WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, Psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday.

Now today I wanted to talk about something that is a little bit of a hot topic at the moment and is getting some air time on Twitter today. And that is some recent findings that the vagus nerve is damaged in Long COVID.

Now, this is really confirming something that we all have known for a long time. But it's wonderful to see the science catching up to what we as long haulers know. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that today and kind of explain why this is so relevant to the polyvagal work that we do. So there was an article in Forbes a couple of weeks ago, that is talking about a preprint that came out in the Lancet in the middle of June, a research group in Spain looking at vagus nerve functioning in Long COVID. And what they found was that the vagus nerve seems to be enlarged in a certain portion of people with Long COVID, particularly between the bottom of our brain, the brainstem, and kind of the middle of our chest. And then they also found that the diaphragm had some kind of inflammation and stickiness in even more people with Long COVID. And then they talk about in this paper, dysautonomia, and all of the symptoms that we have that could be caused by the vagus nerve and vagus nerve damage, and they hypothesize that this is what's going on in Long COVID. Now, this was a little bit of what shall we say? beginning study, there are measures of the vagus nerve that are relatively crude. They're just doing an ultrasound and looking at the size of things. And we definitely can do a little bit more than that scientifically.

But it's wonderful that we at least have initial confirmation of some ideas that we have long talked about in the Long COVID community, which is what is happening in Long COVID. And why Polyvagal Theory is so relevant, why polyvagal strategies are so helpful to us, and why the safe and sound protocol is so helpful to us. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about why this is relevant today. And kind of going back to some of the basics about the vagus nerve, how it works, what it does. And then talk a little bit about what are the scientific theories currently about what's happening with Long COVID. And why vagus nerve damage is definitely one of the big ones.

So if we look at this diagram here, this shows us the autonomic nervous system, and specifically where the physiology of the nerves are located in our body. And you can see, there are three different colors of nerves that we're looking at here. But it's essentially two different systems, and they make up the autonomic nervous system together. So if we take the yellow nerve, which runs down our spine, that is the sympathetic nervous system that is our fight or flight. And we talked a lot about how being in fight or flight happens more frequently in Long COVID. And some of the reasons why. And then if you look at the red and the blue, that is actually your vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve has two branches, what we call the ventral vagus nerve, which is your rest and digest. And it's sometimes referred to as the social engagement system because that is the bit that we use when we're feeling good to interact with other people. And then the red bit is called the dorsal vagus nerve, and that is our shutdown or freeze response or our immobilization. And that is, you've probably heard me say this before. It's like a rip cord that our body pulls when we're in fight or flight for too long, which potentially could cause us harm. And the body pulls the ripcord and we go into that shutdown state. Now, what is super interesting about this research is they're seeing damage to the blue bit of the vagus nerve, which is the ventral vagus, which is our rest and digest, and our social engagement system. So, what that means is that the balance is gone. We don't have the ability to pull ourselves up the ladder as we talk about.

Instead, all we've got is the sympathetic nervous system, and the dorsal vagus, which is shutting us down. And that makes sense clinically, right, because we frequently talk about how we bounce around. We get a little bit of energy we move up to fight or flight, then we don't have enough energy to move all the way through and complete that. And for various other reasons, if we have a trauma history, the dorsal vagus kicks in and shuts us down into the freeze response or immobilization. And if there is damage to that blue bit of the nerve, this would absolutely make sense. So wonderful, that we have this research confirming something that really does fit with our experience of Long COVID. And the other thing that was much talked about in this research paper was all the dysautonomic symptoms that are regulated by the vagus nerve. And if you don't know this already, the vagus nerve is responsible for blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, thirst, hunger, dizziness, nausea, and GI symptoms.

And again, if you're looking at both the red and the blue, and seeing where those nerves go into, that would make sense the vagus nerve is a large communication device, essentially, between the bottom of our brain and our GUT. And if that communication is off, and especially if the blue bit at the top is not working, then the signals might be coming up from our GUT, but they don't get through to our brainstem, which is where our brain controls everything. And so that's why we see crazy heart rate, crazy blood pressure, dizziness, nausea, GI symptoms, and all of that stuff that comes under the dysautonomia umbrella and is very frequently referred to as POTS or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.

And what I wanted to also talk a little bit about today is our understanding so far of what Long COVID is, in terms of our medical path of physiological kind of scientific understanding. And this lovely diagram is taken from Hannah Davis's paper, which came out in January of this year. And I think that was in nature, I will put the link to these papers below if you want to check them out in more detail. But this is a really lovely diagram that shows us the current main theories of what is going on in Long COVID, and there are five. And just to give you a heads up that they're probably not competing theories, the chances are that they are all present, and maybe kind of interrelated. But we can see on the very far right-hand side, she lists dysfunctional neurological signaling, and she writes underneath dysfunctional signaling in the brainstem and or vagus nerve. And that is what we're talking about here. So the study that is talked about in the Forbes article is showing that there is damage to the top part of the vagus nerve. And this is lovely confirmation of that theory.

