Constant stress problems
Constant demands on your time can make you more stressed out and worried, which can lead to a number of mental illnesses. Stress is the main cause of diseases like heart disease, chronic skin problems, chronic cluster headaches, and other psychiatric disorders. It is also one of the biggest contributors to these diseases.
Why medication is not an answer?
Most pharmaceuticals have a success rate of less than 50% and can cause unbearably bad side effects. Because of this, doctors can’t use drugs to treat stress-related diseases because the side effects are too bad.
Alternative treatments?
Alternative treatments have been made in recent years to help with these problems and lessen the bad side effects of medications. In particular, a lot of research is being done on ways to help by stimulating nerves. Because these techniques can change the way the nervous system works, they are often called neuromodulation. Since 1990, a lot has been learned about vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) using implanted or invasive VNS devices and other neuromodulation techniques. It is the autonomic nervous system’s main parasympathetic nerve fiber. Since the first VNS device was implanted in a human in 1989, over 100,000 people around the world have been treated with VNS.
Why we should care about HRV and vagus nerve?
HRV (Heart rate variability) The vagus nerve is often thought of as protective, soothing, and defensive. HRV, which stands for “Heart Rate Variability,” was used in this study. HRV is the difference in the length of time between heartbeats. It can tell how stressed a person is by how the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems change. Several studies show that when there is stress, the HRV variable HF goes down and the LF variable goes up. This decreases parasympathetic activity. To stimulate the parasympathetic system, people came up with stimulation frequencies that usually make the sympathetic system respond. Even though it is rare to stimulate the vagus nerve at the cervical level, there is a lot of potential there because the vagus nerve is especially easy to work with.
To figure out what effect VNS has, you can estimate the LF and HF parts of HRV. Based on these results, it is clear that VNS decreased LF values while increasing HF values. This shows that the parasympathetic nervous system was more active than the sympathetic nervous system. The difference between the LF/HF ratio before and after VNS was also calculated. Between before and after the VNS sessions, all fifteen participants saw a 64.5 percent drop in their stress level. Need more information about science? Click here to find out more 🙂
When someone sits still for short periods of time, it’s normal for their stress levels to go down a little. However, the fact that the VNS sessions caused a bigger drop may mean that the stimulation is effective at lowering stress. Shows an example of an HRV frequency analysis from one participant before and after VNS. The higher HF rise than LF rise after VNS shows that parasympathetic activity went up instead of sympathetic activity. Changes in HRV parameters caused by VNS have been found in other studies with about the same frequency.
Stimulating the Vagus nerve activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the essential element for rest, digestion, restoration and relaxation. This makes you calmer, less stressed, less anxious and results in far better sleep. A better night leads to a better day. And you dont need sleep music, habit menu or watch some sleep gifs!
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TLDR: Your Heart Rate Variability, or HRV, is variance in time between your heart beats and is an important metric for measuring how well your nervous system is able to switch between “fight or flight” (sympathetic state) and “rest and digest’ (parasympathetic state).
By increasing your HRV, it’s possible to reduce pain, get better sleep, and support your body to become more resilient to stress.
