Unlocking the Power of the Vagus Nerve: Hormones, Stress & Fertility

 Hey, it's Dr. Omatma, host of Egg Meets Sperm, and this is the best podcast to get all of the vital information that you need to support your fertility journey holistically for you and your partner, because fertility takes two.

Hello and welcome to Egg Meets Sperm. I'm your host, Dr. Omatma, and my guest today is a very special treat, Dr. Nawaz Habib. He is a bestselling author of Activate Your Vagus Nerve. It's the new and the newly released Upgrade Your Vagus Nerve. He is also the host of the Health Upgrade podcast and Dr. Habib is the founder of Health Upgraded, an online functional health consulting clinic supporting optimal health and elevating the awareness and function of the vagus nerve.

His background that I just found out, he's a chiropractic doctor, which I think just helps to know, like, what your, where you're coming from and what your angle is. But I'm really excited to dive into the vagus nerve and how that connects to fertility because when I heard you speaking. You were being interviewed on someone else's podcast and I was like, Oh my God, the Vegas Nerve, yes, let's talk about it.

So that is how I ended up getting Dr. Navaz onto our podcast. And I'm very excited to talk to you today. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. I'm excited that you reached out and, uh, excited about this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So let's kick it off with the vagus nerve and its connection to hormones, because I think that's a, that's something people don't know a lot about.

So I'm curious to hear your take on how this affects our hormones. Yeah, it's such a great question and a great place to start. And I think it comes down to getting information up to the clinic, the control center of the body. If we don't understand what's happening within the body, the current situation with regards to optimal function in the gut, optimal function with the microbiome, optimal function with the liver, what's going on with like thyroid hormone, what's going on with the adrenals, if we don't have an understanding of what's currently going on, we're not going to be able to then have an optimal controlling pattern of what then occurs within the hormonal system.

cascades within the body. That controlling point, particularly for the hormones, is the hypothalamus, right? The hypothalamus is kind of that top point within the central nervous system that is so important in then being able to relay information down through the HPA axis, through the HPG axis, so hypothalamic pituitary adrenals.

hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis, which obviously when it comes to fertility is kind of that holy grail. But the hypothalamus is that that control point. And so getting that information up to the hypothalamus is really important. Now there's two pathways. That information comes into the hypothalamus.

One way is through the bloodstream. Absolutely need to know in the bloodstream, which hormones are currently high, which hormones are currently low. What's the concentration? What's the balance? Do we have high levels of testosterone? Do we have high levels of estrogen or progesterone? What's the balance?

What's oxytocin doing? What is thyroid hormone doing, right? We need to know all those things. Big one here is cortisol. We need to know if cortisol is high. Cortisol being high tells us that our body is under stress. And so through the bloodstream, the hypothalamus has access to these important pieces of information.

And that bloodstream is going to go through the hypothalamus. And that's where we're going to get a bunch of info. Another area where we're going to get a bunch of info is through the vagus nerve. And this area is, I think it's been overlooked for a long time. So the vagus nerve is the single most important connecting point between all of our internal organs.

Getting information up to our brain, 80 percent of the information on the vagus nerve is afferent information. What that means is it's information coming from organs in the body, going up to the brain, that information is going to be passed up. So this is telling us, is there inflammation in the gut?

What's going on with stomach function? What's going on with microbiome? What's going on with. pancreas function. What's going on with liver function? Each organ actually has a direct connection via the vagus nerve up to the brain. And like I said, 80 percent of the information here is coming up. And it goes up to the brainstem and then through the brainstem, it relays up to the hypothalamus.

When the vagus nerve is not working effectively, we can't get that information up effectively to the hypothalamus. And so the control center doesn't truly know what's going on and we can have hormonal imbalances that then occur. Fascinating. Fascinating. So I don't even think I knew that 80 percent of the information is.

Not from the brain to the rest of our body, but actually the reverse. Like our body is sending out. All of the sensory information or all of the like local information back to the brain to let the brain know like, oh, there's this fire over here, there's this fire over here, and then the brain can then accurately assess and figure out, okay, what's the most important thing to work on?

