Dr. Navaz Habib
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So I want to talk first about HRV balance and recovery index. So different devices will call it different things. And each of them has a different algorithm by which they're pulling that data and determining what the name of it is and what it really is. But what I want to talk about is that HRV Balance or Recovery Index is really talking about the measure
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
of time or efficiency to enter that rest digestion recovery state how quickly can we shift from essentially having our foot on the accelerator to having our foot on the brakes when it comes to proverbially in our bodies and hrv balance tells us that hrv heart rate variability is the marker that we want to look at when it comes to autonomic balance.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Autonomics being the sympathetic fight or flight system shifting to the parasympathetic rest, digest, and recover system. And the access to be able to shift between these two systems, to be able to go from fight or flight accelerator being pushed, to rest, digest, recover, brakes being pushed, that's a really important marker and something that we need to really look at.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So this is a client of mine who... noticeably had a terrible week. He had really, really low recovery levels, but his recovery levels were directly linked to his HRV. You can see that very clearly. So this, what we're looking at here for those who aren't on video with us is we have two screenshots taken from a Whoop band. Okay, the Whoop band is a great wearable device that's worn on the wrist.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And on the left side, we have an image showing his recovery percentages on Monday through Thursday were 26%, quite low, 33%, 30%, 24. And then on Friday, he bumped up into 64% and Saturday down a little bit to 54%. So he had a little bit better Friday and Saturday, but he had pretty terrible numbers when it came to recovery. his recovery capacity during the week.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So the stomach, the intestines, the liver, the spleen indirectly. It has direct connections to nearly every single organ in the body, and that is unique because there's no other nerve like the vagus nerve. It is sending information to those organs, but the vast majority of information that's flowing on the vagus nerve is actually coming up from those organs to the brain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Now, if we correlate that on the right side of this image, we have a very particular set of HRV balance numbers or HRV numbers during the week. And so his heart rate variability Monday through Thursday were on the lower end as well. And they actually followed this recovery trend. You'll notice that Monday was 33, Tuesday was 40, Wednesday was 41, and Thursday was 30.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Dudes correlate with that recovery percentages that we saw on the other screenshot. And then on Friday, he bumped up. When he went up to recovery of 64%, his HRV went up to 58%. Or 58 milliseconds, excuse me. So he had this big jump and then HRV dropped a little bit on Saturday down to 47 and that's when his recovery was given a 54% mark.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
What this tells us is heart rate variability or the average HRV is essentially a marker of the balance between sympathetic parasympathetic. So we're able to pull this data and determine If we are capable of shifting sympathetic to parasympathetic and back pretty easily, then HRV generally is going to be higher and HRV balance is going to be higher. That means that we're recovering better.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
In this particular patient's case, He wasn't. His HRV was generally significantly lower than his average. And that caused his recovery scores to be significantly lower. And then he was actually taking a bit of time after he noticed this week was pretty terrible. I believe there was travel involved. That's really what was causing these lower levels.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But he finally was able to get himself into a situation where he was sleeping more readily afterwards. I believe he got sick on this trip. And so that was what contributed to his very low HRV markers and his recovery index being as low as it was. And then finally on Friday, I believe he started to feel significantly better.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
He was able to overcome some of these sickness challenges in addition to the travel issues. And that resulted in a slight increase in his HRV and his overall recovery percentage. So this is whoop band data. And there's another set of screenshots that we can look at here with regards to what these look like. So on that last day, if you remember his recovery was 54%, his HRV was 47.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It was on the lower side and his body had experienced a pretty significant amount of strain, meaning that he was at a 12.7 strain marker. Whoop band has a very particular way of pulling in strain data. Each device has a slightly different one. So this is a great way to know that. He got back to his house. He got back home. He started feeling better.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And you notice on the right side here, we have a screenshot showing that his recovery went from 54% up to 93%. And his HRV followed suit. Went from 47 up to 73. This was huge. And so his strain was a little lower that day. We were at 10.6. And his sleep, because he slept really well, was at 100%.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
