What a NERVE!

The vagus nerve is your longest cranial nerve – technically, twin nerves that emerge from either side of your brainstem and wander through your body like, well, vagabonds (hence the name). It forms a network of some 100000 fibres running to nearly every internal organ and carrying information back to your brain for analysis. The brain then sends commands down to the organs, with effects only recently becoming better understood in terms of stress, epilepsy and, increasingly, inflammation.

STRESS

The vagus nerve is a major part of the parasympathetic nervous system, counterpoint to the sympathetic nervous system – the one responsible for the fight-or-flight survival response. In the past, this response would have been triggered by the occasional encounter with a woolly mammoth, but today your sympathetic nervous system can be on almost constant alert due to the stresses of modern life, such as work deadlines, traffic jams, and the relentless pressure of being plugged in electronically, always on call.

While your sympathetic nervous system galvanises you to escape danger, making your muscles tense up and