But if it's not getting that information. that it's making decisions just based on, like, missing pieces, essentially. That's exactly right. Yeah. And, and missing information is never good when you're trying to create a positive outcome, right? If we don't know that there's inflammation, if we don't know that there's certain issues going on, then we're not able to then accurately relay good information to the effector cells, to the hormonal glands that are then going to do the job of sending out those important hormones.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So for people that are maybe brand new to the vagus nerve, where, like, where are the connections that it's actually like listening in on? Understanding the anatomy of this, I think is really unique because there's no nerve like the vagus nerve. It's actually called the vagus nerve.

There's two, we have one on each side, right? We also say this, uh, the sciatic nerve, there's two, we have one sciatic nerve in each leg coming off of our spinal cord. But the vagus nerve is unique because. It doesn't connect in the same way that every other nerve connects. It's a cranial nerve. It's the 10th cranial nerve.

We have 12 pairs that come off of cranial, uh, off the brainstem. And the 10th cranial nerve is the vagus. It has a few branches that come off. It goes to the ear, um, where it collects a little bit of sensory information from the oracle of the ear. Then it comes down. Um, it sends a branch to the pharyngeal muscle.

So the back of the throat, which helps to maintain patent airway. Important one to remember for later. And then it goes to the laryngeal muscles and the laryngeal muscles help to allow for us to have pitch and tone in our voice. So control of our voice, being able to go really, really low or really, really high with our voice comes down to how much we're tensioning the vocal cords and those are branches from the vagus nerve and those are the motor branches, but then the nerve continues on down.

If you go in and you find your pulse in your neck, right in front of your SCM muscle. You're actually within a couple of millimeters of your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve rolls alongside in your neck with your carotid artery and your jugular vein. When you're finding your pulse, you're feeling your carotid artery.

Within a small sheath called the carotid sheath, we have three items. We have the carotid artery, which sends blood from the heart to the brain. We have the jugular vein, which brings blood from the brain back down to the heart. And we have the vagus nerve. Kind of tells you how important this thing is.

Little nerve is right. Because it's literally running alongside it has the ability to potentially go down the spinal cord. Why wouldn't it go down the spinal cord or why wouldn't it go down the sympathetic chain? Doesn't make sense because it's an important piece to this entire puzzle of optimization.

Then it comes down into the thorax, excuse me. As it comes down into the thorax, it connects to the heart and the lungs within the chest cavity. And it runs along the esophagus and the trachea. So this way we're getting a little bit of gut function. We're getting lung function. We're getting breathing.

We're getting heart rate of heart rate variability, which is going to be linked heavily to vagus nerve function. So HRV, for those who know what that is, Vagus nerve is heavily involved in creating optimal heart rate variability, and we'll talk about that. Then as it continues down alongside the esophagus and comes down into the abdomen, this is where we get connections to essentially every visceral organ in the abdomen.

Stomach, gallbladder, pancreas, kidneys, liver, spleen, small intestine, the entire length, and most of the large intestine, all are connected to the vagus nerve. The spleen has a slightly indirect connection, and that is an important thing we can talk about. That's how we control inflammation in the body. And that's a whole pathway called the cholinergic anti inflammatory pathway, which we can talk about later.

But those connections, getting to know what's going on in each one of those organs, and sending important information down to those organs, about 15 percent of the information is Sent down from the brain to those organs that then creates an optimal function level within those. So we have 80 percent of the information coming up for all of those being processed in the brainstem, going up to the hypothalamus.

And then whatever happens, the effector cells are then going to be sending signals down from the brainstem through that entire course to the effector organ or wherever that signal needs to be sent. That will then control our shift between, are we going to sit in a fight or flight state, or are we going to sit in a rest, digest, and recover state?

And that is the difference here. When the vagus nerve is signaling effectively, we can shift to rest, digest, and recover very effectively. And this is the imbalance that we're seeing more and more today where chronic disease and infertility are so common because we're generally, for the most part, we've noticed a huge shift into the number of people that are sitting in a fight or flight state almost all the time.