This wearable device data helps to provide feedback as to what's going on with regards to our heart, our heart rate and our heart rate variability, which are these great little signs that we can pull to look at vagus nerve function and autonomic balance. And so that's really where wearable device data can help to provide some insight that we weren't aware of.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So it's actually reporting in what's going on with regards to inflammation, with regards to optimal regulatory function, with regards to digestion and detoxification. And it's sending that information up to the brain to tell the brain what's going on. 80% of the information on the vagus nerve is going from the organs up to the brain.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, you're absolutely right there. When We have this data. When we are able to pull this information, we know that then this is a great proxy for whether our vagus nerve is able to send good information to the immune cells that it needs to, to turn on that healing state. We know that healing state is necessary for our ability to perform at a higher level.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We know that we need to be able to recover from the breakdowns that have occurred. So when we see low recovery data, it means we're not going to be able to perform at a higher level. in the gym, at life, whatever it is. We're also seeing that when we do recover well, our ability to shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic is going to be shifted off.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And what that's going to do is it's not gonna allow us to enter that healing state. So our ability to perform in the gym, lifting weights, doing whatnot is going to be reduced. So with this particular patient, we saw that That first week when he was really down, really sick and not doing well, we noticed that his ability to recover was reduced.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So he wasn't able to go to the gym and perform at a higher level. He wasn't able to show up at work and perform at a higher level. The vagus nerve was not able to send the anti-inflammatory signals and create that recovery process as effectively during that process as when he was doing better. When he's doing better, then he can show up, he can perform better for sure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, that's actually like the perfect way to put it, because when our bodies and our signals in our bodies are pushed towards that sympathetic side, what that's telling us is that our bodies are in a reactive mode, that we're in a more threat response type of mode. We're ready to respond to threats around us. in a very particular way. We either fight with them or we flee from them.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
That's different than what we generally initially expected to hear because vagus When we think of the vagus nerve, we think of the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest, digest and recover system, meaning that we're sending this information to tell the body to relax, to slow down. That's not entirely true. Only about 15% of the information on the vagus nerve is brain to body.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And what that means is we're not able to think as clearly. And that's really important here that you've kind of brought up because when we're in a sympathetic state, things that aren't threats will actually show up more as a threat to us or we'll perceive them to be more of a threat to our survival. And in reality, they're probably not major stressors or major threats to our survival.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So when we're in that mode, when we have lower HRV markers and we have lower HRV and recovery numbers, it tells us that we're primed to be in that threat response mode. And we're not in that parasympathetic rest, digest, recover mode, because that mode, when we're in that mode, we think more clearly. We have better executive function.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We have better signals being sent to our brain telling us that we can think about things in a more logical, more reasonable manner and not think of everything as a threat. And so we're able to then not be as anxious, not show up in this threat response type of mode. And that's really important to understand.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
What's really cool here, though, is we're also able to look at other markers that will tell us whether we're in that threat response mode or not. And one of those big ones is resting respiratory rate or our breath rate. I'm going to share my screen again and would love to kind of dig into this a little bit. So when it comes to a measure of your cardio respiratory efficiency,
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Your breath is really key to understanding whether we're in more of a sympathetic or parasympathetic state because our breathing is what really drives this particular pattern. When it comes to breathing, our resting respiratory rate, what we see here is that I've got two screenshots from an Oura Ring, and this is actually from my Oura Ring.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
You'll see on the left side that during this particular week, the 39th week of the year, that my respiratory rate was significantly higher than average. So my average is sitting here on the chart as 15.3 breaths per minute. And during this particular week, it went up to 17.2 breaths per minute. This is a week where my breathing was significantly faster. I was not able to slow everything down.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
I think I was actually quite sick this particular week. And so my respiration was poor. And then you'll notice on the right side, the 45th week of the year, I was able to bring my breathing rate down well below the average of 15.3 to 14.6%.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
and what this meant was i recovered really well i was able to get myself into a state where breathing was much more measured much more calm and this was really optimal for my breathing pattern and for the signals that i was sending through my body because respiratory rate is so important to understand as kind of a proxy marker for your vo2 max and your ability to take in oxygen and be comfortable
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
holding on to carbon dioxide before you release it out. Now, when it comes to kind of that average versus optimal respiratory rate, what we'll see here is that the normal average worldly respiratory rate is somewhere between 12 and 20 breaths per minute. We've got a chart here showing kind of a bell curve data with regards to where people's breath rate truly is. 12 to 20 is kind of the full range.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So we need to be very particular in knowing that the vast majority of information is coming up. What that means is when there's breakdown of the vagus nerve, we're often not getting good information up to the brain. We're not getting the information that what's going on in the gut needs to get to the brain. And that's a huge area. The gut brain connection is made up via the vagus nerve.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But in an optimal scenario, respiratory rates for males should be between 10 and 14 breaths per minute. For females, it should be closer to 11 to 16 breaths, simply due to differences in sizes of lungs and respiratory capacity and kind of the strain that females are under other than males. And
