When the Nervous System is the Doctor

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✍️ From the Physician’s Desk

Hello friend, it feels great to get back. to you this week.

I was brainstorming what to bring to your inbox this week, and just when I started researching an idea, I saw a patient; let’s call him Sam. He came in for persistent back pain. All scans were normal, no muscle tears, no disc issues. Yet Sam rated the pain 8 out of 10.

Instead of writing another prescription, I decided to practice what we preach, literally, and so we tried something different right there in the exam room. I dimmed the lights, asked Sam to sit back, and guided him through one minute of slow breathing with long exhalations. Then I asked him to hum softly with me. Yes! Hum, the same ancient habit we seem to have forgotten.

When we were done, Sam looked up, a little surprised, and said, “That’s weird, Doc, my back doesn’t feel as tight as it was prior to this weird stuff”

Was the pain “cured”? Of course not. But I had just given Sam’s nervous system a new signal: the “you-are-safe” signal. That was our first step toward turning the alarm volume down.

Then it occurred to me! Every ancient religion knew we had this ability. Where are we?

This week, I want us to explore how you can do the same using your senses, your breath, and simple daily practices to teach your body calmness and resilience.

Imagine sitting in a dark room on a grey morning, feeling sluggish. Then a soft, warm sunlight creeps in, and a whiff of citrus aroma from the window drifts in. Before you know it, you’re more alert, your breathing steadies, and your brain clicks into focus mode.

This wakefulness is what you could call sensehacking: tiny tweaks that use your five senses to nudge your biology from a wakeful state to sleep and back again. Research is now exploring using the same “sensory micro-interventions” to boost mood, reduce stress hormones, and even sharpen cognitive performance. That is why the science of ‘circadian rhythm’ won the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology in 2017. Right after Autophagy in 2016.

Try this today: As soon as you wake, get outside for 5 minutes of direct light or sit near a sunny window. Your circadian clock resets, cortisol peaks naturally, and melatonin production later that night improves. You’ve just given your body a free, non-chemical boost for an entire day, no supplements needed. Do you have any doubts? Try it.

As a medical student, my high point was when I could close my eyes and trace the 10th cranial nerve from the brain to one of my friends. That nerve, the vagus nerve, is like your body’s peacekeeper: slowing your heart rate, boosting digestion, and calming inflammation. It’s one of the few parts of your autonomic nervous system you can actually influence on purpose. That was a deliberate, intended, creative, evolutionary marvel, and what it does to our health.

The easiest doorway? Everything was deliberately placed at this ‘open gate’ to our internal milieu. Sensors, immune surveillance cameras, sharp-shooting soldiers, submarines, nuclear bombers, and then the most intelligent messengers.

Your mouth and breath. Did you know? Gargling with water for 30 seconds, humming softly, or doing slow exhalations (like breathing out through a straw) activates vagal tone. Patients who practice this regularly often notice calmer digestion, less racing heart, and better emotional regulation.

I teach my patients this: when stress spikes, hum your favorite tune for 60 seconds—it’s the cheapest, fastest “pill” you’ll ever take. Never take the monks and other ancient healers for granted when they do these…They know. You now know what they knew.

The vagus nerve, cranial nerve number 10, or X, is the main highway of the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest-and-digest” branch of our autonomic network. It sends signals in both directions: from the brainstem to the heart, lungs, and gut to slow heart rate, deepen breathing, and stimulate digestion, and from the body back to the brain to report on inflammation, microbiome activity, and organ state.

Its fibers control immune function, balance mood through the balancing of neurotransmitters, and even glucose metabolism. Because it touches every organ system, vagal tone is a measure of whole-body resilience. By stimulating the vagus through slow breathing, meditation, humming, gargling, or cold exposure, we increase parasympathetic activity, resulting in lowered cortisol, improved gut motility, and shifting the body toward repair, restoration, and emotional regulation.

One of the most fascinating shifts in medicine is the recognition that some chronic pain is not simply “tissue damage” but danger signals gone haywire. Remember the earlier telephone lines? They developed static or even connected to your neighbor’s conversation sometime.

Those were “rogue transmissions.” Certain forms of pain are like that. The nerves fire ‘unprovoked’ due to damaged areas and junctions from chronic inflammation or some diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.

You can also think of pain like a smoke alarm. If the battery is too sensitive, it goes off when you toast bread. Your brain can do the same, firing pain signals long after an injury has healed. Or as in neuropathic pain, when there is no injury in the area feeling pain, just the nerves ‘firing rogue signals’.

Emerging therapies, such as signal reprocessing, are teaching the nervous system to “calm down.” Surprisingly, many of the tools overlap with what we’ve already discussed: gentle movement, safe sensory input, and vagal nerve activation.

If you live with ongoing pain, try pairing a micro-intervention (like warm compress + calming scent) with vagal breathing. The goal is to tell the brain: you are safe.

For the next week, pick one action from each category and notice changes:

Journal how your stress, sleep, and any pain change. Reply to this email and share your story might inspire someone else.

Our nervous system is not separate from our gut, muscles, or immune system. It is not some isolated command center, it is intimately woven into every cell, every breath, every beat of your heart.

Here's what most people miss: 90% of your vagus nerve's communication flows from your gut to your brain, not the other way around. When your nervous system is dysregulated, your gut permeability increases within hours, cortisol floods your bloodstream, and your immune cells literally forget how to recognize threats properly. Your muscles hold the score—chronic tension rewrites your nervous system's default settings.

But here's the beautiful part: it works in reverse too. Regulate your nervous system, and inflammation drops, digestion normalizes, and your body remembers how to heal. You are the conductor of your body's orchestra. The question isn't whether it's playing—it's what score you're handing it. Choose wisely. Your whole system is listening.

Strange but True Health Facts.

Answers to trivia quiz:

1. It’s the vagus nerve — cranial nerve X — the star of today’s newsletter. 2. Melatonin, produced by the pineal gland. 3. Calcium — it also plays a key role in nerve conduction. 4. The circadian rhythm.