And that's the important thing to look at. And so if I hear and understand you correctly, you're saying that part of the problem is not that we are actually in fight or flight, but that we have improper signaling that is then telling our brain that we're in fight or flight because there's no vagus nerve saying that we can rest and relax.

That's exactly right. We have constant levels of stressors that are keeping us in that fight or flight state. And we don't have a great braking system. So I like to consider this. The analogy of a car is really simple here. The fight or flight state is like the accelerator of the car, right? We want to push the accelerator to go, and that's a good thing.

We want to be able to make the car move. A car without an accelerator is useless. Pizza junk sitting in the garage, but we need to have control. And control means being able to slow that down or stop. And that's where the vagus nerve comes in. That's where that rest, digest and recover state comes in. And for most people, the brake line has either been cut or it's been damaged.

And so we're not able to create that shift of control from fight or flight into rest, digest, recover effectively. So the car is going and it's not able to slow down. The brakes are not as effective as they need to be. We're not able to shift to that state. And really want to question, can you heal in a fight or flight state is healing something that we're capable of?

The answer is no, we cannot heal in a sympathetic fight or flight state. Our bodies can truly only heal and grow when we're in a parasympathetic rest, digest, recover, and growth mode. And when it comes to fertility, this is one of those most important things that we can often forget about that we can't.

Grow a human. We can't even send the signals to our organs to grow a human. When we're in a sympathetic state. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree. So what has put us in this damaged or non effective parasympathetic state? This is where we talk about something called vagal tone. What is the tone of the vagus nerve or what is the signaling capacity of the vagus nerve?

And when it comes down to it, we have to really look at what are the challenges that have stopped us from getting there. The answer to this is stress, but I want to break stress down because we often siloed stress into one thing and that's it. And I, I completely disagree. I think what we think of as stress is day to day, either emotional, psychological types of stress.

And that daily stress is one component. That's the stuff that chips away. It's the kids not listening to you and screaming in the back, right? It's not being able to get your work done. And you know, there's a deadline coming up. It's the. finances and you're like, Oh my God, the mortgage is going to come out.

And I don't know if I'm going to have enough money in the account to do this or whatever it is. Those day to day stressors are challenging, but they're not the whole picture. There's three other areas I want to look at. There's physical stress. When it comes to physical stress, it can be either overdoing it or underdoing it.

So on the overdoing it side, this is where we have injuries, this is where we have potential, like slip and fall, car injury, um, you know, traumatic physical injuries that can occur. We can also overdo exercise, we can overdo, uh, physical movement for some people, repetitive strain injuries, things like that.

On the opposite side of this is living a sedentary lifestyle, right, where we sit, we don't move. We're under three, 4, 000 steps a day. We're not active. Our bodies are not moving effectively. And those physical stresses are really important to look at and to identify where we, we can be moving a little bit more effectively, more efficiently at low grades through the day, right?

So are you exercising enough? Are you sweating enough? Are you getting your body into a situation where physically you are capable, you're mobile, you're functional. The next area is biochemical stress. This is an area that. I think functional medicine hits really, really well. This is where we can identify now these wonderful tests that we have to help to uncover exactly where the challenges biochemically are coming from bacterial dysbiosis in the gut, right?

Microbiome dysbiosis, parasites, viruses, yeast, mold, Lyme disease, all of these potential biochemical toxins that we're sitting in the stew of. day to day lives, right? What was this number that came out? I think it was a year and a half ago or two years ago. There's something like 198 different chemicals that were identified in placental blood flow.

Oh, 312. It went up by God, which is ridiculous, right? It's crazy, right? This is biochemical stress, right? This is. Things that we as parents, as, as humans are being exposed to on a daily basis. And these are just the ones we know of, right? Like what else is out there that we don't know about? So being fully aware of all of these biochemical stressors, things that are affecting us in a way that we didn't truly identify doing our best to minimize our exposure, there's, I don't feel like at this point in our day to day lives, that there's any way to completely avoid exposure, but minimizing or increasing Our body's capacity to effectively clear those toxins, that's key.