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
when we are actively breathing, when we're spending time in active breath recovery mode, and we're trying to control our breath to create what's called a resonant frequency, and this is what we use to improve HRV, we wanna get our breath rate down into the four and a half to six and a half range of breaths per minute.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
This is really important to understand because breath control is one of the best ways for us to shift our recovery state. And when we're breathing faster, When we have a higher respiratory rate, shorter breaths, they tend to be more chest based breaths.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And this is driving us towards sympathetic state, that threat response state more versus a state where we want to be in a slower, more calm breathing pattern. And when we notice that our respiratory rate is higher, we're in sympathetic state. When our respiratory rate is lower, then we're in a parasympathetic state.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
This is really ideal for us to look at and a great proxy for our ability to function as wonderful humans that we are.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
When we see that this data tells us that we're not functioning optimally, that our our breath rate is less than optimal, that we're shifted with lower HRV. What we're actually getting is this interoceptive information as to what's going on inside our body and our ability to sense threat. And we have kind of two sides to this coin.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So if there are changes or issues going on with regards to the microbiome, if there's issues going on with regards to inflammatory processes in any one of these organs, getting information up to the brain is so uniquely important. And so the symptoms of vagus nerve dysfunction will often show up as gut issues are kind of the number one that I tend to see challenges with regards to digestion.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We have a threat mode, a threat response mode, which is more of that sympathetic activation. And then we have The opposite side, which is when parasympathetics are functioning. And there's a specific feeling that drives parasympathetic function and allows us to enter that parasympathetic mode, the vagus nerve activated mode, more effectively. And that is the feeling of safety.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Safety drives our breath rate. It drives our ability to feel comfortable, feel safe. And when we feel safe, our breath rate comes down, our heart rate variability goes up. These are important markers, important data points that when we get this data in, it tells us
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
That, yeah, you know what, your body is responding and maybe a more threat response mode because for some reason you're not feeling safe. So having these proxies as to what's going on internally tells us what the signals internally are interpreting and how we're essentially shifting between that sympathetic and parasympathetic mode.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, safety is that most important feeling. And when we don't feel safe, and I'm sorry to hear, obviously, about the situation with regards to the break-in at your home, But when we don't feel safe, our body responds in that particular way. And even though we will often enter a threat response mode in our brain, our body shows these symptoms and it shows these signs.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And if we don't take the time to read into them, to listen to them, then we're not able to get that feedback data that's being provided by our bodies. And I think that's really important to understand. So getting that feedback, getting that understanding of what our bodies are trying to tell us, is absolutely imperative.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And that's where wearable technology can help to provide that insight as to, yes, I am feeling safe, or no, something's not exactly right here. And maybe I should do a deeper assessment into why I'm not feeling as safe as I should. Now, I also want to get into talking a little bit about sleep. Sleep being that third area that wearable technology can really help to provide phenomenal information.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We have a digestive insufficiency, constipation, diarrhea, IBS type of conditions. Next, we have inability to regulate or control inflammation. So we'll often have inflammatory processes, things like autoimmune diseases, things like brain issues, specifically mental health type challenges, anxiety, depression, very commonly linked to vagus nerve dysfunction.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So with regards to sleep, we really want to know what our sleep looks like, what our sleep architecture looks like. So I'm going to share my screen one more time and I want to go over kind of the five sleep cycles and having this goal of 25, 50, 25 on wearable device data when it comes to sleep. So with regards to these particular markers, Optimal sleep architecture.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
This is, I've got an image here showing what optimal sleep architecture looks like. And it's showing the time that should be spent generally in REM sleep, in light sleep and in deep sleep. And we have marker kind of showing that there should be five sleep cycles through the night that we go through. And we should be noticing that the majority of our deep sleep is happening in the first two cycles.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And it kind of weans off in three and four. We shouldn't have too much deep sleep in the fifth cycle, but we should have a lot more REM sleep in the later cycles in four and five. And light sleep is generally going to be pretty equal throughout all the five cycles.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But what we should have is this percentage of optimal total sleep time of 25% spent in REM sleep, 50% spent in light sleep, and 25% in deep sleep. That 25, 50, 25 is kind of that optimal. And on this next slide here, I'm showing actually sleep data from a really good night of sleep that I had very recently that showed that my time asleep, these are screenshots from my Oura Ring,
