Showing results by author "Friedrich Schmidt" in All Categories

When your lover kisses your throat or the skin behind your ear, this pair of nerves helps you feel it. If a doctor tickles certain spots in your throat with a cotton swab, it causes you to gag. When you eat, it helps food move through your digestive tract. Why should you care, though, about the vagus nerve? After all, it doesn’t sound as exciting as Vegas. If you have certain illnesses or symptoms, a poorly functioning vagus nerve could be the culprit; that’s particularly true of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

If you have certain illnesses or symptoms, a poorly functioning vagus nerve could be the culprit; that’s particularly true of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. This nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body, running from the brain stem to the colon and affecting many organs in the body. The good news is that you can take simple actions to stimulate your vagus nerve to function better. This information can be especially important for people with treatment-resistant depression; vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) seems to reset chemical imbalances in the mood centers of the brain.