Wendy Hayden - The Vagus Nerve Gut Brain Connection

The Vagus Nerve Gut Brain Connection: Heal Your Vagus Nerve and Improve Gut Health

by Wendy Hayden

SWH Media LLC.

www.NaturalConstipationSolutions.com

2021 Wendy N. Hayden

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S.copyright law.

Cover by Wendy Hayden

Introduction

The Vagus Nerve

The Vagus Nerve and the Gut

Is Your Vagus Nerve Healthy?

How to Convince Our Vagus Nerve We Are Safe

Breathing for your vagus nerve

Cold Exposure to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve

Meditation and prayer

EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique or Tapping and the Vagus Nerve

Nutrition for Vagal Nerve Health

How to stimulate your childs vagus nerve

Introduction

I have been on a quest to heal my familys health for the better part of the last decade. My husband has Crohns disease and had his large intestines and colon removed before I met him. My youngest son was diagnosed with Autism, Celiac, Tourettes, anxiety and struggled with chronic constipation. My oldest son has Asthma. My two sons and I have been diagnosed with PTSD. In my extended family, there are multiple diagnoses including Rheumatoid Arthritis, depression, type 2 diabetes, and IBS.

At 16 months old, my youngest son was hospitalized for 5 days with Salmonella. Doctors put him on IV antibiotics. They saved his life but set off terrible gut issues. At 18 months, his pediatrician diagnosed him with Celiac disease. At 4 years old, he was again hospitalized. This time for rotavirus. His pediatric gastroenterologist prescribed Miralax. I was told that hed need to be on it for life. My sons mental health took a nosedive during the year and a half he was on Miralax. He developed anxiety, panic attacks and hallucinations. A pediatric neurologist diagnosed him with Tourettess syndrome, PDD-nos, and later Autism. Every doctor I talked to assured me that Miralax wasnt causing these issues and told me I had to keep giving it to him.

Then my husband had surgery to repair a bladder fistula. The surgery went wrong and almost killed him. After this surgery he was in the hospital for 6 weeks and on TPN nutrition for 6 months. His surgeon told him he should go on permanent disability.

I read everything I could and tried everything I learned to heal my family. We changed our diet and used supplements I read about. We found an integrative medicine doctor who worked with us to help us heal. We made great strides, and I learned so much.

I made it my mission to heal my family. I made bone broth, fermented foods and cooked with veggies we grew in our garden. I served my family home-cooked organic food and read the label on every item I bought at the store.

My husband got off steroids and immune suppressors. He bought his own business where he worked 6 days a week, 60-hour weeks. He was tired, but he looked wonderful and was healthier than he had been his entire adult life. We knew we could never get him in perfect health because of the surgical damage and not having large intestines, but he was feeling better than he had since he was 12 and developed Inflammatory Bowel Disease and was put on steroids and immune suppressors.

I got my son off of Miralax and healed the damage it did to him. I worked to heal his gut and as it healed; he flourished. As his gut health improved, his mental health improved, too. He stopped ticcing; he went from hardly talking to doing public speaking at living history events. His anxiety melted away. He started hitting every age appropriate milestone and even exceeding them. He grew like a weed.

I used what I had learned to help thousands of families with children who were struggling with chronic constipation, both through my Facebook groups and with my books, What Your Doctor Didnt Tell You About Childhood Constipation and 'End You Chronic Constipation, Now! and my childrens books.

I felt like I really had figured it all out.

Then my husbands health started going downhill again. The stress of running a business slowly ate away at my husbands physical and mental health. For the first time in years, he had a Crohns flare. He kept getting blockages from the scar tissue in his intestines and was having pain from his Crohns disease. He began having a horrible urgency that made it hard for us to leave the house and sometimes could not make it to work without having to stop at a gas station for a restroom break.

We ended up back at our Integrative Medicine Doctor. He told my husband that the stress of running the business would kill him and that we needed to make big changes. Our doctor told us that stress and trauma were causing my husbands flare and that until we got rid of the stress and get to the root of the trauma that had triggered his autoimmune disease in the first place or his health would not get better. It was a big switch in thinking for us.

Our doctor told us that trauma can damage our DNA, causing disease to be passed down through the generations. Since many of my husbands family members have autoimmune issues, this made a ton of sense to us. He also told us it didnt matter how healthy we eat or how careful we were with our gut health, or what supplements we took; if we had unresolved trauma, nothing we did would work to heal our bodies long term.

I knew from my interest in DNA that just because you have a gene for a disease, it doesnt mean that you will get the disease. You can just be a carrier of a gene for Crohns or Celiac. Something needs to trigger your DNA to cause that gene to express itself.

We werent in a position to sell his business or just throw the keys on the desk and walk away, so I researched ways to help him deal with the daily stress he was experiencing and also began looking into trauma and how it triggers autoimmune disease.

I dove deep, reading books, articles and watching hours and hours of videos.

My Aha! moment came watching a talk by Dr. Stephen Porges. Dr. Porges is the pioneer researcher behind the Polyvagal theory. As he talked about the vagus nerve and its impact on so many health issues, I realized this might be the key to healing my family long term and that this information could also help my readers who struggle with constipation, autoimmune diseases, and gut dysfunction.

I am not a scientist or a doctor. I am a wife, a mom and a human who is trying to take what I learn and use it to heal myself and my family and my community.

The health issues my family has had have pushed me to learn more about the standard medical model and effective natural alternatives to the toxic and ineffective treatments prescribed to my family.

I wrote this book to share what I have learned with you. The techniques I have included in this book are ones you can easily implement into your daily life. They will help you heal yourself and heal your family.

There are some wonderful books written by scientists, including The Polyvagal Theory by Dr. Stephen Porges, if you are looking for a thorough analysis into the science behind the vagus nerve.

This book will give you an understanding of what the vagus nerve is and how it affects your health, but I am a layperson writing for laypeople. It lays out techniques to help you hack your autonomic nervous system, get out of fight-or-flight mode, and tap into the healing power of the vagus nerve.