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
I was in bed for eight hours and 20 minutes, but my sleep time was seven hours and 49 minutes. And you can see, as you kind of look through the trend data of the Oura Ring, I go from being awake where it's white here down into a light sleep for a short period. But then the majority of my deep sleep is happening in my first two sleep cycles, cycle one and cycle two.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And then we're spending more time in REM later on in cycle three and four, and then more time in light sleep and popping out of sleep later on in the night. And so that night on another screenshot here, it shows that I spent 22% in REM sleep, 53% in light sleep and 25% in deep sleep. And I actually had 31 minutes awake, which obviously tracks with the time of sleep versus time in bed. markers.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Sleep is so important and noticing that your sleep is off or something is not working really well there really helps to provide input into whether we're recovering well or not, because sleep is where we truly recover. That's where recovery occurs is during sleep time. The vagus nerve is most active immediately in the moment where you fall asleep.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
There's been a great data study showing that the moment you fall asleep, your vagus nerve spikes activity for a moment there. And it continues on through the night. So that recovery process is going to be occurring through sleep time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And this tells us that we're going to be able to, you know, control inflammation, improve the recovery process, send information to the immune system more readily to engage in regulatory and recovery functions. And what we're then gonna see is, if this isn't working well, we're gonna see changes in blood sugar. We're gonna see changes in your ability to control and regulate function.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So I wanna go over a few data trend comparisons that can help to provide some real insight into how wearable devices show that there are trends that can pop up from time to time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So I use a particular technology, a software called Heads Up Health that helps me track my patient's data to know what's going on and to see where blips or changes can affect in a positive or a negative way their wearable health data. And I think this is really where wearable health data can be very powerful. So I'm gonna show a couple of screenshots from my heads up health with my patients.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So these are the big ones that we tend to see in regards to symptoms, in regards to specific conditions that are linked to vagus nerve dysfunctions.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And you'll notice in this particular one, I've got a screenshot of my patient's aura ring tracking the changes in AM readiness score, which is the same idea as kind of the recovery index. versus their resting heart rate. And you can see that the red line here tells us about resting heart rate. The average of that resting heart rate is sitting around kind of the 65, 66 area on average.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It does kind of bump up and down as the weeks go, obviously. And On the blue line, we see that AM readiness score. And AM readiness scores are trending kind of from an upwards maximum of 88 or so down to the mid 70s, okay? And they're kind of up and down. But what we see is on nights when the resting heart rate popped up, got up into the higher marker closer to 70 on average,
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So as a very simple overview, The vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve. We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves that come out of the head and neck area that come out of the brainstem in particular. And they generally send information to and from the head and neck area.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
The AM readiness score significantly dropped following. So the heart was beating harder, telling us that we were unable to enter that healing state and that readiness recovery state more readily. That occurred around October 28th. And then again, we had a huge spike in heart rate, average resting heart rate. up into the 75 zone. And that also correlated with the drop in AM readiness score.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So what we're seeing is your heart rate and your readiness scores will correlate in an inverse manner. This is an important one to look at. So getting this data in for me tells me, hey, what were you doing those two nights? Did you eat a late meal? Did you maybe have a more sugary meal? Was there something that triggered you to go into this state of a higher resting heart rate.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And so do we need to do something to ensure that we keep our heart rate lower and not allow those spikes to occur because you showed up not ready the next day. Your body was unable to recover more optimally. On this next screenshot, this next slide, we have a comparison between a couple of different devices.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So we've got Apple Health tracking weight, which started kind of halfway through this slide. We've got a LibreView, which is telling us about, it's a continuous glucose monitor in the green here. And then we have AM readiness score tracking as well. And this was a really cool one because we were able to track three different data points and notice that there's a trend that followed accordingly.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So where AM readiness is and AM readiness continues, we have glucose kind of following suit. So average glucose through the day, we notice that as AM readiness decreases, as we feel like our vagus nerves are less capable of sending information and regulatory information, our average blood sugar actually increases.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So when we have spikes in blood sugar, more spikes, we have more of these higher number days or moments, our readiness decrease. And that was a huge one. Okay, on the negative side. But then we have this other marker that as AM readiness increases, our blood sugar decreases. So this was really cool. And what followed suit there was weight actually followed alongside with that sugar level.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So as this person was sleeping better, getting better recovery scores and recovering more readily, getting their readiness scores up into the 80s and 90s, rather than sitting in the low 80s on average, Their glucose levels through those days came down.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