And this is where liver and gut function are at the highest, uh, of important detoxification capacity, right? Biotransformation ability. So important to understand. The last stressor is kind of psychological stressors. This is where we look at things that happened in the past, right? Childhood traumas, a victim of a crime, had some sort of challenge as a child.

These are psychological stressors that I say, scuff the lens through which we see the world. And what this does is it shifts our perspective. It makes things feel potentially worse than they are objectively. And so we create this perspective of things doing good or not being good or being bad when they're just things that are happening and how we react to them.

Then dictates what happens with our hormones. It's what dictates what happens with cortisol. It then dictates what happens with our vagus nerve and, and our signaling capacity and all these stressors fill this proverbial bucket. And as this bucket becomes more and more full, our vagal tone slowly goes down.

And when that bucket overflows, it's when our vagus nerve is not able to send those breaking signals effectively to slow down from fight or flight and put us into that rest, digest, recover growth mode. That those four areas of stress are the ones that I think we really need to become aware of, really do a good inventory to understand where the stressors might be coming from, understand that that inventory is not at all encompassing, but it does cover a good chunk of the potential stress that we're dealing with and what we can then potentially change to allow our bodies to get into that recovery mode and heal our vagus nerve.

Got it. So basically like over function of that sympathetic stress state. Uh, is like a loop that kind of keeps going downwards because it's making the parasympathetic less effective and less functional. That's exactly right. Uh, okay. So, is there a way for us to then measure or understand our own vagal tone or vagal function?

Yeah. I've alluded to this just a couple minutes ago. The single best way to understand what our vagus nerve is doing is through the measurement of heart rate variability. Um, and HRV heart rate variability is not the same as heart rate. What it's looking at is the number of milliseconds between beats of the heart.

So in subsequent beats of the heart averaged over a period of time. So what we're not looking at is we have 64 beats in one minute of our heart. We're looking at. There's between beat one and beat two, there's 74 milliseconds. Then there's 98 milliseconds. Then there's 22 milliseconds. And what we're looking at is variability.

How variable is the, um, the time between beats of the heart and then averaging that over a period of time and that obviously over time. We'll change based on the time period, based on the stressor that we're experiencing. What we're looking for when we're doing an HRV measurement is we're looking for increased numbers, higher variability.

What this means is we're pushing the accelerator and then we're pushing the brakes. And that's causing us to go in an oscillating up and down pattern where we're accelerating and braking. The problems occurring, if our HRV is low, that's telling us that we're pushing more accelerator and our brake's not as effective.

Because there's not as much variability and our heart is beating like a metronome. And what this is telling us, physiologically, is that our bodies are not resilient. They're not resilient to stress. When our bodies become stressed, our HRV goes down. What we should have is a good rebound, a good bounce back, resilience, and we should be able to bring our HRV back up.

And so it's not an average HRV that I like to look at, but how quickly are you able to recover from stress? Interesting. Okay. Interesting. So do you like, um, what heart rate variability monitors do you like? I'm wearing one right now. I've been using this for a long time. I love the Aura Ring. I think it's easy.

It's passive. It's great during sleep and you can set it for certain times, but I, I think the technology in wearable devices that we have available to us has gotten exponentially better. By the time somebody listens to this 6, 7, 8 months from now, it's going to be completely, uh, just void of truth at some point, right?

This is going to be obsolete data, but some sort of wearable device that helps to give us accurate levels of ranges of where we sit are, is the best way to go. And there's a couple of times I can't wear this. When I'm weight training, I can't wear my earrings. I don't want to scratch it. I don't want to ruin it.

Bothers my fingers. A whoop band is a great option or a bio strap or an Apple watch is not a bad option at all. Or if you want to wear the Polar H10 chest strap, that's a great option. There's a bunch out there now there that are popping up. And so finding one that works for you. That allows you to look at the data, become fully aware, and not tie your worth to that data, really important to understand.

