Podcast - Dr Carrie Rigoni on Low Tox Life with Alexx Stuart
This blog post is a transcript of the podcast interview between Alexx Stuart and Carrie Rigoni. It was created for those of you who prefer to read rather than listen (please forgive any grammar mistakes, it may have come across differently verbally vs in written form).
“This is the Low Tox live podcast.
Hello and welcome to the Low Tox live podcast, I'm Alex Stewart your host and today is show 240 and I have Dr Carrie Rigoni joining me today, a Chiropractor and Pilates Instructor from over in Perth. She is also Perth's only Integrative Neuroimmunology trained Practitioner and we will talk about what that means during our chat.
So today I'm going to be focused on babies and kids with a little bit for the parents as well, this is really really helpful for carers’, parents, teachers, babysitters, anyone who has babies and kids in their midst because if we are all looking out for our kids and their best opportunity to thrive then our kids have a much better chance of doing well later in life.
So we are talking about a few things today, the Vagus Nerve in particular, what it is with a really great 101 explanation, how it can impact our health and how it can be less than optimal in its function in our babies and kids and what that actually looks like, so this is a fantastic episode if you feel and parents often have a sixth sense when they just know that something is a little bit off but can't often place what it is, eh and if you feel that something is a little bit off maybe your kid just not focused on anything and can't focus on anything, maybe they have sensory processing issues, maybe they are challenged in some way developmentally and you want to look into perhaps anxiety or they startle really easily, todays show is going to be fantastic, so we look at that, how the vagus nerve training and tone exercises can really support our children's health and Carrie steps us through the whole process. We also look a little bit at babies and how they are fed both emotionally and physically through nutrition in terms of how that is going to help them thrive. It's a really great show and im really happy to kick off 3 or 4 weeks that we have coming up on parent and kid topics, so settle in if those are the type of topics that are important to you I would love if you would share this with other people you know its important to aswell because I feel that you are going to get a lot of value from this show. I was particularly interested in the points in the show which Carrie steps us through some of the factors and symptoms that may suggest vagus nerve to the port is needed for our babies because I'm pretty sure I didn’t know back in the day and a lot of people wouldn’t know what to look out for and so it was really really useful to go over that today so we are going to kick into that episode in just a little minute.
Hello Carrie, how are you?”
Hello, I'm well, thank you for having me.
“I'm excited about this show, I love chiropractic, huge fan myself, I think it’s a wonderful thing to have in the mix with one's health team and I'm always curious to know when practitioners and health professionals chose particular modalities and things to bring into their own education. Why chiropractic for you? And of course, you have the Pilates aspect as well, what made you think those two things were going to be what could see you supporting people the best way you knew how?”
I eh, to be honest I really just fell into chiropractic, I had neck pain when I was a teenager and I saw my family chiro and it helped, I think when I went into chiro school compared to when I graduated I had a very different idea of what chiropractic was and I love that, but to be honest where I got to today was mostly due to my own health issues, so you know all through chiropractic school, it’s a 5 year degree, in my 4th year I got really unwell with burnout and I got labelled with chronic fatigue syndrome and I kind of tried everything that I knew in terms of healthy life style you know, I was seeing a chiropractor myself regularly, I was doing everything that I thought I should be doing to improve my health and I just wasn’t getting there and that’s when I discovered the vagus nerve and all of its power and when I started working with a focus on my vagus nerve I really healed my own health and so now where I'm at in practice is very much inspired by what helped me and my own health journey and I really want to help parents in particular raise healthy kids so kids don’t have to go through chronic fatigue or any of these chronic diseases that I had to go through in my 20s.
“It's so interesting isn't it how often our mess becomes our message.”
Yeah.
“And I was reading that you were Perth's only integrative Neuroimmunology trained practitioner. What is that?”
So really that’s just a label that describes one of my certifications, I'm a nerd, self-confessed nerd, I love studying, I'm always doing some kind of certification. Not many people have done the Integrative Neuro-immunology purely because the man who was running it hasn’t ran it for a few years. So Integrative Neuro-immunology is all about how the brain and the body work together and how the immune system affects that, so the cracks of it is you know how can we get your brain and the vagus nerve working better.
“Brilliant, so it was kind of a compliment to the chiropractic and the Pilates.”
Yeah.
