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April 21, 2019
Basic Reset
Hi ,
About a week ago I read a book on vagus nerve function and clinical applications. The vagus nerve has been described as the rest and digest nerve that comes out from
the base of your skull and travels down to most all of your internal organs like the heart, lungs, and digestive system. This would normally be pretty dry clinical stuff that no normal person would find interesting. However, the information presented was exciting (in a chiropractic nerd sort of way) because it provided a whole new way of looking at this subject.
About 25 years ago a professor Porges from the University of Illinois at Chicago presented findings that what everyone has believed about the vagus nerve for the last several thousand years is inaccurate. He demonstrated that in fact the vagus nerve is actually two different and distinct nerves that have very opposite effects. The old theory is accurate for lower life forms, but for humans and other mammals it is not. We mammals developed special nerves to support our capacity for social engagement that when engaged suppress the fight/flight/freeze responses to danger.
Higher life forms learned to create safety through
connection to others, and the new vagus (termed the ventral vagus) was the nerve that controlled this response.
Think about this for a moment. We have a whole nerve system for opposing fear, rage, and withdrawal by increasing social engagement. That is pretty amazing. In this day and age of chronic stress with everyone’s health being destroyed by stress, to discover that we have on board a system for relieving our
reactions to stress by opening up connection to others. This is actual hardwired nerve physiology, not some airy-fairy psychological theory. What is more, this function can directly be measured by the effect it has on our heart rhythm, know as our heart rate variability. The more engaged we are the more the timing between our heart beats varies in response to our environment. This nerve
function can also be seen with classic cranial nerve tests. This is the test where the doctor looks down your throat and has you say ahhhh. If this nerve is working right, the soft palate tissue on both sides of your uvula (that thing that hangs down at the back of your throat) will lift up evenly. If it does not lift up or only one side lifts up, then the vagus nerve is not working correctly.
This nerve also directly correlates with the function of several other cranial nerves that relate to social connection and communication – the nerves to the facial muscles for our expressions, the neck muscles and eye muscles for tracking expressions of others, voice and throat muscles, and the nerves that modify our hearing. We are wired to be social animals because it is our socialness that gave us a survival advantage over competing life forms.
Probably the most cool thing presented in this book is a simple technique for turning this neurologic system on so we can turn off or turn down our fight or flight feelings and our withdraw and separate feelings. The implications are profound and many of these implications and clinical applications are presented in this book. Such things as working with anxiety, PTSD, depression, autism, ADHD, and many more. Many
of the results are simply amazing.
One little application that caught my attention is its usefulness for patients that deal with a sliding hiatal hernia messing with their stomach and digestion. A portion of this ventral vagal nerve goes to the esophagus. When we are in flight or fight, the muscle coat around the esophagus contracts and shortens up the esophagus, actually pulling up on the stomach and creating the sliding hiatal
hernia. By engaging/ turning on the ventral vagus, the esophagus relaxes and the hiatal hernia settles down. Hiatal hernias have always been a vexation to me. I can reset them by pulling down the stomach and resetting the diaphragm, but they tend to come right back when the person gets stressed.
Now I can show the patient how to reengage the ventral vagus nerve function any time so they can fix their own hiatal hernia as soon as it happens. Here is how to do it:
Atlas Reset Basic Exercise
Your atlas controls the blood flow to the brain stem and the midbrain where all your emotions, coordination, and nerves for controlling your organs live. When your atlas is under tension due to stress (real or imagined) it twists and reduces blood flow to these brain regions. This exercise is to rebalance your atlas and open up the blood flow to your brain. The eye movements trigger movements and tension releases in the tiny muscles between the skull and the atlas.
1. Interlace your fingers and place your hands behind your head cradling the back of your skull. Let your elbows relax out to the sides.
2. Keeping your head centered and pointed forward, shift your eyes to the right as far as you can and hold that eye position for 30 to 60 seconds. You are waiting for your breath to release with a sigh, a swallow, or a yawn.
3. After your breath releases, then shift your eyes asfar as you comfortably can to the left and hold that position for 30 to 60 seconds waiting for the same breath release.
4. All done. Note any improvements in the movement of your neck.
The first few times you do this it is best to start out laying down. The idea is to let your skull be supported by your hands so that you relieve the weight of the skull pushing down on the vertebra. This helps free up the space between the skull and the first vertebra, the atlas. The eye movements trigger the rebalancing of the tiny
muscles in this area which in turn re-centers your atlas vertebra. The main blood supply to the base of the brain and the regions controlled by the vagus nerve passes through the atlas as the vertebral artery before ducking up into the brainstem. If the atlas is out of place, it restricts some of this blood
flow to the brain and triggers anxiety. Resetting the atlas this way opens up that blood flow and stimulates the ventral vagus function. This also calms down the part of the brain for flight or fight and the portion for withdrawal and disassociation. It takes us out of survival mode and into here and now social engagement.
This simple technique can be used anytime and as often as needed. This is a form of self care that is really easy to do and has a huge impact. I was excited to share it with you because it will empower you to immediately help not only your necks, but your stress, your digestion, and possibly your relationships.
If you are able to be in a positive socially engaged neurologic state, then you have a much greater chance of actually enjoying the people you encounter.
If you are interested in reading the book yourself, the title is “Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve” by Stanley Rosenberg. I got it here on Amazon.
Take care,
David
Ellen update:
This last weekend was a busy one for us because my son that lives up in Seattle flew down for a visit. We went out to a magic show at Mystique, out to lunch with my mom, to a movie, and then for extra fun I got us all caught up in making some sugar free candies for my grandkids for Easter. Here both Devon and Ellen are decorating the peanut butter filled chocolate eggs. We used xylitol and peanut flour to make the filling more like a true peanut butter cup, and sweetened up the chocolate with stevia.
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No Acid/alkaline diet osteoporosis link
A common belief among nutritionists is that eating an acid diet will produce osteoporosis. This review of the scientific studies and research shows that this belief is untrue as our kidneys balance our acid/alkaline levels without the need for any bone minerals.
Osteoporosis
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"It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Diet drinks double chance of stroke
Studying the results of 81,000 postmenopausal women showed a doubling of the chances of having a stroke in women who consumed 2 or more artificially sweetened beverages per day. The chances of having a heart attack - fatal or nonfatal went up 31%. Sugar sweetened is of course just as bad. The only safe sweetener known at this point is stevia and possibly the sugar alcohols.
Diet drinks
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"The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service"
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Green tea and carrots reverses Alzheimer's in rats
The key anti-oxidant in green tea EGCG and one in carrots -ferulic acid- when combined together is nutritional doses have been found to reverse Alzheimer's type symptoms in lab rats. So drink your green tea and eat more carrots to potentially save your brain.
Alzheimer's
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"He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Finding the new location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.
If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center
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visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"
Referral doctor for when we are out of town:
Jennifer Webb DC
6216 Main St. suite C1
Orangevale
988-3441
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About Dr. DeLapp
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Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 35 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only
truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow. It is available at Fair Oaks Health.
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