily a bad thing because you'll get results. But is it going to cure people? That's the question.

0:51:13 - (Bec): You'll get those long-term results. So people who've made it this far, analysing, I've probably plucked out nuggets about chat going, oh, I wonder if this could be an issue for me. So, I mean like, if people are just starting to become, let's call it vagus nerve, curious what, you know, where do they start or what things? What are these kind of daily strategies and practices that they could do to kind of help bring more balance into the autonomic nervous system.

0:51:44 - (Emrys): So obviously healthy lifestyle is a healthy autonomic nervous system. Okay, so, you know, not smoking, although nicotine provides some short-term improvements, not long-term. Alcohol is so bad for the autonomic nervous system that you can suppress the vagus nerve within like three or four drinks and then you just, your vagal function shuts down. And if you're alcoholic, you know, most of those alcoholic symptoms are actually autonomic dysfunction.

0:52:16 - (Bec): Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

0:52:18 - (Emrys): So that, that aside, and even any kind of recreational drugs and some pharmaceuticals too, unfortunately. Yeah, but putting those aside because that makes it more complicated. People need to get outdoors, they need to get their sunlight, they need to get, they need to get good midday sun, they need to exercise, whether it's just walking, they need to make sure that they eat food that is real food, not packaged, refined, processed food.

0:52:51 - (Emrys): It doesn't matter if it's vegetables, fruit, it doesn't matter, just real food. Organic at the best. Whatever. It, it's great if you can eat organic. It doesn't have to be organic. Okay. And then, you know, there's other things like breathing, which won't heal a damaged vagus nerve, but it will make a lot of people feel better. So people who. You'll know your type. Right. There are two main types of breathing. Slow breathing and fast breathing methods. One that's fast breathing is the WIM HOF method, which is hyperventilation.

0:53:26 - (Emrys): Someone I use for myself. I feel better for it. And then some are better with the opposite, which is slow breathing, like diaphragmatic or box breathing.

0:53:35 - (Bec): I definitely feel better with that.

0:53:36 - (Emrys): Yeah. And a lot of people will say that they don't like the WIM hof. They'll go with that. Okay, great. So. But they train different parts of the autonomic nervous system. Cold exposure is not a bad idea. Now cold exposure to the body activates the sympathetic nervous system. Cold exposure to the face activates the vagus nerve. So if you do both, remember, never just go and do this. You must go into the WIM Hof method if you want to learn how to do it properly and gradually expose yourself to cold. But it builds resilience, cold.

0:54:10 - (Emrys): And that is really important for the survival system, the autonomic nervous system. So you could look at that as a way of building it up. Yep. Now and it doesn't have to be an ice bath.

0:54:23 - (Bec): Right. Like we can.

0:54:24 - (Emrys): Oh no, no. Cold shower, plunging away. Next day it's 20 seconds. You build it up. And that's what they recommend normally on the WIM Hof method. Now beyond things like that, you're gonna often need like some people say, gargling and bitters and things like that. And there is some evidence, like hops bitters, for example, have very good evidence now. And you know, if anyone's heard of Kieran the beer, the Kieran have now they're producing medical hops bitters in lots of different drinks that are non alcoholic but also as prescription based or just supplements to reduce brain inflammation.

0:55:06 - (Emrys): And. Well, I mean it'll actually, it, it's, there's something in it because they've done controlled trials with this stuff, these bitters and they actually make your heart function better at a vagal level.

0:55:21 - (Bec): Yes. I started to read about this. Interesting.

0:55:23 - (Emrys): There's definitely something in it. I'm trying to source some good local hops bitters so that we, you know, don't have to get an import. I'd Rather have in Australia. But that's something for people to look out for. So there are things out there that are like therapeutic like hops, bitters. But you often will need in certain cases to start actually doing some kind of vagal repair program. The kind of stuff I do with patients.

0:55:51 - (Emrys): But you know, there's most of the healthy lifestyle behaviours I've already mentioned improve autonomic function. Okay. It's just that people don't relate to the autonomic nervous system as improving when they do that. I mentioned the ketogenic diet and the carnivore diet. Both have positive effects on the nervous system by and large. In the brain, healthy fats having more protein and fats that are from animal sources in the diet. I recommend that and hopefully more liver, obviously that's a very important one. And eat brains for your brains. That's actually not completely wrong if you, if you don't mind brains.

0:56:33 - (Emrys): But you know, these things are difficult for some people. I know. But like, you know, start with one thing, a daily walk, start with another thing. Just go outside more often. Be outside most of the day. One thing at a time, you know, and you might see some change. But when you've done everything else then you might need to see a clinician who's involved in vagus nerve therapy.

0:56:55 - (Bec): Yes. And this is obviously something that you do a lot of education around. So how do people find someone who understands and specialises in the vagus nerve? Aside from yourself, of course.

0:57:08 - (Emrys): Yeah. So I've trained a lot of clinicians out there. I run different groups online. My book is called the Vagus Nerve Unleashing the Body's Secret Weapon Against Disease. And there's a group associated with that, which we do. I do lots of posts on there, but I also run a wellness collective. It's like an educational group on my website which is emersgoldsworthy.com and often will people contact me and they'll say do you know anyone in Sydney, in Melbourne? And you know, and I'll refer them if they can't see someone in person or there isn't anyone there.

0:57:46 - (Emrys): I do telemedicine online consults. I have patients all around the world and there's a lot that can be done through my home-based program using, you know, inexpensive equipment that, you know, I've, I recommend to people. But there are more and more people doing work with the vagus nerve which is great. As long as we're dealing with the vagus nerve problem itself and not kind of treating the symptoms, you're probably on the right track.

0:58:15 - (Bec): Yeah. I mean, all of our modern lifestyles probably have culminated in a very disorganised vagal system. So it can't hurt to have more time in nature and deeper breathing.

0:58:30 - (Emrys): And look, I don't like, I really don't like patients coming in who haven't done that stuff. I feel it's like that step one, right? It is step one. I know it's hard and some patients find it really difficult to implement such things and maybe they need a bit of support around it, like advice and so on.

0:58:49 - (Bec): The last stuff for people, like, sometimes I think they think it's too simple. Like the answer couldn't possibly be that.

0:58:55 - (Emrys): Yeah, I know my health journey. The truth is it, it is the case that I would say probably 80 of my patients could have got better by just doing things that, you know, on a day to day basis that, you know, normalise the autonomic function, you know, because everyone has a vagus nerve damage, you know, or they just have an abnormal activity which you can't always quite concisely say what it is. But it could be just an, like a deficiency of nature. Like that is an actual thing, a deficiency of the environment, a deficiency of light that results in autonomic dysfunction.

0:59:31 - (Emrys): So it's not, it's not outside the realm of possibility. You know, we don't. They all impact our nervous system. We know that and we know it impacts our health. So it's more than likely that that's all because of its autonomic relationship.

0:59:46 - (Bec): Well said. And on that note, I'm going to thank you for once again sharing your expertise on this topic. I think we could travel down many tangents on the vagus nerve and we probably will in the future anyway. But yeah, I always love learning from you Emrys. I always take away something from our chats.

1:00:06 - (Emrys): Oh, it's great to chat to you again and I hope we get to chat about some other topics in the future.

1:00:11 - (Bec): Absolutely. Love to, anytime I will chat to you, you know that.

1:00:15 - (Emrys): Thank you.

1:00:15 - (Bec): Thanks, Emrys.