Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation and exercise capacity in healthy volunteers

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/46/17/1634/8023896?login=false

by PaulHoule • 11 months ago

106 20 11 months ago

academic.oup.com

bob1029• 11 months ago

You can stimulate your vagus nerve simply by breathing out slowly while under moderate exertion. The sensation can be very unpleasant, but it also tends to take you slightly out-of-body for a while which can help with pushing through difficult tasks.

kazinator• 11 months ago

20th century Czech runner Emil Zatopek practiced, among other things, interval training with held breath. He could have been training his parasympathetic system just as well as respiration pathways.

It's been my experience in endurance exercise is that if you are inexperienced in it, you overreact to certain signals from your body like rising CO2 or falling O2. After just small effort of a short duration you start gasping for air. Years later, in retrospect, you wonder why you did that.

Another adaptation, in high latitude outdoor runners, is the adaptation to inhaling cold, wintry air. The unbearable burning that feels like you're inhaling alcohol somehow goes away. The interesting thing is that it appears to be permanent. Even if you're out of the game for few years, that discomfort doesn't come back. Could be psychological. If you've been there and done that, you dismiss the discomfort signals and don't pay attention to them.

imglorp• 11 months ago

And before that, maybe the Apache "Mouthful of water run" which among other things enforced nasal breathing when training.

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/2017/11/apache-runnin...

michaelg7x• 11 months ago

I wonder whether swimmers benefit from this, after all, they're breathing-constrained (if going at anything more than a comfortable pace).

brandonb• 11 months ago

This paper is relevant to Long Covid, where many patients have reduced parasympathetic function and suffer post-exertional malaise (PEM). The fact that vagus nerve stimulation improves VO2Max in healthy volunteers is a nice proof of concept for a treatment that could then be tried in sicker populations.

biomcgary4• 11 months ago

I use a TENS unit with an almost identical setup to the paper (ear clip is the same, duration is the same, frequency is 30hz instead of 25hz).

My use of vagus stimulation is for managing anxiety and promoting digestion / gut motility. I have neck issues that probably impinge on this nerve, contributing to these symptoms. Evidence suggests that the effect isn't purely psychosomatic; when laying on my back with TENS, I observe an increased frequency of GI tract "gurgles" relative to off. The observable product of my GI tract has also normalized somewhat.

biomcgary4• 11 months ago

I forgot to mention that the entire setup is about $60 on Amazon, so, for the HN audience, the biggest factor to trying it will be your time and/or intellectual aversion to non-mainstream medicine :-).

donclark• 11 months ago

Which unit do you recommend? I see a wide variation of pricing and options on Amazon. *and thank you

dfoo22• 11 months ago

Do you have a unit you would recommend? I have pretty bad GI issues, anxiety and terrible posture.

biomcgary4• 11 months ago

I bought a TENS 7000, which is #1 in Amazon's "Muscle Stimulators & Accessories" category. Mine came with a 9V battery. The specific "tens ear clips" that I purchased are no longer on Amazon, but similar ones are around $20 for a pack of 3-4.

Note: some people place electrodes on the tragus, as in this paper, but others stimulate the concha. Tragus needs one two pad clip, concha needs two one pad clips. The rubber pads are just slightly bigger than the eraser of a number 2 pencil.

akkartik• 11 months ago

Sounds like the place to start reading is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcutaneous_electrical_nerv...

nathan_douglas• 11 months ago

Hmm, this is interesting. I have rheumatoid arthritis and recently saw news of trials for using vagus stimulation to treat that. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/03/nx...

It looks like it operates somewhat differently to this, but I'd be, well, delighted to be able to reverse my RA, even if a few of my joints are already FUBAR.

kristianp• 11 months ago

So they stimulate the Vagus nerve, exercise them to exhaustion and measure vo2 peak during the exercise. Done for 7 days.

Would be interesting to see the effect on athletes, you would expect no effect on them, but if there's any benefit people will try it to get any performance gain.

bravesoul2• 11 months ago

28 sample size. And sham reduced capacity by half as much as the real thing increased it? Anyone got any comment on tbe conclusion as I am sceptical but can be persuaded maybe.

jdhwosnhw• 11 months ago

Unfortunately I’m in the same boat. What appears especially telling is:

tVNS applied for 30 min daily over 7 consecutive days increased VO2peak by 1.04 mL/kg/min (*95% CI: .34–1.73*; P = .005), compared with no change after sham stimulation (−0.54 mL/kg/min; *95% CI: −1.52 to .45*)

(emphasis mine) The 95% CIs for the case and control groups overlap. Seems borderline irresponsible to have a the abstract reporting a significant result.

Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation and exercise capacity in healthy volunteers

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