When you are stressed and anxious the sympathetic nervous system is more activated than the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system activates “fight or flight” systems while the parasympathetic nervous system activates “rest and digest” systems in the body. Increasing “rest and digest” reduces stress and anxiety.

A method of activating “rest and digest” is by stimulating the vagus nerve.

Dr. Duane Olson points out some active and passive ways that he recommends to stimulate the vagus nerve, training the brain to activate “rest and digest” reducing stress and anxiety.

If you want help reducing stress and anxiety, you can call Dr. Duane Olson, for a free phone consultation at 239-774-5433 or email him at Duane@LIFEstrengthHealthCenter.com

TRANSCRIPT:

[Dr. Olson] Today we'll be talking about stress and anxiety.

My name is Dr. Duane Olson. I'm a fellow of the International Board of Functional Neurology. I deal with a lot of patients that deal with prolonged stress and anxiety. They might be on medications. They might be taking supplements. They might even be trying a few of the things that I'm talking about today. But what I want to talk about is really focusing on two things.

Not only the amount of stress that you have coming in, which could be physical, chemical or emotional.

But how do you deal with that?

What are some active things that you can be doing by yourself and what are some passive things that maybe a functional neurologist like myself could be doing?

So first of all, we'll talk about what types of stress there are.

There are physical stressors which are, say you're over-exercising or you're not exercising enough.

Repetitive stress from sitting at the desk too often.

Maybe chemical stressors, or it could be pesticides if you're working outside.

If you're drinking alcohol or drugs, any of those things that stress out the body chemical wise or even emotional, where there's lots of stressors in the world today that maybe you're not dealing with properly, where these other two things are perfect. But emotionally, you just can't get a grip.

Those are some of those things that we tend to look at and try to identify. When we're first saying what types of stressors are we dealing with and making sure that we cover all of them and don't leave one that could be just working in the background and us not knowing about it.

So one of the things that I look at when we're looking at stress and how do we deal with that.

I kind of like to look at the fight or flight system.

That's your autonomic nervous system, you're sympathetic and you're parasympathetic.

It kind of works like a teeter-totter where if we're overly stressed, this system is going to be working overtime, and the other system is not going to be working.

So when we talk about it like that, we say, hey, if you're in a stressed and anxious state, your digestion, your rest, you're probably not going to sleep very well. You're going to feel uptight and stressed.

When that system does work, you sleep better. You have better mental focus and acuity. You probably don't feel pain quite as much. And you just feel generally better when that rest and digest system is working the way it should.

But when we have too many stressors or maybe stressors that we didn't even think about chemically, emotionally or physically that are acting on us, then we're not able to really get that balance effective work when it's supposed to there.

And that's where sometimes patients will go for medications that will help deaden the symptoms. But they continue to feel those symptoms over time because they're not really addressing the problems.

And that's what we want to talk about today is what is one way where we can actually activate or we can manipulate that system right there without using medication.

What we might want to look at actively or using our own motor activity, our own brains to fire that system, that parasympathetic nervous system. It's the rest and digest system there.

We can do breathwork.

And a lot of people say, Doc, I've tried breathwork. It doesn't work.

And I talk to those people and say, how often you do it? Well, I did it three times. One day and once the next day.

Really to develop a pattern in the brain or neuroplasticity in the brain, we have to do it repetitively almost every hour, especially when it comes to that breathwork and calming anxiety, because we always have these stressors that are acting on us.

It is not a once a day thing where the stress hits us. It's multiple times a day, and our brain is constantly thinking those things are always on the forefront.

So helpful things like the Apple smartwatch here where it reminds you to breathe. I set mine to seven times a day. There are some days where I don't even realize it's repeating or telling me to do it, where I may be only caught at once. That's when I know I'm in a very physically stressed state where I have a lot going on.

So when we look at how do we actively do that?

We want to do breathwork where we're taking 3 seconds in through the nose of an inhalation, and then 5 seconds out through the mouth.

The key is the exhalation.

That is when the parasympathetic nervous system really gets activated.

Because when we are just in a natural state, focused on our work, or our family, or stress, that's when we get really shallow breathing and that sympathetic nervous system is up.

