Putting The Breaks In Our Fight Or Flight Response.

A few years ago now I started having very unusual symptoms appear. They were present in my twenties but I was able to overcome them with natural medicine. The symptoms that returned were dizziness, mental fog and a rapid heart rate that lasted throughout the day. I found it hard to concentrate. Interestingly, they went away when I was lying down.

I got to the point where it seems like every opportunity I had, I would rush to lie down. It was starting to interfere with my home life. For example some of the simplest chores like washing the dishes and laundry became almost impossible. While I was standing I would often space out and forget what I was doing.

I started taking measurements of my heart rate variability to see if there is anything going on with my autonomic nervous system. I found that it was very low compared other people my age. I also noticed my heart rate was often 65 beats per minute lying down but while standing my heart rate was almost always over 100 bpm and at time as high as 130+ bpm during regular daily activity. This all suggested a problem with my vagus nerve or parasympathetics.

Our parasympathetics is like the break on our nervous system and help us reach a calm state. We call this self-regulation. This explains why my heart rate would shoot up when moving throughout the day. Later I learned about an autonomic condition called POTs syndrome. For me the underlying factor for this was EDS or joint hypermobility syndrome which I have talked about in the past.

When I would get these attacks of dizziness and mental fog my heart rate variability would be a very low as well.

Heart rate variability is a measurement of the autonomic nervous system. Low heart rate variability is correlated with chronic disease, anxiety, depression and even early death. This scared me!

Interestingly you can build your vagus nerve / parasympathetic response using Breathwork and biofeedback exercises. This is because the diaphragm is connected to the vagus nerve. When actively breathing, we stimulate the vagus nerve which sends signals to the brain to calm down. I think of our parasympathetics as a break to counter our fight or flight response. With live HTV biofeedback we can watch the shift from fight or flight to rest and digest. This is rewarding and keeps us going.

From my experiences it takes time to boost our vagus nerve and parasympathetics, typically up to 10 weeks of regular practice is needed. The more you practice the better results. Just like going to the gym!