WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, Psychologist, fellow long hauler and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. Today I wanted to go right back to basics and talk about our nervous system. And this is really the central thing that I help clients with. And it's also the central thing that helps me with my own recovery, which is why I help clients with it.

So you may be sitting there thinking, "Wait a second, Long COVID is an organic physiological disease. Why is she talking about autonomic nervous system?" Well, the autonomic nervous system is a key part of our physiology. And it's super relevant in Long COVID for two reasons. First of all, the central kind of communication highway for the autonomic nervous system is our vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve starts in the brainstem and it goes all the way down into your gut, and possibly even into your pelvis. According to certain theorists. The vagus nerve has two branches, one of which is also split into two. One branch is called the Parasympathetic, and the other branch is called the Sympathetic. Now you may be recognizing these names a little bit. The Sympathetic branch is what is responsible for our Fight or Flight. And the Parasympathetic has two also, strands, branches, one is called Dorsal, and one is called Ventral. Now, the Ventral deals with our Rest and Digest. And the Dorsal deals with our Shutdown and Immobilization, which you have heard me talk a great deal about, and is very relevant in Long COVID. But one of the key things that the vagus nerve does is moderate the immune system. So it is responsible for increasing or decreasing inflammation in the body, depending on whether it's working efficiently or not. And whether the signals are moving correctly in those three branches of it. So already, you can see why the vagus nerve is so relevant in Long COVID because even without big fancy randomized controlled trials, and tons and tons of research, we all know and most physicians can take a guess that inflammation is a huge part of what we're dealing with. So if your vagus nerve is not bringing the inflammation down, which more than likely it isn't, because if you've got Long COVID and it hasn't gone down, then the vagus nerve has not done its job, then doing some autonomic nervous system work to support the vagus nerve to make it be working more efficiently and flexibly so that you can get that inflammation down is going to be super, super, super crucial.

The other thing that is really, really relevant to us, which is somewhat related to this you have probably heard the term dysautonomia, which loosely just means dysfunctioning of the autonomic nervous system, but when the word dysautonomia is applied to us and many other folks with dysautonomia, who don't even have Long COVID and you may also have heard the word POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which comes under the dysautonomia umbrella, what we're talking about is things like heart rates, blood pressure, body temperature, regulation of our digestion, thirst, et cetera. And all of these are controlled by the brainstem and by the vagus nerve. So if you have crazy high unexplained heart rate, especially if you're an athlete and you're trying to get back to training, or if your blood pressure suddenly drops or it suddenly shoots up or you're suddenly boiling hot or you're suddenly freezing cold, or all those other fun symptoms that we experience under that dysautonomia heading, those are all vagus nerve regulated. And so again, if it isn't working correctly, you're not going to be able to recover from those symptoms. And the question I want to pose to you today is, are you where you want to be with your Long COVID recovery? And you may be sitting there thinking, "What is she talking about? If I was where I was wanted to be with my Long COVID recovery, I wouldn't have long COVID". Sure. And sadly, all of us who are watching this, including me, do have Long COVID. And getting out of Long COVID is pretty much our main focus right now. And I would say that I'm at sort of 97.5 recovered, I'm not 100%, because I'm not back to running at the volume that I used to be running in the past. But I am where I want to be, because I understand how this all works in my body now, and I'm doing the things that I need to do. And if I keep doing them, I will get back to that 100%.

And by understanding all those things in my body, what I mean is my nervous system. And the chances are, if you're not where you want to be with your recovery, your body is still stuck in Immobilization, or bouncing into Fight or Flight periodically, running out of energy and then slamming back down into Immobilization again. And you may have heard from well meaning doctors or other health care professionals, that it just takes time. And sure, with time, it might improve a little bit. But there are many, many, many millions of people in this world walking around with dysfunctioning, autonomic nervous systems, and they don't change over time without some significant input. You may have heard that doing some yoga, doing some deep breathing, doing some meditation. That's all the stuff that we need to be doing. And absolutely, those are wonderful. And if that works for you, then that's absolutely great. And keep doing that. The difficulty is that if we are stuck right down at the bottom of the ladder in Immobilization, those things are not really going to be enough for us, they are still too advanced, and we need something more basic. And this is where the work that I do comes in both the Polyvagal strategies that I teach and that I have utilized for myself, that I go ahead, and I'm still doing on a daily basis now if I need to. And the Safe and Sound Protocol, which you've heard me talk a lot about. And if you haven't, I'm going to put a link down below to the videos where I do talk about it in more detail. So you can get up to speed. These are all interventions that work for where we are at. So if you are not where you want to be with your recovery, and you're trying really, really hard to, as they say on Instagram, reset your nervous system, which by the way, is not a thing, it doesn't have a reset button.

But maybe you're trying some of the strategies that you've seen on YouTube or videos that have gone around in the Facebook groups and you're not getting anywhere. And that's because those are too advanced for us. Even most of the wonderful books have Deb Donna, who talks extensively about Polyvagal theory and has converted it into clinical practice from Dr. Steven Porges' work, that stuff was too advanced for me when I started out. And now I understand why. Because she's basically pitching at a level where she assumes you spend some of the day in Rest and Digest. And guess what most of us do not. And the other thing to be thinking about, it's not just the strategies, it's also knowing our own nervous system. So when I came into this, I was thinking, "Yeah, sure. I have calm I have rest. I spend some time and Rest and Digest. Absolutely". And I see that with all my clients. We start out by rating where do you think you are on the ladder today? And the majority will say, "Oh yeah, I'm little bit and Rest and Digest had some moments and Sympathetic", and I look at them and what I'm seeing on their face and in their body language and in their emotions. None of those things are Rest and Digest, most of those things are Shutdown. And so you may be lying on the couch, and you think that you are calm. But that isn't really what calm feels like. Calm also includes joy and compassion and gratitude and connectedness to others. And I don't know about you, but in the worst of my chronic fatigue days lying on the couch, I did not have joy, I did not have connection to others, I did not have compassion for myself or for anybody else.

And so a big part of this work is figuring out what our body is telling us what the symptoms are indicating in terms of where we are on the ladder, and then how we can lean into each of those states and use some strategies to move through and gently move up. If any of this is resonating with you and you want to learn more. I am offering free P Polyvagal review call, you can book one at the link below. And I would happily talk to you about where you are right now. Begin to figure out what's going on for you in terms of where you are on the ladder and how we can help you move forward. I hope you have a tolerable week and I look forward to seeing you soon for another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.

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