Sympathetic nervous system wants things to work fast and hard, like the heart rate would be higher. The blood pressure will be higher.

So we like to monitor those things when we're looking at our patients.

This is called a pulse oximeter here it measures the oxygen levels in the blood as well as the heart rate.

So I will put a few videos up here where it'll show my patients.

As I'm looking at them, we'll be very closely monitoring their heart rate and their pulse ox there. So as you can see, mine is about a 100 for the pulse ox and average is like 96 to 100, but we want optimal function. So I always want to see it higher. Or I want to see improvements in that area when we're trying to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest area.

Also, I want to look at the heart rate right now, and I'm talking a lot and I'm up making a lot of movement. So I expect my heart rate to be a little bit up right now. Maybe I'm even a little nervous. I think I am. But that thing should normally when a patient sitting and resting should be in the 60's, maybe at the 70's. And that's another thing we'll look at. If it's very high, I'd want to see that come down as I'm doing this breathwork, which I'll show you in a few videos here.

But the key is to doing it hourly to develop repetition, to develop neuroplasticity in the brain.

We want to do three sets every hour where we're taking a breath in for 3 seconds and blowing it out for 5 seconds and really just trying to focus on the breath and get out of our heads a little bit so we can knock down some of these physical stressors.

So we'll go into the nose, three out through the mouth, five, and we'll repeat that ten times, actually, and we'll do that every single hour.

Now, I also put another thing here. Gargling.

Gargling is something simple that people can do. I often ask my patients, hey, do you ever have an issue with drinking water where it goes down the wrong tube? That kind of tells me that that area we're trying to stimulate is underactive.

If they always choke on water or if they have any difficulty swallowing or anything in there. So I would have them just take a little, just a tiny amount of water. If they're able to do that without choking on it, then I know that system works pretty well.

I might add that in the treatment after doing that activity of breathing, I might also have them do gargling because that activates that area.

That is where the rest and digest is, and that helps tip them in the right balance into the rest and digest and calms that anxiety down.

Now, there are also some passive ways which I'll show you in a video here soon that we can activate it.

Passive means someone else or something else is stimulating that part of the brain there.

And the way I use that, I use a peripheral nerve stimulator, which we have in the office right here, and we set it on certain settings, very low settings, and it creates a twitch or stimulation to that area of the brain right there, further causing that rest and digest goal.

So as what you'll see when we're doing these videos right here, I'm looking at my patient with their pulse ox, and I'm making sure that that is going up, and I'm making sure their heart rate is going down as I apply this to the proper location.

So that's a passive way that we can do that to further develop neuroplasticity or connections in the brain to get that person from being overly anxious to being more in a rest and digest phase.

So in summary there, what we really want to look at with patients who deal with stress and anxiety is, one, identifying all the factors that could be causing stress.

Sometimes it's not just to the naked eye there where we can see it physically or something we're tasting.

Sometimes it's just emotional stressors where we get to see something over and over and over or something's repeating in our head. No one sees that kind of stuff, but we know in our mind. Hey, this thing keeps popping up.

We need to address those types of things.

The way we address those is we use active and passive types of exercises when we get those stressors to calm that body down. So we don't just go into an increased heart rate and get anxious and uptight.

So the active ones are the breathwork.

And it's not just once a day. It's not just once a week. It's once every hour, 3 seconds in, 5 seconds out. And we do that ten times.

We can follow that up with a little bit of gargling. I usually use about 4oz of water. I just take a little bit. I gargle. I swallow it, and then I go and finish that rest four of the ounces. And I'll do that once every hour. You'll also be getting hydrated, which is also a good thing for the system.

The next thing is coming into the clinic and having us do some types of passive therapies there.

We might be using peripheral nerve stimulators such as this.

We might be doing some other neurological activities that we'll talk about in the future.

But this is one of the easiest passive ones that you saw in the video there where we got some pretty immediate results.

But it would be a repetitive thing where we'd want to get you to do stuff at home, to really fully integrate the entire system.

Thank you so much for watching the video. I hope you learned something today.

Take care.