I mentioned about the vagus nerve in part one so this is a continuation about my pelvis journey. What I have learnt so far is that the vagus (which derives from the latin word meaning “wandering”) nerve serves as a highway of communication between the gut, brain and the autonomic nervous system. It is the central mediator of the activities of the Central Nervous System (CNS), Enteric Nervous System (ENS) and the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). If you think of your body like a house, the CNS is like the heater radiating the whole house, the ENS is the heater for one of the passage ways leading to a room, here relating to the gatrointestinal tract a.k.a the pathway to the digestive system. The ANS is similar to the insulation on your heater, controling involuntary functions of the body for example, your blood pressue, heart rate, breathing etc.

There are two branches of the vagus nerve on each side of the body, the cervical branch which is the 10th cranial nerve exits at the base of the skull. If you are someone like me who is recovering from having a right torsion pattern, that skull area can get compressed because the frame in the hole in which the vagus nerve exits, is by the occiput (back of the head) and the temporal bone. The occiput in this case will be moving down at the atlas (according to Greek Mythology, Atlas who was responsible for bearing the weight of the heavens on his shoulders) point (top of the cervical membrane) and so this area becomes sensitive.

I recall finding it alarming if someone were to tap me in this region as it used to make me jump and get quite irritated lol. So what does this all mean? When the vagus nerve is healthy it is called having a high “vagus nerve tone" when the vagus tone is withdrawn the opposite happens. A low vagus tone occurs when we are faced in a fight or flight response to danger. If you're in an unsettling environment and you can't address what is in front of you, for whatever reason, the vagus nerve takes away the calming influence and the fight and flight response takes action. So if an individual was presented in an unsettling situation a normal response would be to fight or run away. For me this appeared frequently in my childhood and as a child I was unable to neither flight nor flight but instead "freeze", this is where the third function of the vagus nerve comes in which is immobilisation, meaning that the body will shut down. I was frequently physically hit as a child and I did not have the courage to scream, fearing that this may provoke in being attacked further so taking the abuse was my approach. Constantly being in “freeze” mode may also psychologically change the individual into dissociating from themselves and not be comfortable in their own body later on in life. I dissociated from everyone that I knew and adopted a new identity, felt accepted in a group after being bullied at school throughout my teenage years and at home I victimised myself often feeling suicidal. In the animal kingdom this is shown when the predator is about to eat the prey so sometimes the prey will play dead. For humans there would be no chance of survival if we were to follow Maslow’s theory.

The “Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamic” book has been helpful to understand how important it is to be treated with by a professional and it mentions “in order for any healing process to ensue at any depth, she must be able to separate out from need, fear, ego processes and establish a still and present centre of receptivity and listening”. It also stresses the importance of how to approach physical touch with a client and adopts the “ritual of contact” method which includes “the negotiation of both the quality and distance of practitioner attention and of physical touch”. I found this exceptionally fascinating as throughout my whole life I recall feeling so uncomfortable when anyone was to physically touch me, especially when I was younger. Whether this was seeing a massage therapist, or a chiropractor or as little as my friend giving me a hug. After all it was uncommon to hug or show any affection growing up so this learnt behaviour meant that I secretely craved this from someone that I trusted. Perhaps its the lack of oxytocin, I’m not too sure but I have been trying different ways to boost oxytocin naturally.

On a positive note, I observed that as a child, I was able to deal with traumatic events quite calmly and perhaps this is also why unconsiously I have grown to be physically fit to “fight” if I was faced in an unsettling situation again, “proving” to my inner child that I am worthy. But healing is not becoming the best version of yourself, healing is letting the worst version of you be loved!

There is a link between the vagus nerve and being intolerant to certain types of foods. I’ve noticed that eating certain cooking oils such as canola oil, coffee on an empty stomach, sugar on an empty stomach do not sit well with me. When I was younger I would often get acid reflux and didnt think anything of it, I was told that “I must've eaten too much” and it “happens to everyone” so when I didn't get acid reflux I thought my food wasn't being digested! But it was due to having low stomach acidity which is another symptom of having a low vagus tone.

Another symptom is gastroparesis also known as delayed gastric emptying whereby it takes the stomach a long time to empty its contents. Normally, the stomach contracts to move food down into the small intestine for digestion. The vagus nerve controls the movement of food from the stomach through the digestive tract. Gastroparesis occurs when the vagus nerve is damaged and the muscles of the stomach and intestines do not work normally. Food then moves slowly or stops moving through the digestive tract. The serotonin (happy hormone) that is produced in the gut is stored primarily by the enterochromaffin cells in the gastrointestinal tract. So when the vagus nerve is not stimulated is it unable to release serotonin from the enterochromaffin cells in to circulation leading to the peristalsis. It is this that contributes to the feeling of being depressed.

Grapes, blackberries, raspberries, soy, fermented foods and chocolate all have a high amount of histamine and consuming all of these have caused me to break out, particulary on my jaw. Those who are histamine intolerant cannot tolerate sauerkraut or other fermented vegetables. So it is probably best to live on a diet which consists of eating fresh food, fresh vegetable juices, raw eggs, raw organic milk, soaked raw nuts and soaked raw seeds. This is because “healthy” people have an enzyme called diamine oxidase (DAO) which is made in the gut and other parts of the body), it breaks down any excess histamine that is absorbed from a histamine-containing food or any histamine stored inside our own cells, liberated by histamine liberator foods. When “healthy” people eat foods which contain histamine, or foods that liberate histamines, it does not affect them thanks to a healthy level of DAO in their body. However, when people have a low level of this enzyme and they eat too many histamine-rich foods, they suffer “allergy-like” symptoms such as headaches, rashes, itching, eczema, hives, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, flatulence, etc. This is called histamine intolerance and results from a disequilibrium of accumulated histamine and the capacity for histamine degradation. As in this case with nearly any substance in the body, it’s all about balance.

Histamine isn’t good or bad its a necessary molecule that exerts critical effects to help the body communicate with itself. The best way to measure histamine would be in the blood. Histamine is metabolised through another key enzyme which is called Histamine N-methyltransferase (HNMT). DAO works on histamines outside the cell and HNMT works on histamines inside the cell. Well, both of those enzymes require three nutrients to work properly. They require copper, magnesium and vitamin B6. Ding, ding, ding! And what happens when people are under stress? What do they lose? They lose magnesium, B vitamins and the copper goes rogue. And so they lose the very nutrients that they need to make those enzymes work to control the histamine response. Sometimes histamine levels can be really low because of too much copper in their body or those histamines can be really, really high because of copper deficiency.

The individual who really did the breakthrough work on this is called Carl Pfeifer, he coined the phrase histopedia and histadelia (I think is the other term for the high). Histopedia is low histamine and histadelia is high histamine. He was able to link the histamine level to an individual who had tendencies towards schizophrenia or depression. It’s absolutely fascinating. He discovered that if your blood histamine levels are below 40, you have very low histamine, which means you have excess copper and if your histamine level is above 70, it means you have excess histamines from too little copper.

There’s a wonderful article at the American Journal of Critical Nutrition. The author’s name is Maintz. I think it’s from 2008 and it’s called “Histamine and Histamine Intolerance”. You can Google it and then the full article will come up. It explains that histamine intolerance is behind this wide spectrum of chronic disease that they had no idea about including heart disease, neurotransmitter issues and gut dysbiosis, all of the allergies and stuff that we would expect.