There are a whole bunch of vagus nerve manipulations in current medicine. Many are quite common to self treat for things like converting episodes of SVT. Although the effectiveness is mixed. If they could find a non-drug treatment for Afib, I bet that would be big money based on the potential population and the current drug cocktail side effects.
Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
61–70 of 159 posts
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#62I have acid reflux and possibly a mild hiatal hernia. When it triggers in Just The Right Way, I also get severe panic attack symptoms. When I started investigating it (my coping mechanism during panic attacks) I discovered that the vagus nerve travels next to the esophagus through the diaphragm. So my complete layman explanation was that the stomach pushes through the diaphragm during a hiatal hernia -> it rubs again…
Famotidine an old school H2 antihistamine used for acid reflux (pre PPIs), was found to have an additional mechanism of action via activation of the vagus nerve to inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines in covid (via alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7nAChR) signal transduction - https://molmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s10020-022... ). It has also been used quite extensively to combat post-covid neurop…
That's interesting about famotidine. This is also a treatment for MCAS, which is probably under-diagnosed because it's kind of obscure and the diagnostic criteria kind of suck currently. It can reduce stomach acid, so my doctor and I decided against using it as the first option in treatment, but may reconsider even though the alternative seems to be working. Thanks for the link and explanation.
Can you share any relevant resources or ideas you've gotten on reducing the opportunists and increasing butyrate production? I've coaxed and cajoled my MMC and other digestive processes back into shape, or so it seems, but am struggling on the microbiome angle. It's tricky because the list of foods that trigger symptoms is insanely long, so it's hard to get creative and experimental as far as that goes.
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#63>Further research revealed that the brain communicates with the spleen – an organ that plays a critical role in the immune system – by sending electrical signals down the vagus nerve. These trigger the release of a chemical called acetylcholine that tells immune cells to switch off inflammation. Electrically stimulating the vagus nerve with an implanted device achieved the same feat.
One might also achieve comparable effects by drinking baking soda.
>"We think the cholinergic (acetylcholine) signals that we know mediate this anti-inflammatory response aren't coming directly from the vagal nerve innervating the spleen, but from the mesothelial cells that form these connections to the spleen," O'Connor says.
>While there is no known direct connection between the vagal nerve and the spleen -- and O'Connor and his team looked again for one -- the treatment also attenuates inflammation and disease severity in rheumatoid arthritis, researchers at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research reported in 2016 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
O'Connor hopes drinking baking soda can one day produce similar results for people with autoimmune disease.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180425093745.h...
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#64I thought all the Hacker News "smarter than everyone else, self prescribers" were still endorsing Adderall, mild hallucinogens, and poop-swapping. But, by all means, shine on you crazy diamonds.
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#65There is also 10+ years research for tinnitus using Vagus Nerve Stimulation to stop it [1]. Results seem mixed. Many other drugs/neuro-stimuli for T have gotten mixed results and passed clinical trials such as Leniere only to flop in actual usage. It's interesting that the community anecdotal evidence such as r/tinnitus and TinnitusTalk are so useful for these cases because they are more likely to report negative res…
I’ve got tinnitus and can’t really foresee any kind of solution. Not sure what the vagus nerve would do given the ears go straight in to the brain. Hopefully one day though, I’ve learned to live with it for the time being.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel down this rabbit hole after reading Breath by James Nestor. Got serious about practising 5.5 second inhales / exhales and started forcing myself to adjust to nose breathing (even during exercise) It did a total number on my anxiety levels and pulled me out of the constant cortisol fuelled fight or flight mode I found myself as I slowly crashed and burned into the ground I wish someone had taught me as a child,…
Post the technique here so lazy people like me can read about it!
I think they're talking about box breathing:https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing
4s:Full breath in
4s:Hold
4s:Full breath out
4s:Hold*
*this one seems the least natural to me as you're just sitting there, at the bottom of an invisible pool, wasting away.
