Discover the Single Most Important Nerve and Why its Key to Solving Your Anxiety

Anxiety can be perplexing. Sometimes there is a clearly defined event or situation that triggers it and other times it appears a mystery. But, that depends on how you look at it. 

Stress and anxiety are intimately linked. According to the American Psychological Association anxiety leads to a nearly identical set of symptoms as stress: insomnia, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, muscle tension and irritability. 

One problem is that they are only looking for what caused the anxiety initially and not looking at what are the conditions that are perpetuating anxiety. The reality is that over 90% of all illness, disease, and conditions have a relationship to stress. 

The key is how we look at stress, what it is, and how the body responds to stress. Sometimes it helps to take a 30,000 ft view of stress and evaluate a bigger picture. This can offer insights about how the body is impacted by stress’ effect on the nervous system.

The Cascade of the Stress Response

To start it is important to understand that “stress” is much more than the challenges at work or home. Stress is also much less about what happens to you and all about how your brain and nervous system responds to stress. This helps understand the wide range of impact the same stress has on different people or on the same person at different times. 

Our nervous system developed long ago to ensure our survival. It is the number one priority. After all nothing else matters if we don’t live to see another day. There was a time in human history not that long ago that we regularly encountered predators that threatened our very survival. 

This Sympathetic “Fight-or-Flight” Nervous System responds to any real or perceived threats. The challenge is that our world is filled with stimuli that the Sympathetic System perceives as a threat and acts. The Sympathetic System essentially mobilizes all the body’s resources to fight for your survival or flee danger. This in part looks like:

  • Blood shunted from our organs to our muscles
  • Increased Muscle tension
  • Elevated Stress hormones like Cortisol and Adrenaline
  • Impaired Digestion
  • Increased Inflammation
  • Elevated Heart Rate and Blood Pressure
  • Impaired sleep

This is a great formula for short term survival but terrible over the long term. And, that is essentially the problem. The more the Sympathetic System gets activated the easier it is to activate it. Over time we start to live in a state of Sympathetic dominance and slowly but surely our health and vitality erodes. 

For many people this is a slow and unrecognizable process over decades. Others have a past history of stress or trauma or experience a heavier load of stress and the result is anxiety….or depression…or fibromyalgia…or headaches…or digestive issues…or heart disease…or some combination of those. 

That is why the symptoms of chronic stress and anxiety are so similar. They are related and that offers us insight into how to bring balance back to the system. 

Here’s a post I did using the cover of Newsweek on The Anxiety Epidemic.

If the chronic overactivation of the Sympathetic Nervous System is the culprit then what is the antidote?

The Single Most Important Nerve to Solving Your Anxiety

Before I tell you the name of the nerve, why it is so critical, and how to activate it, let’s look at what this nerve does for you…

  • Supports rest and recovery
  • Promotes quality restorative sleep
  • Healthy digestion
  • Lowers Inflammation
  • Healthy Immune Response
  • Lowered Muscle tension and pain
  • Lowered heart rate and blood pressure

While the Sympathetic System is called the “Fight-or-Flight” system this nerve is referred to as the “Rest and Digest” system. This is the Vagus Nerve of the Parasympathetic Nervous System. 

Over activation of the Sympathetic System causes a suppression of the Vagus Nerve activity. This becomes a perpetual cycle that progressively lessens the tone or strength of the Vagus Nerve. 

Removing any source of tension or irritation that is driving the activation of the Sympathetic System is important. But, that is not enough. It is essential to cultivate activity of the Vagus Nerve. The activity of the Vagus Nerve is your pathway to health and well-being. 

It is important to realize that regardless of when your anxiety started, the stress that caused the imbalance in your nervous system started years before, maybe even decades. The activity of your Vagus Nerve has been compromised for a long time and as a result it will take time and repetition to essentially “wake up” your Vagus Nerve. 

The nervous system is great at learning patterns and right now you have a very well entrenched pattern of Sympathetic overactivity. There is a lot of inertia behind this imbalance and it will take repeated activation of the Vagus nerve to first slow this process down and then reverse. 

If you want to overcome your anxiety you must commit to “exercising” your Vagus Nerve many times each day. It has to become part of your daily routine. There are many ways to achieve a combination of removing irritation from your Vagus Nerve and stimulating it. 

Here is a short list. Not each method is as convenient as others and some are more impactful. I encourage you to adopt all the ones that feel good. 

  • Gentle movement like dance and tai chi
  • Flow Yoga
  • Nature exposure 
  • Human touch
  • Chiropractic
  • Massage
  • Conscious Breathwork
  • Craniosacral Therapy

The Chiropractic and Craniosacral can help remove the source of tension and irritation that is inhibiting the Vagus Nerve. Conscious Breathwork is the most consistently effective method to activate the Vagus Nerve. 

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