“So, I think we need to do a bit of a 101 for people who might not be a cross with what the vagus nerve is, especially for people who have suffered a lot of different things for a long time it can really be one of the things that unlocks a new chapter in healing so I would love for you to break that down for us before we go into more nitty gritty.”
Yeah, so the vagus nerve is actually the largest nerve in the body and it runs from your brain stem, it runs through your neck, your thorax, your chest , through your abdomen and digestive organs and basically all the way down to your pelvic floor and it has all these little fingers, kind of like extensions through all of your organs and the vagus nerve has 2 main roles. It does have a role in telling the body what to do so some of the nerves, you know, the messages travel from the brain, through the vagus nerve and into the organs that it needs to tell what to do but 80% of the nerves actually tell the brain what's happening in the body so it’s a very sensing organ and it has a large role to play in how we manage stress and how we are able to pull ourselves out of the stress response. The vagus nerve works by, you know, our nervous system is always scanning the environment for threats or dangers, so you know naturally it just wants to keep us alive. What happens is then if you get into a stress response the vagus nerve, a strong healthy vagus nerve will pull you back out of that so you dip back into the parasympathetic, the healing nervous system state. A vagus nerve that is struggling, you will probably stay longer in the stressed-out state so you might feel like you're in constant fight or flight, that your restless, you can't sit still and this seems to be the biggest part of the vagus nerve that relates to health because we know that chronic sympathetic dominance or chronic stress states lead to a lot of negative health outcomes.
“Absolutely, and do you find that this looks different from adults, to kids, to babies like how is that sympathetic dominance different in the different ages?”
You know, the difference with babies compared to adults is that adults, the rest of their nervous system has developed so you know as adults we've got pre frontal cortex, our rational brain that says hey there is actually no threat so you know you can cut that stress response, we have got other areas of our brains that work with the vagus nerve to inhibit that stress response or at least to reduce it as much as possible. Babies have such an immature nervous system with an under developed brain so they tend to be I would say more dis regulated so to speak so babies with low vagal tone are likely startled more regularly they may have poor sleep, they may need you know the koala babies that just needs constant contact with their caregiver because that’s their point of safety, like if their brain isn't developed enough to know that they are genuinely safe then they look to their caregiver for that safety so babies who have vagus nerve that is struggling tent to be the higher needs babies so to speak. I don’t love that label but you know lots of mums use that, you know the clingy babies that they need lots of cuddles and attention and don’t really want anyone other than their primary care giver.
“And what can ignoring that do later on for a baby? What I'm basically trying to get at is let's say you don’t realize it's a vagal tone issue that you need to look at and support and then you read a baby book and you think you need to get them into a routine and settling them in their cot till they finally get to sleep and they don’t get that contact, does that sometimes cause more dysregulation into their childhood?”
Yeah, unfortunately what the science is saying is that, this is any child no matter what their vagus nerve is doing, if you know you try to train them in terms of self-regulating, falling asleep on their own, learning to feel safe being alone even though babies cant naturally and you know physiology can't do that, they have done a lot of studies that shows that these babies still have really high cortisole levels but what happens is they learn to not ask for help because they learn that their caregiver isnt going to come and help them so it does blend itself to a baby maintaining a stress response although they may not be explicitly displaying it.
“Ok, so this is the part I fess up to being one of those mums who 12 years ago, 2 days into having my bassinet right next to the bed, thought I really am never going to be able to sleep like this, I was having sleep issues and vagal tone dysregulation myself even though I didn’t know it at the time, and our bub did sleep in his own room from the get go. What are some of the things that we can do as I'm really conscious when we get wonderful advice like this on the show, I know for a fact there are going to be like half the audience going oh crap iv ruined my child, same goes for breastfeeding and missing out on all the good gut flora, we aso have to know what to do later on down the track to omittigate some of that potential dysregulation caused by the way we did things as a product of our culture or being unable to do something differently, you know what I'm trying to say? Let's make all those mums including me feel really good about what we can do.”
Like I hate bringing it up because I know it will induce guilt in a lot of mums and it's not about that.
“Which is why I go head on and acknowledge that and go let's just not feel guilty, let's look at what we can all do whether it was from the get go or whether its where we are at now.”
