Vagus Nerve Activation of the Spleen: A Promising Therapeutic Approach for Boosting Immunity During Cold and Flu Season

How hacking the parasympathetic nervous system and combining VNS therapy with regular massage therapy can create a powerful immune-boosting routine.

As cold and flu season approaches, it's a good time to seek out natural, effective ways to strengthen our immune systems to stay healthy. Our regular self-care routines are a great start to creating a defense against illness. However, emerging research into the vagus nerve, particularly its connection to the spleen, offers a promising new approach to boosting immunity. Cutting-edge therapies such as non-invasive vagal nerve stimulation can hack your nervous system, which may be a game-changer in fighting infections and diseases. Emerging research into the vagus nerve, particularly its connection to the spleen, offers a promising new approach to boosting immunity. Therapies like vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) combined with Massage Therapy, also known to stimulate the Vagus Nerve, can give your body the extra support it needs during this time of year.

Understanding the Vagus Nerve and Its Role in Immunity

The vagus nerve plays a crucial role in counterbalancing the body's sympathetic stress response, which is associated with the "fight or flight" state. When the body experiences stress, the sympathetic nervous system triggers an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and alertness to prepare for perceived threats. The vagus nerve, as part of the parasympathetic system, helps to restore balance by activating the "rest and digest" response. It slows down the heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and promotes relaxation and digestion, thus regulating stress and helping the body return to a calm, balanced state after a stressor has passed. Proper vagal tone, or the health and responsiveness of the vagus nerve, is essential for managing chronic stress and maintaining overall nervous system harmony.

One of the most vital roles of the vagus nerve is its connection to the immune system through the spleen. Activation of the vagus nerve signals the spleen to release anti-inflammatory molecules and immune-regulating cells, which aid the body in fighting off infections and reducing inflammation. This nerve-spleen connection offers a pathway to modulate the immune system, making it a natural and non-invasive way to boost immunity.

Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Immunity Boosting

Given the vagus nerve's central role in immunity, therapies that target this nerve are showing great promise. One such therapy is Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), which involves bioelectronic therapy using microcurrent to gently stimulate the vagus nerve and enhance its communication with the body's organs, notably the spleen.

Dolphin Neurostim VNS Therapy is one of the leading devices designed to offer easy, noninvasive VNS. The Dolphin Neurostim device delivers precise, low-frequency microcurrent stimulation to the vagus nerve through the tragus in the ear. This gentle therapy has been shown to improve vagal tone, which is associated with a stronger immune response, reduced inflammation, reduced sympathetic stress, and a greater capacity to fight off infections.

Incorporating VNS therapy during cold and flu season can help keep your immune system in check by maintaining a healthy balance of immune cells, reducing stress, and preventing inflammation—one of the root causes of many seasonal illnesses.

Creating a Holistic Immunity-Boosting Routine for Cold and Flu Season

Massage stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system through sensory receptors in the skin, muscles, and connective tissues. These signals travel through the nervous system to the brain, prompting a relaxation response. The brain then activates the vagus nerve, reducing heart rate and blood pressure, promoting digestion, and releasing tension. Additionally, massage increases the production of calming neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine while reducing stress hormones like cortisol. This effect shifts the body from the sympathetic "fight or flight" state into the parasympathetic "rest and digest" state, promoting deep relaxation and recovery.

Adding VNS to a massage session accelerates the shift from the "fight or flight" state into deep relaxation, reducing stress-related symptoms like elevated heart rate and muscle tension. This allows the body to respond more fully to the massage, promoting deeper muscle relaxation and enhanced circulation. The calming effect also supports the body's anti-inflammatory processes, which helps regulate the immune system. As stress decreases, immune function improves, making the combination of VNS and massage more effective in boosting overall health, reducing pain, and speeding recovery.

Additional Tips for Staying Healthy This Season

1. Stay Hydrated: Water supports all bodily functions, including the immune system.

2. Get Plenty of Sleep: Rest is critical for maintaining a healthy immune response.

3. Eat a Nutrient-Dense Diet: Foods rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants help fuel your immune system.

