WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. This week, I wanted to talk about a topic that you have heard me talk a bit about before, which is trusting your gut. And I know many of you may have been to workshops in which we talk about how to make treatment decisions by trusting your gut. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit more about what's happening physiologically in our bodies when we tune in to our gut instincts, and why Polyvagal theory is so relevant to that.

So interestingly, when we talk about gut intuition, or trusting our gut, we're not just using a metaphor, we are actually talking about the information that comes from our gut, our physical gut in our bodies. And I wasn't aware of this until quite recently, I thought it was somewhat of a metaphor. But if we think about Polyvagal theory and the Autonomic Nervous System, everything is about the Vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve goes from the brainstem, all the way down into the gut, through each of the organ systems in our body. And there are in fact, three branches of the Vagus nerve, the Dorsal branch, the Sympathetic branch, and the Ventral branch. Hence, why Dr. Porges uses those three names when he's referring to the different levels of the Polyvagal ladder. And what is super interesting is, obviously, information is going in both directions, through that nerve system. So we get information that goes from the brain, down into the organs, and ultimately into the gut. But we also get information that goes from the gut, up into the brain.

And when we're talking about gut instinct, intuition, or gut instinct, that's what we are referring to, the information that comes from our guts, up into our brains, and is incredibly informative. And some people you may have heard people talking about this, obviously, gut health has been talked a lot about in recent years, and especially in reference to Long COVID, the microbiome, and also this idea that our gut is almost like a second brain. And when we think about gut instinct or intuition, that's really what we're saying that our gut has really important information that it autonomically, so subconsciously, shares with our brains and helps us in decision-making. But, of course, what this also means that if our gut is messed up, that information will not be accurate.

So if you have Long COVID, and the spike protein has messed with your gut microbiome, if you have trauma, and your relationship between your gut and your brain has been interfered with, for example, many of us had pre-existing IBS or other types of gut syndromes that now are being connected to histories of trauma. And that is why because the signaling between the two is not working correctly. And what this means in terms of our decision-making, is that the information that we're getting from our guts may not be as trustworthy as we would like. However, there is a solution. And the solution is to work on our autonomic nervous system to calm our vagus nerve to get it back to functioning as it was optimally in order that that information from the gut is going to be optimal. You may be working on your gut health, you may be doing all kinds of regulation exercises like we've spoken about on this channel about moderating our nervous system in order that we can lean in to freeze, complete our Sympathetic activation and ultimately move back into Parasympathetic or Rest and Digest.

And so one thing that I find very commonly, and you may have been at one of my workshops where we spoke about this, we would do an exercise where you would get quiet and pay attention to your body and see what your body is telling you. And very, very commonly, the feedback that I get from folks who are still struggling with Long COVID Is that their body is telling them, "Don't do it". Whatever the treatment was, they were thinking about doing their body is telling them, "Don't do it". And the difficulty is that, yes, your body may be telling you "Don't do it", or your gut intuition, signaling might be messed up due to your nervous system being off, due to your gut being off, due to all kinds of things that have happened to you in the past that has made the nervous system hyper-vigilant. And so then when we present something, the natural response, almost like a trauma response is, oh, no, I'm going to keep myself safe. I'm not going to do that.

And so how can we tell the difference between the two, we have to go back and we have to do all that nervous system work, in order that we know that the signaling is working and that we can trust our intuition again. And I know it's very confusing, right? Because we're not sure what is going on in the medical community. And oftentimes, they don't have the information that we need. And so we need to use our own judgment to make our treatment decisions. And yet, what if that is off too, and we can't make those decisions correctly? And so what we find that we come back to time and again, really, regardless of the topic that I'm talking about, is that our nervous system is the key. And if we are calming on nervous system if we are supporting our nervous system if we are containing our nervous system. Ultimately over time, we are creating positive changes in our nervous system, then we are going to be able to more likely trust that information.

I hope that makes sense. If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this email and I will endeavor to answer them in a future video. We have a workshop coming up on April 6. If you would like to join us the link is down below. And if you would like to book a call and talk more with me about your current treatment and where you might go next. The link to book a call is also down there too. I hope you have a tolerable week and I look forward to seeing you on another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.