The Importance of Vagus Nerve Health in MCAS

This post addresses the importance of vagus nerve health for MCAS.

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What is MCAS?

Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is a chronic condition that affects all organ systems. MCAS is serious and disabling and people with MCAS experience often significant and debilitating symptoms daily, including anaphylaxis, which can be fatal.

MCAS is often found in combination with other chronic conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).

Frequently healthcare providers do not know about MCAS, and the tests for MCAS are problematic because they are not uniformly reliable. MCAS can be difficult to manage. Treatments include blocking mast cell mediators with anti-histamines and mast cell stabilizers, as well as avoiding triggers.

Check out this post on how to manage MCAS.

What is vagus nerve health?

The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the human body, running from the cranium, around the digestive system and lungs. It passes through the neck via the vocal cords and passes around the major organs of the liver, spleen, pancreas, heart, and lungs.

The vagus nerve is an integral part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is key to our capacity to rest, digest, calm, and soothe. Having a healthy vagus nerve enables you to adapt to stressful situations, helps regulate cortisol and blood sugar levels, and it is associated with feeling more relaxed. Having a healthy vagus nerve equates to a higher vagal tone, whereas a low vagal tone is related to many maladies, including heart disease, diabetes, mood disorders, inflammatory conditions, and autoimmune dysfunction.

The bucket theory

The bucket theory offers a helpful analogy for understanding symptom reactions with MCAS.

Think of your body as an empty bucket that you want to keep from overflowing. Different foods and activities fill your histamine bucket at different speeds but they combine to form the total level of histamine in your body (how full your bucket is). A fuller bucket means you have more histamine symptoms. When you manage triggers, reduce exposure to known triggers, and take medications and supplements to reduce histamine, you can manage the level of your bucket.

Do you know your typical symptom progression?

One of the keys to understanding the level of your bucket is knowing your symptom progression. It is helpful to keep track of the symptoms you are having and to evaluate whether they are escalating. Symptom escalation means that the level of your bucket is rising.

Knowing your symptom progression in a symptom flare is the key to developing your own rescue plan. In this post, I discuss how to determine your own symptom progression. Once you know what typically happens in your symptom progression you can design a rescue plan to address those symptoms.

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Vagus nerve health for MCAS

One of the biggest things I took away from the recent The Many Manifestations of Mast Cell Activation Summit with Dr. Kelly McCann is the importance of vagus nerve health in supporting MCAS. Dr. McCann interviewed dozens of practitioners in the field and so many of them mentioned how the vagus nerve is central to addressing MCAS.

Eighty percent of the vagus nerve is sensory, meaning it is sensing what is going on in your body and it sends information back to the brain about what it finds. And twenty percent of its function is as a motor nerve.

Vagus nerve injury

Vagus nerve injury can occur from actual injury to the nerve (such as with a concussion or other physical injury), from contracting an infection (such as Epstein Barr), or from exposure to mold or other toxic environmental agents. The vagus nerve is surrounded by mast cells, and in constant communication with them through its receptors, collecting information about the safety of the body.

If the vagus nerve sustains an injury it signals to the brain that the body is not safe. And as long as it is sensing the effects of the injury, infection, inflammation, or exposure, it will continue to send signals to the brain that the body is not safe. If the injury to the vagus nerve goes untreated it will continue to send a signal that the body is in danger. The mast cells respond to the threat by activating wherever the threat is perceived — whether in the gut, the tissues, or anywhere — which further signals to the vagus nerve that the body is not safe. And on and on.

Vagus nerve feedback loop

So you can see how there is a feedback loop that occurs via the vagus nerve when it senses any attack on the body, it signals to the brain that there is a problem, while the mast cells compound the problem by overreacting, releasing mediators, which cause more inflammation, further notifying the vagus nerve that the body is not safe.

The vagus nerve has branches to all of the major organ systems in the body, and it is meant to balance the nervous system. When you have this chronic perceived threat to the body at the neurological level it can contribute to dysautonomia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), slower intestinal motility, heart palpitations, blood pressure, temperature dysregulation, neuropathy and paresthesias, and many other conditions.

So, in what ways can you address injury to your vagus nerve?

Vagal tone

There are many easy ways to increase vagal tone, including:

1. Mindful breathing techniques. Just five minutes a day stimulates the vagus nerve.
2. Alternate nostril breathing.
3. Chanting, humming, singing, laughing, and talking.
4. Gargling.
5. Loving-kindness meditation.
6. Washing your face with cold water.

However, for someone with extreme MCAS, these measures may not be enough to heal the vagus nerve.

Vagus nerve healing

My favorite tool for vagus nerve healing is frequency healing. By using individualized frequency you can direct healing to your vagus nerve daily. Ask me more about frequency healing!

Re-training exercises for vagus nerve health

In addition to the myriad health benefits of having good vagus nerve tone, the vagus nerve has been implicated in releasing trauma stored in the body.

Dr. Stanley Rosenberg’s book Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve includes five gentle exercises for healing the vagus nerve.

Suki Baxter, who has studied with Rosenberg, offers some quick vagus nerve re-training exercises to turn off fight or flight in the sympathetic nervous system to release trauma stored in the body. Here is a link to her YouTube channel.

The key to doing vagal re-training exercises is to stop as soon as your body involuntarily sighs, yawns, or takes a deep breath because those are the signals that your vagus nerve has “reset.” Doing more or continuing past that point can be stressful for the vagus nerve and counterproductive.

What do you think about vagus nerve health?

I’d love your reply below!