You know, there is science versus reality too, you know, if you as a mum can't sleep when your baby is in the room then you need sleep to function in the day. There are so many new answers, it's never black and white however the really good thing about the vagus nerve is that well the nervous system as a whole is we know that it's very plastic, we can change it at any time so just by doing some cry it out before you knew that that research existed or whatever you feel that you maybe didn’t do perfectly in hindsight, you can influence the vagus nerve at any time of the day so it doesn’t really matter, you know you can do that till you 100 years old.
“Its literally like a muscle you can tone and work out.”
Yep, so when we know better, we can do better. It's certainly not what I did when my baby was 0-3 months is going to affect them forever and ever, there are things that you can definitely do here and now straight away.
“Nice, and so in terms of the child, let's just say a 5–12-year-old with poor vagal tone, how can that present that might give parents a clue that that's something that needs to be addressed?”
The most common comment I get in my practice from mums in this age group is that they just know in their mother's intuition that something not quite right in their child. So that might manifest as noticing they are more dysregulated than their peers or their siblings, just can't pull themselves out of a stress response or once they get started they really struggle, they need a lot of co regulation, they could just be kids who still want to co sleep, the struggle the learn that self-regulation even when they are having bouts of brain development when a typical kid, again I hate that term but you know the standard rate of neurology development we would say around that age they would be able to sleep on their own and regulate themselves a bit better, they still need that co regulation from their caregiver to feel safe in their environment.
“Right, so co regulation works to the benefit of the baby to a certain point but if there is still needs later on then that’s a clue that you need to work on vagal tone?”
Yeah, I mean all kids at some point will need some co regulation right like again it’s a spectrum, its working out and trusting that intuition that this is beyond what a normal response should be, like I feel like my child is not responding you know.
“Yeah, like you filled up the love cup, you've had a great chat over breakie, they've been cuddled in bed maybe, the morning was loving and then there are huge amounts of separation anxiety or screaming because they can't get to sleep unless they're in your bed, that kind of line drawn reality check?”
Yeah.
“And then what about with neurodivergent cases, ADHD, autism etc., what is the role of vagal nerve toning and work on the vagal nerve for those kids?”
So, my favourite thing to see in practice, I see a lot of kids on the spectrum, and the one really big part of the vagus nerve is it's called the social engagement system, it's making eye contact, wanting to communicate with other people, wanting to form friendships, you know human connection and so working with a child on the spectrum who has issues in that or struggles with that social connection, you know they may be doing really amazingly at school and everything but they are still playing by themselves and not really making any friends etc. regulating the vagus nerve can start to create that interest in other humans which is a really beautiful thing to see.
“And so, does that come down to the sense that one can be safe through connection instead of connection being a very stressed induced interaction?”
Absolutely.
“How special, that’s just incredible isn't it.”
Yeah, so the vagus nerve tells your brain, you know, I am safe, basically, I am safe in this environment although kids who are over stimulated with other people and noise and light and sensations you know, any sensory auditory processing stuff that stuff makes them feel dysregulated and unsafe so by helping their vagus nerve kind of recalibrate and get stronger so to speak then even in those moments their nervous system can be saying oh I am actually safe right now you know, I might not like this bright light or this noise but it's not going to set my system off completely, I still feel safe.
“Yeah I remember teaching my little guy how to take a deep breath when the vacuum cleaner went on, just take a deep breath and then sometimes that didn’t work I'd say why don’t you just sing your favourite song super loud and he used to belt out some horrific Wiggles song but it would work and it's kind of like often we are doing these things we don’t even realise we are doing these things to help our child but you interview an expert a few years later and your like oh I was helping him tone is vagus nerve, there we go!”
Exactly, I love that!
“Ok so I'm interested to also ask you about birth delivery style and circumstance around how it affects the vagus nerve from day dot and even in pregnancy stress, maybe the woman is in a very stressful high-powered job, how early and how much of an impact are these earlier events have on fetus's and babies?”
There is growing research regarding stress during pregnancy and again this is something I say upfront, release the guilt, like we are all in this culture where we are doing doing doing and we often don’t have the luxury of not working while we are pregnant right!
“Often, it’s the time when you're working more than ever to stockpile so that you have enough money to take a few months off!”