4. Exercise Regularly: Moderate exercise, such as walking or yoga, boosts circulation and promotes the healthy movement of immune cells throughout the body, improving your body’s ability to fight infections.

5. Manage Stress: Chronic stress can weaken your immune system, so make time for relaxation techniques like meditation or yoga.

By combining these holistic lifestyle practices with advanced therapies like Dolphin Neurostim VNS and therapeutic massage, you can create a robust defense against seasonal illnesses.

Conclusion

The vagus nerve's connection to the spleen offers an exciting, natural way to modulate the immune system and improve health, especially during cold and flu season. With therapies like VNS and massage, you can tap into your body's natural defenses to stay healthy, balanced, and resilient.

If you want to boost your immune system this season, consider incorporating VNS therapy and regular massages at Blue Monarch Advanced Bodywork. Our tailored sessions are designed to enhance your body's overall function, providing long-term support for optimal health.

Stay ahead of the season by giving your immune system the care and maintenance it deserves!

Read the Vagus-Spleen Research Article Here!

Continuing Education Adventures: PhysioKinetix with Paul Kelly

Exploring the newest, evidence-based therapy in pain and movement science through Table Neuro-Training.

For the past month, Blue Monarch’s Cofounders, Heather and Terri, have been immersing themselves in the world of PhysioKinetix. This month we were fortunate enough to attend a workshop with the innovator of this powerful new modality, Paul Kelly, in our hometown!

What is PhysioKinetix?

PhysioKinetix (PKT) is a movement-based, regenerative therapy that focuses on correcting motor pattern imbalances and compensations responsible for pain, dysfunction, and postural misalignment. PKT uses assessments and neuroscience to identify dysfunctional and compensated movement and restore functional or primal movement patterns (movement patterns required for daily living).

Who Can Benefit?

Short answer...everyone! Many events in our everyday lives cause movement patterns to alter or compensate, including pain from injury, repetitive motions, behaviors, or stress.

Imagine sitting at your computer for several

hours a day as a repetitive behavior, and compound that with turning your head slightly to the right to look at your monitor. Another example would be how carrying a child on the same hip could slowly alter the rotation and balance of the pelvis. Perhaps you love playing golf on the weekends and feel the effects of repetitive right motor dominance and a loaded right-to-left swing. Over time our brains rewire our bodies to make our activity easier to accomplish, splinting for pain and dysfunction. These new patterns become our new normal and live in our bodies until that compensation fails, only to produce a new injury, compensation cycle, and pain. Even the constant pull of gravity (14 pounds) can alter our standing and walking cycles over time, giving us the illusion that pain is synonymous with aging.

The PKT Technique: Table-Neuro-Training

The treatment begins with manual and movement therapy to assess for stuck or fixed joints and motor control imbalances. Joints that become fixed or displaced put excess tension on the attached connective tissues and ligaments, creating length/tension imbalances in the surrounding muscles. The PKT Therapist then mobilizes fixed structures by activating the core and motor cortex of the brain through regenerative movement. After the fixed structures have been assessed and mobilized and pain patterns have been reduced, the next step is stabilizing your newly balanced joints through neuromuscular activation. Once stability and mobility are restored, your PKT Therapist can reeducate the mind and body with functional patterns for long-lasting results in pain relief, mobility, balance, and motor control.

PKT: The Move for Life System

By integrating this modality into our practice, we hope to alleviate and correct many common neurologic and orthopedic dysfunctions while building strength, increasing muscle control, creating injury resistance, and fine-tuning performance. This system helps everyone, from athletes and weekend warriors looking to rebuild and improve their performance from the ground up to people who suffer from chronic pain or age-related movement dysfunctions.

Full PKT sessions will be available later this year. Until then, you can schedule an Integrative Bodywork session with Heather or Terri to try a Myoskeletal-PKT combo session!

About Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly is an NCBTMB Approved Continued Education provider and owner of The Temple Human Performance Center in Knoxville, TN. Paul has been Clinician and teacher for 3 decades and brings a wealth of knowledge from manual therapy, sports medicine, and exercise science to his upbeat, dynamic, hands-on presentations. His passion is to help educate manual therapists and health care professionals so they might tap into a greater understanding of how Exercise, Movement Science, and Manual therapy can help with longevity. He continues to stay on top of the latest research and developments in all areas related to Manual therapies, Sports Performance, Neuroscience, Nutrition, Movement, Pain Science, and Human Performance related issues. ~from the Temple of Human Performance website

For more information on PhysioKinetix please visit www.TempleHP.com

Continuing Education Adventures: Oklahoma City

Great Times at the 9th Annual Myoskeletal Workshop with Erik Dalton.

Many of our clients know that continuing education is the foundation of Blue Monarch's Advanced Bodywork. We believe that furthering our education is an integral part of the effectiveness of our services, whether treating pain, stress, or posture. So, we pride ourselves on being the biggest massage nerds in town.

Last month Heather (co-founder of Blue Monarch LLC) traveled to Oklahoma City for the 9th Annual Myoskeletal Workshop with Erik Dalton. Erik Dalton, Ph.D., creator of Myoskeletal Alignment Technique, is an Osteopath, Massage Therapist, and studied with the top researchers in the bodywork field, such as Ida Rolf, creator of Structural Integration (Rolfing). The founders of Blue Monarch have been studying Myoskeletal Alignment Techniques (MAT) since 2012 when they ordered the first Home Study program and attended their first workshop the following year in 2013, again in 2014, 2015, and two workshops in 2021. Since then, we have slowly taken the science the course provides on human anatomy and biomechanics and the techniques based on that science, and we've integrated them into Blue Monarch's services. We consider MAT the core modality of Blue Monarch Advanced Bodywork. We’ve reduced pain, improved postural conditions for many clients due to this technique.

The theme of this year's workshop was" Relieving Pain Through Rhythmic Touch," and the man himself, Erik Dalton, alongside his Teaching Assistant and Senior Myoskeletal Instructor, Nate Fay, kicked off Day 1 with a musical demonstration on brainwaves. Lowering brainwaves from an alert Alpha state to a more relaxed, Theta state is the Therapists first task in a Bodywork service. When the brain is at higher frequencies, so are stress levels, and the body has difficulty healing and returning to homeostasis. When the brain's frequencies can be lowered through modalities like deep Myofascial Release, gentle Traegering, and rhythmic joint mobilization and stretching, it can return to Theta, making the bodywork session more effective.

This workshop was packed full of amazing techniques and focused on treating neck cricks, and arm pain, between the blade pain and low back & sciatica pain, but the techniques are only a small part of this fantastic learning experience. For every technique we explore the common compensations and patterns that lead to these conditions, taking a deep dive inside the human body's inner workings. We explore assessments to lead us to the causes of dysfunction to better apply these cutting-edge techniques in a gentle but effective application.

The most significant emphasis on the delivery of MAT is to create a positive neurological response by lowering brain activity and using the Graded Pain Exposure Technique (GEST) to lower the pain responses in the body. With the brain in a calm state and fewer pain receptors firing, the body will produce a D.O.S.E. (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Seratonin, and Endorphins) of feel-good chemicals to promote healing and relaxation.

Continuing Education Workshops are a great opportunity to learn from industry leaders, meet fellow therapists from all over the world, and even chat with our mentors. I love stealing a picture with the Great Erik Dalton; he is always more than happy to oblige. I have never met anyone so full of passion, ambition, or appreciation for the Bodywork industry. I was also fortunate to get some hands-on training from Paul Kelly, creator of Physiokinetix, a therapeutic neuro-retraining technique that we have big plans for in the very near future.

We always feel so fortunate for these educational opportunities and to learn, grow, and continue to be inspired as Bodyworkers and Massage Therapists. We can't wait until next year!

Check out our Socials for more pictures from the Workshop!