Vagus Nerve Follow Up Questions
Andrew, thank you for your episode on vagus nerve stimulation. I had the following questions after listening: - Which branches specifically are responsible for a stimulation response or a calming response respectively? - I have been taught that the vagus nerve is the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system and therefore any time we experience a calming effect, it is due to vagal activation. I understand now that the vagus nerve has a dual function (stimulation and calming); however, is it true that a calming effect always involves the vagus nerve or are other nerves active in concert or separate from it? - High vagal tone has been linked with increased HRV and increased HRV has been linked with better health outcomes. When we talk about high vagal tone, are we talking about the branches of the vagus that function to stimulate or to calm or both? Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. I appreciate all that you do.
Aluminum in deodorant and other purported toxins in everyday products
Is aluminum in deodorant something to avoid? Is this another case of the dose makes the poison such as your recent AMA on fluoride? What are products that should be avoided (such as things with these purported estrogen mimicking compounds), or even common cleaning products that should be avoided?
Fibromyalgia, epilepsy, endometriosis
I would love a few episodes about fibromyalgia as I’ve seen my mom suffer her whole life, I would love to know more also about epilepsy as my father and brother also suffer from that. How alcohol makes epilepsy worse, (my father is a functioning alcoholic) and I would love an episode about endometriosis.
using pattern recognition during your working memory test
last episode during the first working memory test, I remembered the first two sequences without a problem. However, I used pattern recognition instead of straight out memorizing them... can people who are good at detecting patterns, visualize images/movement, mapping the patterns to schemas in there head instead memorization during this working memory test actually prove they have good working memory? it seems like my working memory just passed the info to another part of the brain and moved on... jkzpi - jk was the middle of the keyboard i put my index finger to type, z the last letter in alphabet, pi - math symbol romkle - read only memory, my friend kyle without the y i learned and used three very different languages (turkish/english/german) at different times (and spoke a mixture of them in sentences at home and school) and always had to look for patterns to learn things... not sure the working test memory actually shows my dopamine level or whether i have a good working memory. in reality my language is "math/equations (science/engineering)/image-movement visualization/patterns/process mapping" and less spoken words...