They actually were able to get their glucose levels into the sixes and sevens rather than being in the nines and tens, which is where they were dysregulated. And what was very exciting there was they actually started losing weight. They actually lost a couple of kilograms over that last month or so.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So this was a really great marker telling us about how our vagus nerve, our wearable data helped to provide insight into how to improve the glucose levels and then to show up in a much better way. And this last one is actually a baseline versus intervention timeline. So this was really cool.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We were able to identify that once we started doing, in this particular case, hyperbaric oxygen therapy for this particular client, they actually had improvements in their sleep scores and their HRV. So with this particular person, we have a red line of data tracking essentially their their HRV. And then we have blue markers spiking on when hyperbaric oxygen therapy was delivered.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And when it was delivered more readily, what we saw was an increase in HRV of 30%. Average HRV went up by 30% and max HRV went up by 20%. And their minimum HRV actually increased as well by 42%. What this meant was we could see that there was benefits to this therapeutic intervention that were more powerful than getting just kind of subjective data from this patient.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So this was a really cool set of data points that I think can be really powerful in helping patients to identify what is working really well in their case and what isn't. This is where wearable device data of wearable trend data can be so powerful in helping to support patient's health and provide a set of information that helps us become more empowered with our overall health.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, so over the past five years, I've been working with clients that have had vagus nerve issues pop up and I've come up with a bit of a categorization of what these vagus nerve specific stressors, the major challenges that cause the vagus nerve to break down are. And I outline them in more depth in my book.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Lots of data there, but I think there's a lot of great stories that can be told from these data points.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, I think that's really the power of wearable device data is helping to provide that feedback, helping to provide that data point to help encourage and empower us to make better decisions. So you're absolutely correct with that. No question about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Sleep really is the playground for the vagus nerve. It's where the vagus nerve goes to work. And so, yes, I would absolutely double down on the idea of improving sleep because when we sleep well, our bodies recover more readily.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And if we put attention to ensuring that sleep is optimized, that our sleep environment is optimized, that we're ensuring that we're getting our bodies into that recovery state more readily, we're giving the vagus nerve an opportunity to turn on more and to engage that safety response and to engage that recovery process.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
The immune system is, I think, been siloed into this being our protective system and protecting us from threats to our survival. It's not just that. It does so much more. The immune system needs to be given signals to tell it to engage that recovery-based process. And that happens when good signals are being sent to it. And that can only happen if we sleep well.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But here are kind of the four areas that we need to look at when it comes to the type of stress and stress as an overall kind of overarching determination is chronic stress. Chronic stress is what breaks down the vagus nerve. But there's four areas that we need to look at to understand what types of stress.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So without a doubt, if you can improve your sleep quality, the time that you're spending, the effectiveness of your sleep, everything will tend to trend in a much more positive direction when you do so.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, it can absolutely be overwhelming. There's a lot to take in here. There's a lot to understand. And when you're empowered to make changes, it often has to do with the simplicity or your ability to handle these. So I'm gonna provide one big recommendation that I think has helped the vast majority of my patients more than anything else. And that is book-ending your day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Essentially creating routines in the morning and in the evening around your sleep to ensure that you're preparing yourself to handle the stressors of the day in a really powerful way. So wake up in the morning and essentially providing yourself this initial window of preparation and recovery assessment as to what's going on in your body.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Maybe doing some breathing exercises in the morning, getting a sense of how you slept. Do you feel good? Do you feel capable? Do you feel ready? What are you grateful for in that moment? What are some of the things that you're ready to take on? What are the challenges that you're ready to take on that day?