Yeah so we are all kind of knee deep in this culture of hustle and busyness and stress, I could talk about this topic alone all day but there's a few things that happen that lots of pregnant mums or mums with new babies come in and say I wasn’t stressed when I was pregnant and then after the first consult they go home and they think about it and think you know what I was, i was really stressed but the thing is our nervous system is so smart at adapting that we just really adapt to that state so it becomes our familiar so we don’t even recognize that a lot of the time that our nervous system is in this heightened state all the time, so it's good just to recognize that but secondly what's coming out in the research is that eh, what they are researching is the level of cortisol in the mum while she's pregnant, so cortisol being stress hormone, and then checking the baby, checking the babies heart rate variability which is basically a score of how strong or you know does your baby have high vagal tone which is good or low vagal tone which means its struggling.
“And is the heart rate variability or HRV, as its abbreviated, directly correlated with vagal nerve tone?”
Yes.
“Wow.”
And on that note, that’s why it's becoming the vagus nerve is a kind of up-and-coming thing because everyone has this tec now that they can check their own HRV at home, in the past it's only been done in a research lab so no one could access that data, and now anyone can really. So, what they find is that mums who had high cortisol levels throughout their pregnancy tend to have babies with a lower HRV score. So, they are starting to notice that what happens to baby's vagus nerve is purely from pregnancy stress alone. When it comes to the birth itself, I know a lot of mums hold expectations around their birth and they have guilt or disappointment when it doesn’t go to plan, the reality is that one moment in time is unlikely to affect your babies vagus nerve that much and you know birth trauma is subjective, you know it's all about our perception of that and so it doesn’t matter how traumatic or how perfect the birth was, if you perceive that trauma then that’s your body responding in a stress response and if you can't get out of that then that’s your vagus nerve not being able to support your own stress response but still like the birth itself it may have a slight influence on the babies vagal tone, I personally think it's more the pregnancy you know how we marinade our babies as opposed to the moment they come out of our body.
“And I think this is when prenatal classes and doing a really great program like She Birth's with the wonderful Nadine Richardson or the one I did, Calm Birth, I did that one which was all the rage for the hippie mums to be back 12 years ago and I remember cause I have a very traumatic birth by everyone else's standard by looking from the outside in, it was 2 days of every possible level from the birth center to the delivery suite to the operating theatre for an emergency C in the end and ICU beginning for Seb and I remember telling my story, you know when you are all in the new mothers group and everyone shares their birth story and I kind of went a bit silent when I went through all the details of mines and I was like but we are here and we are healthy and I was just like I did not feel that it was traumatic, I was just vying for healthy mum, healthy baby as the outcome and we were very grateful to have that and that was what we focused on and I genuinely believe that a lot of that pre-natal meditation work, relaxation work, contributed to that cause I remember in the delivery suite after the 8th hour straight of Oxicontin where they were trying to induce contractions and dilate me and it just wasn’t happening. I had super high levels of contractions every 15 minutes for 8 hours and one of the midwives said to the new consulting obstetrician that can in that ‘she did Calm Birth’ and he sorted of nodded and went ok right, that’s how she's doing this, like surviving it really, I was napping between contractions and so I really believe what you said there about its perceived trauma versus actual trauma because sometimes if you can work to say I get to bring a baby into the world rather than I can't believe the way I brought my baby into the world wasn’t perfect, those are 2 very different things in terms of how we inprint on the phycy moving forward what the birth experience was.
Wow so interesting, so we’ve talked about quite a few things, I wouldn’t mind going into a little bit more detail on symptoms that might suggest vagus nerve support for babies because babies are a little bit harder to read and you did mention startled babies, I actually think of my bub who was a terrible day time napper he would just have those kips, he could never seem to get into a deep sleep during the day, I imagine that that would have been one of the signs as well? Have you got any others?”
Yeah, so the big ones for babies that I see mostly in practice are catnapping or wakening frequently overnight, hard to get to unwinde, you know those babies that are always just alert and a bit wired you know, they can't seem to drop down into a calm state, babies who cry the moment they are put down you know mum wants to go have a quick shower or whatever but the moment the baby is on the floor it starts crying, just can't stand to be away from their caregiver, a big one is babies and this goes for toddlers and older kids too who seem really uncomfortable around other people even if its family members who they have seen a number of times but kind of that deer in the headlight look that like ok I'm just going to stay with my mum I don’t feel comfortable around these people who should feel familiar to me so the kind of like freeze response and then we have things like digestive problems so by the time mums find out about chiropractic if they have an irritable baby they have gone through a number of other practitioners already, so a lot of them may have removed a bunch of foods from their diets but not seen much change so the big thing is you keep removing food but your baby still has digestive problems so it's probably not the food that’s the problem it's probably how that food is being processed and that's part of what the vagus nerve does.