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a doctor so I won't pretend I understand how these treatments work but: > Tracey immediately recognised the therapeutic implications, having spent years trying to develop better treatments for inflammatory conditions such as sepsis, arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Existing drugs dampen inflammation, but carry a risk of serious side effects. Here was a technique with the potential to switch off inflammation wit…
sepsis isn't an "inflammatory condition". It's a death sentence if it isn't dealt with promptly. Lumping that in with arthritis renders this meaningless.
Sepsis occurs when inflammations goes from being localized to being spread throughout your entire body. The bacterial infection is obviously the root of the problem, but it's the inflammation that actually kills. Being able to turn off that severe systemic inflammation might buy doctors precious hours or even days to successfully treat the infection before the patient's critical organ system shut down for good.
As laypeople, should probably take a beat before saying statements made by experts and medical researchers are "meaningless."
From google:
>Sepsis is a highly inflammatory disorder with the presence of organ dysfunction in severe cases and mostly caused by bacterial infection (Bone et al., 1989).
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#68For me, the amazing thing about the Vagus nerve is that you can stimulate it with your breathing. And since the Vagus nerve affects the autonomic nervous system (involuntary, not consciously controlled) while breathing choices are conscious, this is one of the few ways that humans can directly impact important aspects of their psychology and physiology, like how calm they feel. Mindfulness + breath choices + vagus ne…
A modern classic would be Holotropic Breathwork, developed by Stanislav Grof after the LSD based therapies he had been developing in the 1970s were made illegal. Yes, it sounds like hippie silliness. But it does have notable effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof
https://www.amazon.com/Holotropic-Breathwork-Self-Exploratio...
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#69For me, the amazing thing about the Vagus nerve is that you can stimulate it with your breathing. And since the Vagus nerve affects the autonomic nervous system (involuntary, not consciously controlled) while breathing choices are conscious, this is one of the few ways that humans can directly impact important aspects of their psychology and physiology, like how calm they feel. Mindfulness + breath choices + vagus ne…
This might go beyond how you feel and into direct biological impacts. I don’t listen to the Huberman Lab podcast much these days but I did listen to the episode with David Linden, which I found quite interesting. [1] At one point, they are discussing the mind/body axis and the latest scientific developments in exploring how mental states can affect the body. There is a fascinating although very untested - but, testable - hypothesis that meditation may be able to slow the growth of cancerous tumours. The mechanism here is via nerve endings that reach the tumour and their effect on immune responses at the site.
Linden was emphatic about how science requires a mechanism of action, and that when people refer to this potential effect against cancer as due to “alignment of chakras” or whatever, it is “bullshit” to use his word.
I get where he’s coming from, but on the flip side, the benefits of meditative practice were arrived at long before science took any note of them. In fact for many years, the scientific perspective on it was that it was entirely bullshit. Meanwhile the people who were (admittedly incorrectly) talking about chakras were delivering real benefits to their followers. As such it seems to me that more respect is warranted, and perhaps even more caution. What do you think?
1 https://hubermanlab.com/dr-david-linden-life-death-and-the-n...
Re: Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent 6 years trying everything to solve reflux. I am a relatively fit 35 year old. I tried antacids, PPIs, H2 blockers and these just exacerbated the issue over time. Eventually after much reading I read that without enough stomach acid, food backs up and causes reflux. It also causes the LES to not close properly. So I started taking Betain HCL and Digestive Enzymes (Solgar ones) before I eat and I can't tell you…
I have a vague recollection that I was tested well over a decade ago and the result was that I have really mild stomach acid and/or not enough of it. Basically if I eat stuff that digests slowly (fats and red meat), it takes my stomach a LONG time to actually break it down and move it forward. If I shove more stuff in there before it's done -> bad time. I lost over 10kg during the worst episodes in about 9 months, I…
Sounds really awful. Sorry to hear that! I wonder if this would have happened many years ago before modern agriculture and all the awful stuff that is present in our foods. I wonder if our environments are causing this lack of stomach acid / enzymes in people. This can’t surely have been happening when we were hunter / gatherers!