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Because often we tend to discount certain ones or forget about certain ones as contributing factors to our stress levels. So number one, daily stressors. These are the day-to-day challenges that people are experiencing. And what we tend to look at or call kind of the stressors that we are dealing with. These are the financial challenges, the relationship issues, the day-to-day issues of stress.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And then bookending at the end of the day, ensuring that we're not overdoing it, ensuring that we're not maybe exercising too late at night or pushing ourselves too hard, maybe having a meal too late, something along those lines. And allowing our bodies to enter that recovery mode more readily because... What that does is it drives that vagus nerve function up.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It allows that recovery process to occur more readily. So if we can start to bookend our day, I think that's the greatest, easiest starting point to help ensure that sleep is optimized, to help ensure that these recovery processes are given the attention that they require, that they deserve, this will help to provide a set of instructions as to how to enter that state more readily, for sure.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So bookending the day is a great one.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
when we get this data in, when we get a sense of whether we're sleeping well, whether our heart rate is higher, whether we're in this state of increased HRV or low HRV, it helps to provide changes to our habits and to our lifestyles. And this is really where we want to create change because the change doesn't necessarily just come from
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
You know, the supplements that you're taking or the food that you're eating, it comes from your behaviors and your behaviors drive all of these things. And so, yes, if you're sleeping in feeling stressed prior to sleep, it's going to drive your heart rate up. It's going to create physiological changes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And that's what these devices help to provide is these trend data analyses that help us to note where we're at and what we can then do about it. And if we can make changes, then we'll actually see these benefits on these wearable trend data points as well. Fantastic.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
you know, running the kids out of the house in the morning or being stuck in traffic during the day, the running around of day to day life and these kind of menial annoyances of day to day life that tend to chip away or cause us to become annoyed or stressed. So that's going to be the first area of or the first type of stress to look at. The second one is psychological stress.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
I think it's really easy to play the victim. And when we get the data and we get these important tracking points that these wearable devices can provide, and yes, they are an investment.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But when we get this data point, it can actually change the way that we show up in the world in such a way that can actually improve how we interact with others, how we maybe work with our business partners or produce new content or share new ideas with others. And what this does is
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
when we function at a higher level, because we've invested in something that's providing us this feedback, this recommendation, these tools, What this provides us is opportunities to show up in a much better sense when it comes to our patients. I have a really great friend who gave me this really great quote. And he said, make it worth more than you paid for it. Make it worth more.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And what that means to me is... Yeah, you might have paid a few hundred bucks for your Oura Ring or your Whoop Band, and yeah, you may be paying $6 a month for it, but is that helping you bring home an additional two, three, four, $5,000 a month to help support your family, to help to do better? Are you able to show up better in a physiological pattern
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Now, I consider psychological stress anything that's happened in the past that's caused a significant emotional distress or a significant challenge to your ability to see the world clearly or in an objective way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
I think the top three ways to improve vagus nerve function, in addition to what we've already discussed today, come down to, number one, your breathing pattern. Identifying and adjusting your breath pattern. We talked about respiratory rate, but I want your breath to be three things. Your breath should be... Nasal, meaning you're breathing through your nose.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It should be diaphragmatic, meaning you're using your diaphragm, which is the muscle that separates the chest from the abdomen. And it should be slower exhales. So nasal diaphragmatic lower exhales. What that means is slower breaths through the nose that are more belly breathing breaths and longer exhale time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
