[yosito]

I think most of these claims are BS, but I've met several people who have claimed to heal their own inflammatory diseases through non-medical practice to help regulate their vagus nerve. I know for me, these types of practices seem to help manage my symptoms. So maybe there is some connection.

[fao_]

The vagus nerve sits inside the collarbone right next to the carotid artery. As a doctor told me once, if you're able to physically stimulate your vagus nerve, you need to get to A&E posthaste, lol

[jdadj]

Look up vagal maneuvers. Used by a subset of tachycardia patients to reset to a typical heartbeat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagal_maneuver

[xtracto]

IIRC there's a stage 2 Test device that uses vagus nerve stimulation through the tongue to attenuate tinnitus:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8120162/

I think it's called the Susan Shore device, and nowadays is the main hope for curing tinnitus to some degree.

[hanniabu]

What's A&E? Googling only shows the cable network

[JohnVideogames]

"Accident & Emergency" - you may know it as the Emergency Room, but it's commonly called A&E in the UK

[firejake308]

Accidents & Emergency is what the Brits call the Emergency Room

[astura]

British for "emergency room."

[epgui]

That’s wishful thinking. Please don’t go off your IBD meds or you will regret it some day.

[firejake308]

That makes more sense for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) than it does for IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). IBS is caused by the gut-brain nervous system acting up due to stress, and vagal maneuvers forcibly turn off the fight-or-flight response from the nervous system. On the other hand, IBD is caused by your immune system attacking itself in the gut, and the T cells aren't really connected to the nervous system in any physiologically relevant way. So your friends were probably talking about IBS, not IBD.

[JR1427]

There could still be a link between the nervous system and IBD, too.

When I was diagnosed with UC, the inflammation perfectly correlated with a portion of the colon that was connected to a particular nerve (I can remember which - it was a few years ago by now).

I dismissed it as BS at the time, but a physiologist once asked me where I feel the physical sensation when I am stressed or anxious, and I said my gut. He thought that was very interesting (since I had recently been diagnosed with UC). I thought nothing of it, but maybe there is a link. (My wife, in contrast, feels anxiety and stress as a feeling in her chest.)

More and more, scientific research is pointing towards how all the systems in the body are connected one way or another, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is also a link between IBD and the nervous system.

[cachecrab]

Vagus nerve stimulation can help IBD

> The vagus nerve regulates inflammation and cytokine release through the inflammatory reflex. Recent pilot clinical trials using implantable bioelectronic devices have demonstrated the efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) in adult patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) as an alternative to drug treatments.

https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42234...

[pazimzadeh]

What claims are BS. What did your friends do wrt their vagal nerve