So, I want to just talk a little bit about the other theories, because I think it is really important that we understand those. And if you do have access to doctors who are able to help you with medications and other treatments for these things, those are going to be a really important part of your recovery. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about how that ties in with the polyvagal work. So on the far left-hand side, we have this idea of immune dysregulation, and if you have seen the latest series of three of Gez Medinger's YouTube channel videos talking about viral reactivation. This is what they're talking about. So it is looking pretty compelling. Now in both MECFS, Long COVID, and other post-viral syndromes that what happens is when the virus comes in, it immediately reactivates things that most humans have in their body, but aren't keeping under control things like Herpes six, or Cytomegalovirus, or Epstein Barr Virus. And so that plays a big role.

What happens there, and you've probably heard me talk about this before, is that the reactivation of those old latent viruses is causing mitochondrial damage. And that's where our chronic fatigue, lack of energy, post-exertional, malaise, the importance of pacing always comes from. So that is a very interesting theory and is being much researched right now as to what we can do about that reactivation. And interestingly, something that was said in that YouTube video, is that they don't think antivirals are actually the way to stop that, which is interesting, personal experience, I did take Antivirus for about a month, and it didn't make a huge difference to me.

Next one, Microbiota Dysbiosis. Now, this is our leaky GUT. And we all know, the vast majority of what you're watching in this video, if not everybody will have had some GI symptoms, if not a lot of GI symptoms at some point in your Long COVID journey.

And interestingly, if we think about the vagus nerve and how the vagus nerve connects to the guard, I think there is actually a relationship there with those two theories. Then the next one is autoimmunity. And fascinatingly, what it's looking like is that the reactivation of latent viruses is causing autoimmunity. Now, if you don't know what autoimmunity is, and I didn't, before I got Long COVID, even though I'd heard the word lots, basically what it means is that the body cannot tell the difference between good things and bad things at a cellular level. And so it basically starts to attack its own cells, because the immune response is over-activated immune priming, as it said there and, and so the body just fights stuff that doesn't even need fighting. And obviously, that causes us some problems.

The fourth one is blood clotting and Endothelial Abnormalities. And this has been talked about a lot recently and makes a lot of sense. Resia Pretorius is leading the charge with that research. And basically, the idea here is that the spike protein causes damage to the endothelium, which is the lining of our blood vessels. And in that damage, makes it more likely that the blood naturally starts to form little clots. And these clots build up over time. And basically, our blood is like sludge, and it can't move around our bodies, which means we get much less oxygen, which again, we're all seeing, and everything does not function because if you've got no blood moving around your body, all your organ systems can't do what they need to do.

And coming back to the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve damage. What I really want to say here is that the vagus nerve is very powerful in all of those other mechanisms. So we know from a lot of research that goes back 20,30 years, that when the vagus nerve is working well, it reduces inflammation in the body and promotes healing. And so if you are going to use some medical interventions, like some antiplatelet or anticoagulant therapy for the endothelial damage, and the micro clots, or some kind of autoimmune or viral replication interventions, or something to make your GUT Calm down, those things are all going to be working better if the vagus nerve is working. And so this comes back around to what we've talked about a lot here, which is if that top part of our vagus nerve is damaged, how do we get it working again? Well, we have two really powerful things that we can do. The first is polyvagal strategies, which means learning your own nervous system, understanding how it works, and then using very specific strategies to help your body, first of all, lean into the freeze response, and then build up enough energy to complete the fight or flight process, so that you can get back to rest and digest and get that process working again. And then the second is the safe and sound protocol, which is a really powerful, passive, we don't have to do anything, we just lie back and listen to the music intervention that helps that top part of the vagus nerve to start working again. And this makes sense in my recovery, the thing that started my recovery was the safe and sound protocol, it kick started that top part of my vagus nerve, working again.

And if you want to learn more about the safe and sound protocol, there are many videos that I have done before. And I will link to that series at the end of this video. So I am excited at this point. I know it has taken a long time. And I know that we still have ways to go in terms of the science, you know, getting really robust studies that really irrefutably show these mechanisms, and then even more importantly, getting treatments to fix what is going on physiologically. But even until we get to that point, it is looking like what we all thought was going on is happening. And in the meantime, we have these super powerful polyvagal strategies, and the safe and sound protocol to really kickstart our healing journey. So if you are curious to know about my online course that talks you through all the polyvagal strategies, the link is down below to take a look at that. We have two weeks left on the presale, so grab it at this discounted price before the price goes up on July 31. And if you want to know about the safe and sound protocol, take a look at the videos and reach out to me we have groups starting each month and we would be more than happy to see you in one of those groups and kickstart that functioning of your vagus nerve so that we bring down that inflammation and get you feeling better.

I hope you have a tolerable week. I'll see you again on another Wellness Wednesday.

Take care!