The gut, brain, immune, stress connection

I learned recently on gerontologist, Zora Benafu's podcast Hack My Age, from her guest Dr. Navaz Habib known as the Vagus Nerve Doc, that stimulating the vagus nerve, which activates the rest, digest, recover - parasympathetic response, reduces inflammation. This is huge! Inflammation is a causal factor of most symptoms and disease states. All inflammation is generated by our immune system. In his book Super Agers, Dr. Eric Topol attributes a defective immune response and/or hyper-inflammation as a cause of cardiometabolic diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, (which are among the top reasons for pre-mature death), autoimmune conditions, and accelerated aging.

It is widely estimated that 70-80% of our immune cells reside in our gut.

A blog article on AustinMD states that "Your gut immune system houses an astonishing 70-80% of your body’s immune cells! This concentration isn’t random—it’s your body’s primary defense against harmful pathogens and disease. The gut microbiota does far more than aid digestion. This complex community of microorganisms shapes your immune responses and overall health." Further, "chronic stress causes your body to produce greater levels of the stress hormone cortisol, leading to increased levels of inflammation. In addition, chronic stress decreases the body’s lymphocytes-the white blood cells that fight off infection."

Thus we have the perfect storm of mid-life Metabolic Chaos(TM), with a cascade of symptoms, leading us to feel poorly and wondering if we'll ever feel like ourselves again. Don't lose heart! There are plenty of diet and lifestyle practices that you can can surround yourself with like a cozy security blanket. If you're consistently wrapping your blanket of resilience around your body-mind, by leaning into practices that support you where you're at, you'll be able to feel better and show up for your life, your family, friends and colleagues.

You can start by breathing.

While diet and lifestyle upgrades are multitudinous, and you will need to stop the bad stuff from getting in, like bad food and bad bugs (in the form of gut bacteria), and toxins (including toxic people and relationships), and consistently add in good stuff, like nourishing food, water, mindfulness, movement, being out in nature, mindset - releasing negative narratives in favor of constructive intentions, muscles, supportive people, good rest and sleep. You can start by breathing.

Here's a quick tutorial on extended exhale breathing.

Why specifically extended exhale? It calms your nervous system by activating your vagus nerve, known to slow your heart rate and reduce blood pressure. It sends a signal to your brain that it’s time to relax, dialing down that fight, flight or freeze response that tied to stress and anxiety. In hospitals, the artificial breathing machines are timed to have extended exhales for this reason.

Start by having your feet firmly on the ground and making sure you're in a comfortable position with your torso upright. You may close your eyes. Continue by placing your right hand on your belly and left hand on your heart and observing which hand is moving with your breath. We will be using a 1:2 ratio, so we will be inhaling through your nose into our belly for a count of 4 and exhaling for a count of 8. Fill your belly first; your breath may move more into your chest on the 4th count or so and that’s fine.

When you exhale, constrict the back of your throat like you're trying to fog up a mirror, to really activate the vagus nerve and get the calming, feeling of safety that we're aiming for.

Then you breathe out for the extended count of 8, exhaling through your nose out of your upper torso first and squeezing the last bit out of your belly squeezing up your diaphragm muscle. Try this for 4 rounds.

Okay, return to your normal breathing. Pause. Observe how you feel. Can you tell that there's a difference? That took less than a minute.

Now that you have this tool in your toolkit, you can take it out and use it liberally. When you feel stressed, before you eat to signal to your gut that your safe, so it can work on digestion, when you're falling asleep, when your meditating, when you get a frustrating email, when you're running late, when your bothered by traffic or anything out of your control. Anytime, everywhere.

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