These things are important because when we're inhaling, when we're taking a breath in, we're turning on the sympathetic nervous system. We're pushing the accelerator. When we're exhaling, we're pushing the brakes. We put our body into a state where the brakes turn on and we slow everything down. This is a huge and very powerful tool in creating that shift between sympathetic, parasympathetic.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And when we learn to breathe really effectively, that will do it. The exercises that we add on on top of this all work on improving your breath pattern and spending more time in that exhale state. Exhalation is the key to driving that vagus nerve activation upwards. So humming, chanting, breathing, gargling, phenomenal tools, all requiring you to be in an exhale pattern.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So I would add all of those exercises on top of that breath pattern. Number two, I think practicing gratitude is so powerful. Forgiveness, gratitude, it provides a sense of safety inside your body. Knowing that you're in a state because of the things that happened around you, the driving factors that put you in the position that you're in.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
knowing that you are capable of doing better and being excited about what the next day brings creates that sense of internal safety and that is the major driver as we know from a feeling perspective of improving vagus nerve function so Breathing with longer exhales, nasal diaphragmatic longer exhales, practicing gratitude, gratitude practice, ensuring that you're feeling that sense of safety.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So things like adverse childhood events, things like being the victim of a crime, having some sort of trauma, kind of a bigger T trauma, not in all cases because everybody experiences different things and everyone has a different childhood,
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And lastly, I think just spending time with friends, being around loved ones, people that you can laugh with, that you can spend time with. And we tend not to laugh when we're feeling threatened, when we're feeling unsafe. Laughter is this great little hack that helps us shift into vagus nerve activated state.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And being around loved ones, being around people that make you feel good, make you feel safe, friends, family, whoever it is on each individual basis, I think that's an area that's incredibly overlooked. And we felt this during the COVID lockdowns that we felt lonely. We didn't feel connected to people anymore.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And that was another driver of why we didn't do so well during those responses, during these lockdowns. So I highly recommend engaging in physical or emotional contact with others and just experiencing that lack of loneliness. I think that is a huge hack that can be easily overlooked.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, absolutely. You can check out my book, Upgrade Your Vegas Nerve. You can look out for me on Instagram, DrNavazHabib, and you can go to the website, DrNavazHabib.com, and you can sign up for our vagus nerve upgrade program. We've got a free program, a very simple kind of 10-day protocol program that you'd be able to access.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
and get a sense of some of the great tools that you can utilize, very simple ones to help improve vagus nerve function. So go to drnavashabib.com and sign up for our vagus nerve jumpstart program.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But if you ever experienced a significant event, you're more prone to having these major psychological stressors, which are actually the number one cause or the number one reason why vagus nerve breaks down is these psychological stressors. because it primes our body to be in this threat response state more than any other area really does.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Yeah, I am taking on new clients and we work online. So everything is remote. You don't have to wait in line. You don't need to come to me in person. And we work with clients to consult with them to improve their overall health. I'm not taking people on as a primary care practitioner, but I absolutely am consulting those who want to upgrade their overall health.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Thank you so much, Drew, for the opportunity and for allowing me to share with your audience.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So psychological stressors are a major one and one that needs to be looked at in significant depth when we're assessing the specific reasons why vagus nerve would break down. The third area is physical stress. Physical stressors are the stressors regarding or involved in our movements and our ability to move or function in the world in a physical manner.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
They're the ones that are pulling data as to what's going on in our vision and our hearing and sending info out into what's going on or what we should be seeing or feeling around the face and the head and neck area. The vagus nerve is unique. It's the 10th of those 12 pairs. And it is the only one of these cranial nerves to actually leave the head cavity. It comes out from the brainstem.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
If we've ever had car accidents, slip and fall injuries, concussions, Sedentary lifestyle for a period of time. If we sit too much, that's a major stressor on our body. So these are things that we need to look at. Are we moving enough? Is there something that's potentially contributed to our inability to move as we want to in the world?
