Welcome to a new episode of the FAKTR Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. Welcome, and thanks for listening. Today, we continue our 2 part series on vagus nerve stimulation with doctor Nava's Habib. In part 1, doctor Habib discussed how the vagus nerve's regulatory pathway impacts inflammation, the role of acetylcholine in modulating immune responses, and how these mechanisms can be leveraged to improve conditions such as autoimmune disorders and neurological diseases. In today's episode, we will unpack some compelling case studies and explore practical tips you can use with your patients, including diaphragmatic breath work, dietary changes, and vagus nerve exercises. We will also discuss the promising effects of music therapy on vagus nerve activation and the detailed mechanisms involved including macrophages, cholinergic pathways, and neurotransmitters. You'll want to be sure to stay to the end to listen to our q and a segment where we will go in-depth with the questions submitted by our live webinar audience.

Doctor Habib will provide detailed answers and practical advice, ensuring no stone is left unturned. Whether you're a clinician, therapist, or simply interested in vagus nerve stimulation, this episode is one you may want to bookmark to listen to more than once. Let's dive in.

Wanna go through a few cases. First one is Sandra. She's a 6 year old mother and a small business owner. And she came to me after having a pretty severe bout of COVID for which she was in the ICU in December of 2021. She had severe brain fog and fatigue and difficulty breathing. She also had some challenges with her weight and blood sugar. So she was actually diagnosed type 2 diabetic. Her hemoglobin a one c was at 9.3 millimoles per liter.

If any of you know this, this is a very high finding. And she refused to go on medication, which allowed for it to become excessive. And, especially, it went up after having gone vegan in her diet as well, which was obviously she was trying to do something to help, and it unfortunately did the opposite for her. Her fasting glucose generally stood at 154. For those who are interested in knowing this, if you don't already know, anything over a100 is kind of on the high side. We want to optimally be between 80 a100, and this fasting glucose was at 154 for Sandra. She had regained a lot of weight that she had previously lost. I dug deeper into her history and found she had a difficult relationship with her mother during childhood, and 8 years ago, unfortunately, had lost her teenage son in a car accident.

And she really blamed herself for that incident. She really had these major severe kind of episodes of negative mood and really kind of holding herself down from becoming better. And it was due to that that she started to develop these heart palpitations, especially around the anniversary of the passing of her son. And so what happened here? Well, initially, we started doing some targeted probiotic therapy. I used functional lab testing to help identify what's missing. We went on to a higher protein Mediterranean style diet. We added weight training and walking into her daily plan. She loved weight training, so she we kept that going.

We added in vagus nerve exercises. This was diaphragmatic breathing, humming, cold showers as well. And then we added noninvasive electrical vagus nerve stimulation. We did 2 minutes twice daily on the neck using a handheld device. And the results were astounding. In 4 months, her hemoglobin a one c came down from 9.3 to 7.1. That's amazing. That's a huge, huge positive shift.

And even her fasting glucose changed significantly. It hovered now rather than being at the 154 number, it came down between 95 and 116. This is a significantly positive improvement within a few months of starting this therapy. She also noticed significant improvements in her digestive regularity and any gut symptoms that she was dealing with, and she also had a significantly improved mood, energy, and outlook. And then she sent me a message out of the blue one day. She said, good morning, doctor Abiba. I just wanted to share something with you that occurred to me this morning. Normally, 1 to 2 weeks before and for a few days after the anniversary of her son's accident, I started getting heart palpitations.