“And how often is it the vagus nerve all along? Like in terms of people you’ve seen if you had to have a rough stab at the percentages where you say no I will have to send you off I think you should go and see this health professional next versus lets work on vagal tone and they start to see amazing results?”
To be honest I feel like my stats would be quite biased because people who come to me have seen lots of other people already, I would say there is a growing number of standing of people who come to me first because they have saw my Instagram and they are like that really resonated with me and I want to try you first but I would say that probably 90% of the kids that I see have a vagus nerve problem but they are the most irritable high needs, digestive stuff that came to my practice for a reason, there is a whole bunch of babies who won't have it and often if I see say a mum during pregnancy and then I check her baby immediately after and I know the pregnancy has been pretty chilled and we have been working on her vagus nerve so she is pretty calibrated, I often get surprised when I see babies who don’t have a vagus nerve problem but that just because my lense you know, the demographic of symptoms of babies who I generally see is vagus nerve.
“Mmh, interesting. Ok so something came up with Kirsty Worth a couple of weeks ago that we had a giggle about on the show cause vagus nerve inevitably comes up with Kirsty because she is so passionate about Neurology herself and we were talking about all the different ways you can tone the vagus nerve and obviously singing is one of them, and getting that vibration in the back of the throat anyway you can whether its chanting etc. and I said i think that’s why I survived my teen years, I was a member of every possible singing ensemble and then my son was massively into musical theatre from very small like he would know all the words to Mary Poppins at age 3 or you know be able to sing whole songs from frozen and make me replay them again and again and I wonder whether these things are attractive to humans at a subliminal level because we know we need them from a really deep place, what are your thoughts on that?”
Yep absolutely, I think we know we need them and it makes us feel good afterwards, so that’s something I say to the pregnant mums in my practice, I don’t actually care what you do I just care that you do it and if it's that thing that brings you joy and you will find if you look at them all its usually all things that support vagus nerve function so it might be as simple as taking a dip in the cold ocean or singing or hugging, co regulating with someone, all of these things that stimulate the vagus nerve. So, I think we know what we need and they are often the first thing we stop doing if we are stressed but they are the things we need most during times of stress.
“You mentioned dipping in the cold ocean, for a lot of people that makes them feel stressed just the thought of it, that does not feel relaxing so how does that tone our vagus nerve?”
It’s the drop in temperature particularly if it's over the face so for those of you who don’t like dipping in the ocean you might like to try just splashing your face with cold water say at the end of your shower, once you're getting ready for the day. What that does is the decrease in temperature stimulates the vagus nerve to wake up a little bit.
“Ok so just biohacking myself here, with chronic inflammation stemming from long term mould exposure that was about 8 years long, I have noticed since the straw that broke the camels back happened about 5 years ago now that winter has become my absolute favourite time of the year it's so relaxing to me, I feel so comfortable and relaxed in the cold compared to the heat. Is that because it helps to stimulate my vagus nerve?”
In part yes.
“You mentioned food in passing before, and we talked about a lot of people going on elimination diets sometimes before they get to you but what about the significance of food as I'm sure it plays some sort of an impact especially on babies in terms of the way we start and there is a lot of conflicting information about the way we should start food with babies these days and there is nothing worse than a parent who gets themself confused like a woman at a perfume counter who has been trying too many perfumes then you have no idea I mean obviously no one should wear any synthetic perfumes at all but it’s a good example to say that sometimes we have so many ideas thrown at us that we then feel completely disempowered and we have no idea how to feed our own child which is a horrible way to start life. Do you have any ideas as a practitioner who has looked into this very specifically what parents can do to feel a bit more empowered when it's time to know what's really going to help?”