Have you seen that happen? A lot. I'm just curious. A lot. People are like, my friend's HRV is 74 and mine is 22 and I must be dying. And the answer is no, it's not. Um, there's, there's a really interesting question I get is what, what is the best HRV? What's a good HRV? The answer is better than yesterday. For yourself, measured against yourself.

Interesting. None of these devices are, are the gold standard. You're moving towards greater resilience over time. That's what you're looking for. That's the goal. Awesome. So what are some strategies that people could use to improve their vagal tone? A lot of what people are missing out on are these basic foundational tools and the number one most important thing and the best way to change your HRV and to improve your vagus nerve function.

is by learning to breathe effectively. Your breath is so powerful and I think it's something that people overlook significantly. Our breath is, um, something that we almost take for granted. It becomes this passive thing that we're always doing and it doesn't really matter. And in fact, it really does.

When we inhale, our hurt rate goes up. Our beats become closer together. When we exhale, our beats become further apart. And what that does is it creates variability. And so what often is happening is people are breathing very passively, very quickly, breathing through their mouths, not breathing into their, uh, diaphragm, they're using chest muscles to breathe instead.

And what we're doing is we're creating these short, shallow breaths. And because they're short and shallow, our HRV goes down. And so there's an entire pattern that is created here called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA. Or resonance, uh, can be the other R as well. And the way we breathe and the vibration that occurs when we breathe is then going to dictate what the HRV number becomes.

So there are certain patterns that I really like here, but I want to do shorter, deeper inhales with our diaphragm, not breathing through our mouth, breathing through our nose. So nasal. diaphragmatic and a longer exhale. Those are the three things you need to remember. Breathe through your nose, breathe using your diaphragm, and breathe a longer exhale.

Controlled long exhale is the key. Okay, so those three things in together help to control optimal breath. To determine if you're breathing with your diaphragm, a really easy tool people can use, put one hand on your chest. Put one hand on your belly and just let yourself take a breath and see which hand is moving more.

Is it the hand that's on your chest or the hand that's on your belly? Belly. Belly. That means you're in a parasympathetic diaphragmatic breathing state. Cool. A lot of people aren't. And a lot of people, when they're under stress or, you know, under challenging circumstances, you'll notice are breathing a lot more with their chest.

It's actually, if you've been sitting at rest, you should ideally be sitting in a diaphragmatic breathing pattern, right? But a lot of people don't notice these things. And so becoming aware, getting that bio feedback, understanding that how you breathe actually plays such an important role here is number one, in my opinion, for sure.

There's a lot of things tied to breath, which we can talk to as well. Yeah. Tell me what, what's tied to it. So. The fun one in the biohacking world right now is cold plunge, right? Being, experiencing that cold plunge or cold shower, that's, that's a stressor. But teaching yourself to handle that stress really effectively is good.

And when one does a cold plunge, which I've done a few times, the first reaction when you get into that cold water immediately is the same as if somebody startles you. You take a deep breath in and you usually breathe to your mouth and you become short, shallow chest breaths. That's what's happening. But when we do an ice plunge or a cold plunge, what we're doing is we're teaching our body how to breathe diaphragmatically while we're in that situation.

And it's a very strong sympathetic push and then immediate with your function, very strong parasympathetic push. Teaching yourself to handle stress is literally the definition of resilience, right? Teaching your body to become more resilient when a stressor is occurring, that's literally training for the vagus nerve.

Biofeedback training is based on breath. Meditation focuses on breath. These are tools that are all aligned with teaching you to breathe more effectively. Breathe. When we breathe effectively, we become more resonant in that state and our HRV tends to go up. So that's one of the things we can pile on top of the breath.

Other things help here. Humming, chanting, gargling, singing, right? Singing in the car, singing in the shower. Do it. It's actually really good for you. I notice all of those are connected to the throat. Is that what you were alluding to earlier? That is exactly what I was alluding to, right? We've got the vocal cords, The pharyngeal and laryngeal branches of the vagus nerve are connected there.