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Has there been a physical injury that actually can cause these issues? This is particularly true for injuries of the neck. So physical stress that happens in and around the neck area can be very, very powerful in causing vagus nerve dysfunction, something that really needs to be looked at.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And in my capacity as a chiropractor, I've seen numerous cases where physical issues, physical injuries have actually significantly contributed to the inability to send these vagus nerve signals effectively. So what we call autonomic dysfunction as a result of physical injury. And the last area is biochemical stressors.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So these biochemical stressors are now things that we're becoming more aware of, thankfully, because we have access to more and more data with regards to our health. So with regard to biochemical stressors, we're looking at, are there toxins that are entering your body? Are there specific nutrients that are not getting into your body?
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
Is there challenges that are causing issues to your cellular function, your ability to pull in nutrients and your ability to release toxins? What if there's a buildup of toxins in your body and you have poor liver dysfunction or you have the inability to clear out these toxins? So biochemical stress results in cellular dysfunction. So issues of dysfunction at a cellular level.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
If you're lacking the nutrients to absorb or to allow for cellular function to be optimized, if there's microbiome dysbiosis, if there's access to pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all of the things that are sprayed on our foods now, chemicals that are found in indoor air quality issues.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
the cookware that you're using that might be coated in specific things that are toxic to our bodies, as well as excess sugars and excess processed foods. These are all biochemical stressors that cause cellular dysfunction. And this is really where functional medicine thrives. So identifying the sources of these biochemical stressors is another area that really needs to be looked at.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So those four areas, once again, are daily stressors, day to day, psychological stressors that occurred in the past, physical stressors that caused your body not to be able to function in a movement pattern effectively, and biochemical stressors that actually break down our body on a cellular level and create dysfunction on our ability to regulate or trigger inflammatory control.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
We know the role of the vagus nerve is to control inflammation. And when we cause issues to its ability to control that inflammation because we're overstressing it, that results in vagus nerve dysfunction. And that's how people become sick because we lack the ability to control inflammation. And so now what we're able to do, lucky enough, we have access to amazing data almost all the time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And I'm sure we'll get into that as we continue on.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It has a few branches within the head and neck area, one to the ear, to the airways, the pharynx and larynx muscles. And then it comes down through the neck and it actually leaves that head and neck area and it sends branches to every single organ in the entire body.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
The newest and coolest technologies are these health tracking wearable technology pieces. And What we're really excited about when it comes to overall healthcare and the way that people function is we're able to now have data coming in on a continuous basis as to their movement patterns, their sleep patterns, their readiness patterns.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
It comes down to the heart, to the lungs and the thorax, which is a chest area, continues down along the esophagus and goes down through the diaphragm, which is the muscle separating the Thorax and the abdomen, the chest and the belly. And then it continues on in the belly to attach to virtually every single organ in the abdominal cavity or all of our abdominal organs.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And this is really what's exciting when it comes to this new trend in health is wearable technology. So you're absolutely correct when you mentioned that they're not wearable. Perfect, and I promise you at this point, they're not. These are not diagnostic tools. I don't think wearable devices should be considered diagnostic tools for the vast majority of them.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
But what I would say is that they're phenomenal at providing trend data, trend analysis to tell us about certain processes, certain issues, and provide us a bit of feedback as to what's actually happening in our bodies. Because humans notoriously are not very good at knowing what's going on with regards to the internal functioning of their body. Their interoception is not very good.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And we tend not to in our day-to-day modern world spend time becoming more aware of that. And that's a real issue. So having access to wearable health technology data can help provide that insight.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
And so I want to share a few really interesting slides because these are the big three that I look for when I'm working with my clients to pull in some information as to what's going on with regards to their health. So we'll talk about deciphering some of that wearable health data.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
So the top three wearable health metrics that I focus on when I'm working with my clients is number one, HRV balance and recovery index. Each wearable device will call it something a little bit different, but I believe HRV balance and recovery index are one of the more powerful ones that we should look at. And I'll talk about that. in a little bit.
Dhru Purohit Show
Struggling With Mystery Symptoms? An Expert Explains Why Your Vagus Nerve May Hold the Key and How to Fix It with Dr. Navaz Habib
The second one is respiratory rate, which is your breathing rate. And that's something that people tend to undermine. And there's a really big reason why we shouldn't. We should really pay attention to our respiratory rate. And lastly is sleep architecture. The way that our sleep is built and functions, that's really important to knowing.