Yes, there are a few things when it comes to food and again some of this you know research it doesn't necessarily apply to current life, and I say that because a lot of the research says that what we eat during our pregnancy creates a preference in our baby before they even eat food for themselves, they taste and smell our amniotic fluid which has what we eat in it so you know there are some theories that if you want your baby to eat broccoli for example then you should be eating broccoli when you are pregnant, it doesn’t mean your baby will eat broccoli but it means your baby will have tasted it and been exposed to it and be more likely to take it on. Phase 1 is around what we eat during pregnancy, sometimes in pregnancy all you can stomach is hot chips and Coca Cola, whatever it is goes so again it's not the be all and end all but it does help in terms of food preferences. When it comes to introducing food to your baby directly, I have a few simple rules that I talk to mum's bout. Number 1 is starting with whole foods, so nothing processed, simple fruit, veg, meat, fat, blend the ratio so a lot of parents and a lot of advice out there is to start on say white rice cereal or some kind of fruit. The thing is that our babies are already naturally primed to love sweet food so really to get our babies to love meats, fats and vegetables we need to be starting them on those things really early and exposing them straight away so I actually recommend starting with broths and meats and vegetables before you start to introduce your fruits and the other thing I recommend is the ratio so not 100% carbs, not 100% fat but blending a carb, a fat, a protein into a meal, it means that’s going to stimulate the gut bacteria, their gut flora to be able to handle all 3 foods groups, to enable them to develop the enzymes you need to break them down, you know these first few months of introducing food is just about teaching their body how to process it so by doing a wide variety particularly from the 3 varieties of food groups is you get to stimulate their gut flora and their enzymes so that they don’t develop you know the risk of say giving baby too many high carb foods straight away is that this is only going to stimulate the gut flora to digest high carb foods and they are going to continue to have that preference as that’s what their digestive system prefers. So, setting them up with a large variety from the get go just establishes their gut flora and enzymes on how to process everything.
“So important, Its just crazy that we ever let ourselves be marketed to that anything other than that is the right thing to do isn't it, it's crazy to think you know I was a toddler in Chicago in the mid 70s and it was all about Farex rice cereal and that was the best start for your baby any my mum was a first time mum like all the other first time mums out there and we just didn’t know back then that marketing wasn’t the truth either, we thought oh this is such a great company helping me feed my baby and it's much more recent that we started to realise that these are highly constructed narratives that serve a profit, profit engine rather than the true and best way to support our kids so that’s such an important one to remind ourselves so thank you for that.
So obviously I can't ask you how you treat babies and kids in clinic cause that would look quite different to what we are all able to do on a day to day basis at home but if we have heard some things in today's chat that is starting to make us think oh wow ok I definitely think I could bring some vagus nerve work into my family's life, what would that look like for a little toddler and then for a slightly older kid say a teen in terms of supporting them and making it fun to do together?”
The biggest thing in any small child so babies and toddlers, even school aged kids is the co-regulation, it’s the eye contact and the cuddles and you know those simple things that we can add to our day that can help them feel safe and the more that they experience those the more they learn that they are safe. It's like the neurons that fire together, wire together so you know the more they get that message the more the vagus nerve goes oh yeah you are safe so I feel like your kids co regulation is the best thing that you can do for them. When you get older and this goes for all age groups the easiest thing you can do is like you say find something that you love, singing, sing together have a little dance party together. In older kids a really simple hack is to ensure that they look really far into the distance. So, we spend most of our time on devices, if you think about a typical high school student and how often they are looking at screens close up, that short vision can cause them some aggression to the area of the brain the vagus nerve connects too so by getting them to stop and look into the distance and recalibrate their nervous system, it takes like 5 seconds but that can just help recalibrate their nervous system.
“That’s so interesting you say that one because we lived in a home that had homes around it and no outlook for a couple of years and then we moved and we had a whole outlook over quite a wide and far ranging vista and I would just sigh looking out the kitchen window and just feel so happy to just be able to see far so I reckon that that safety must be linked to our hunter gatherer days where if you can see out to the distance and you can see that there are no predators you can relax whereas if you can see more than a couple of meters you don’t know what's out there and you would be more stressed.”
Absolutely, like being caged in.
“Wow this is so fabulously nerdy I love it but it just helps us all realize what our day to day could look like and what we might need to actively tweak.”
Yeah, the other one that is really easy to do and this one is a great one to do with a child who say can't wind down before sleep is horizontal eye movement. So, we spend most of our time scrolling up and down and our eyes are just moving in a vertical plane but holding our eye in a fixed position to one side so say for example turning our eye to the right side, finding something that you can like fixate on so your eyes aren't moving and holding that there until you feel that sigh that you just described or that relief in your body then swapping sides to the left-hand side. This stimulates the vagus nerve as well and again it takes less than a minute to do but it's just adding it into your day, it’s the addition of that habit is the hard part but once it's in your day its super easy to do and it doesn’t take too much time but it just makes the nervous system feel so good.