So humming, chanting, gargling, singing, vocalization, very powerful tool when it comes to the vagus nerve. No question about it. What is it doing? They're creating that physical vibrancy. So. When we signal through the vagus nerve through those motor signals, it's creating the motor patterns in the, in our throat.

If we can go a little philosophical here, there's also this idea of the throat chakra not being effectively, uh, functioning or running. And what that comes down to for a lot of people is not being able to vocalize or be able to release stress. Who doesn't feel good after they're singing one of their favorite songs at the top of their lungs?

Right. It's not just the song. There's a strong, powerful effect that the song or the music, it certainly has, but getting the stress out, literally vocalizing that stress or clearing it out of your throat. What a wonderful tool that we can use to help to clear our chakras. If, if you're into that kind of thing, and I'm not entirely, I think it's, there's a lot to it, but there's not science that's backing it, sadly.

But I think there's a lot to it. If we can get our body into a state where everything is flowing effectively, where we're sitting in a more vitalistic state, then why not? Vocalization literally is creating those motor patterns in the vagus nerve and strengthening the vagus nerve overall. Amazing. Okay.

So we've got breath. We've got anything activating the vocal cords. Anything else that is a good way? A couple of really good ones here. Gargling and gag reflex are really great as well on those same patterns. So gargling is a good one because we're using our pharyngeal and laryngeal muscles. Um, we're making sure not to swallow water.

We're making sure not to push our body into a state where we swallow it and, uh, challenge that. But there's a vocalization piece with the gargling and controlling, um, the water in the, in the back of your mouth. I also love tying that with a little bit of salt in the back of, uh, in, in the water and gargling at the back of your throat at the top of your lungs.

What that does is it creates a high level of resonance and that will, uh, you can't inhale while you're gargling. So you're focused on a long exhale as well. Gag reflex is another way to do this. Not one that everybody loves doing, but while you're brushing your teeth, use your toothbrush and just kind of poke on each side of your throat.

And the motor aspect of the gag reflex. is activating the pharyngeal branch of the vagus nerve. It's not actually the replex overall. There's the glossopharyngeal nerve, this ninth cranial nerve that gets the sensory piece, but it's the motor reflex that is initiated by the 10th vagus nerve. Interesting.

Okay. Awesome. I love it. So those are, those are some of my more foundational tools. Now, if somebody is really suffering, I'm a big fan of vagus nerve stimulation. I think there's a lot of value in electric vagus nerve stimulation. I've seen phenomenal changes for a lot of patients and it comes down to using an electric tool that stimulates the nerve at the cervical trunk here.

There is some phenomenal data here, comes down to cognitive function, comes down to supporting people that are dealing with migraines, cluster headaches, hemoglobin, they continue. I've seen phenomenal changes in sleep and energy and focus and cognitive function simply by using the electrical devices that go on the neck, uh, something that I'm a big proponent.

Wow. That's cool. I've never heard of that. Uh, that's really cool. I love it. Uh, and I think that a lot of the tools that you shared are really great starting points because people aren't even doing those to begin with. Right. So yeah, love it. Love it. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom, all of your amazing work in this space.

Where can people find you if they want to connect? You can find me on Instagram under Dr. Nawaz Habib. Um, you can take a look at my newest book, Upgrade Your Vagus Nerve, where there's a lot more science and understanding behind it. So if you're interested. We'll go ahead and take a look at that and, uh, just look up Dr.

Navaz Habib or health upgrade it online. And if you want to learn more. Love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Navaz for being here and sharing all of your amazing wisdom. And for those of you listening in, I hope you find this useful. Most of all, apply these tools into your life. You guys listening to an episode is great, but.

doing the actual work is what's going to get you results. If you love this episode, show us some love. And if you would love to leave me a voice memo, tell me what you love, what you hate, and what questions you have that you would like me to answer on Egg Meets Sperm. We're doing that all season long. So send me a memo, let me know what you love, let me know what needs improvement, and most of all, send me your questions.