Vagus

Looking back, 2017 was the year of gut health; 2018, however, is set to be the year that we’re all talking about the vagus nerve — the latest scientific weapon in the battle against stress.

No, I had no idea where or what it was either, until I ended up on a therapist’s couch, hooked up to a pebble-shaped vibrating device.

Despite the gynaecological overtones, the vagus is not where you might think, but winds around the body like a vagabond — hence its name.

It starts in the brain stem and meanders close to the left ear, before passing through the back of the throat, via the heart, lungs and diaphragm and then branching out like tree roots in the gut.

As part of our autonomic nervous system (controlling the things that the body does automatically), it monitors information from our senses to gauge threat levels — increasing heart rate and blood pressure when we’re under stress, and relaxing them when it thinks the threat has passed.

This long-overlooked nerve is our stress response superhighway, and unsurprisingly, for most of us of us, it’s all snarled up.

As a 49-year-old full-time working mother and the family breadwinner, I’m a walking cliche — or more accurately a running one.

Leaving the office late, I arrive panting and red-faced at the Upper Wimpole Street clinic of Stefan Chmelik, an integrated healthcare physician and doctor of Chinese medicine, who has treated the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Elle Macpherson.

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Also, ONLY £150!!!!!

https://www.getsensate.com/