Yeah, and it is awesome that holding a fixed position to the side and doing the other side and you can definitely do it as a game with your kids especially once they are over 3 or 4 and say we are going to wait until we either need to sigh or yawn, I wonder who's going to do it first and you can do the looking and concentrating and then go ‘agggh’ like oh you do it first and it can be a fun thing to do. I'm always into gamifying things with kids to motivate them.
“Ok so I have one or two more little questions here and one was, raising kids, it's obviously quite an intense time especially if you have decided to have multiple kids and quite close together, you feel like you are at ground hog day in those toddler years and all of the crazy to dos with raising super tiny humans and of course we have signed up for it so we want to do It but it is a very intense time. How can parents ensure that we maintain our vagus nerve tone, is it the same as the suggestions you've made for kids or is it things that we can add in that adult can just tolerate better and be more likely to stick too, what have you got for us?”
Definitely looking into the distance once, super easy thing to do. For adults it's about finding something that you find joyful like you're not just doing it because you have to your doing it because you love it and again, I don’t really mind what that is as long as it resonates with you that could be a 5-minute dip in the ocean or a `1 hour yoga class whatever suits your time budget etc. The other thing I really love doing is I'm a certified heart math's practitioner and heart math breathing exercises are really beautiful so you can jump on their website, they have a bunch of free ecourse things to learn how to integrate a few of those breathing exercises into your day so you could start your day with one because we know when you are more regulated your kids are more regulated as well so you know starting your day setting your nervous system up with one or there are quick coherent type breathing exercises you can do in the moment of stress so say your baby is crying and your toddler is having a breakdown and your trying to make them a sandwich or something and these is too much happening then there is a specific breathing exercise that you can do in the moment, the more coherent and regulated you are then that’s going to influence the whole situation.
“So true and actually the toddler having a breakdown reminded me of this thing that went viral last year where a dad didn’t say a word and the little girl was just having a complete meltdown and he just held her through the meltdown until she was able to just, you know you hear that little sigh and regulate herself in the safety of the arms of her dad and it was just so beautiful to see and I thing so often we are trying to find solutions and talk our kids off the breakdown ledges when they are not able to be talked to right then they can't commute anything and a good old fashioned hug is, even if your frustrated with how they are behaving, is like the short cut to calm.”
Yup you definitely can't rationalise with an unregulated child you need to get them off that ledge first
“Oh my god so much gold in this chat, thank you so much Carrie and I'm going to put you on the spot here and ask you if there was one thing that you wished everyone did, baby, child, teenager, parent, adult, every day to lead a healthier life what would it be?”
Oh, know what honestly in my opinion it all comes down to what we do when we are pregnant, which I know people can't change that right now which is why I was like ooh, but realistically if we can prioritize and make pregnancy more sacred and give mums that space you know it’s a cultural shift but that would be my vision for the world's vagus nerve, that would change you know the world. In day to day I would say the big thing that I see culturally now is that if I get someone on the HRV about 20seconds in their heartrate or their coherence bottoms out and they go into a dysregulated state that’s usually that feeling when we feel we need to do something but I'm just going to scroll my Instagram or I'm just going mindlessly do something so what I would encourage people to do is sit with that feeling and breathe through it, whatever breathing technique works for you to be able to regulate yourself without soothing yourself with your tec because that’s probably our biggest problem at the moment.
“But I love that you mentioned pregnancy, please don’t feel guilty about that because while many of us might have had our babies yonks' ago or even recently and been stressed out of our minds until we start talking about how important that is we can't pave the way for future pregnancies to be held more sacred I think it's so important and often you speak to pregnant woman and they have like a repulsion of stress. I remember I did as well I was like nope that’s not coming into my field and I remember like I would soothe myself with all of my favourite shows from my childhood to juts be calm and happy every day and i think it's such a helpful thing to be reminded how important that is because it's not easy if you are in a busy modern culture like many of us are to change that culture until we see the problems that its causing, our generation of parents and those 10 years younger than me are seeing just how important our culture is on our children's health compared to just 1 generation ago when we had many more parents where the mum was staying at home for a lot of the pregnancy and very chilled it's just not that story now or many many pepe and its we need to prioritize that. Thank you for making it your umber one and please don’t feel guilty.”