The Vagus Nerve: Your Body's Secret Superpower (And Why Chiropractors Know It Best)

Hey, welcome back! I'm Dr. Francisco Turelli, and if you're joining us for the first time — welcome. This is where we take the deep science of chiropractic, neurology, and human performance and make it actually make sense.

Today's episode is one I have been itching to record. Because there is one topic that is absolutely exploding right now in wellness culture — and I mean it's everywhere. Biohackers are obsessed with it. Cardiologists are publishing papers on it. Breathwork teachers are using it to sell courses. And that topic is the Vagus Nerve.

And look — I love that people are talking about it. I genuinely do. But here's what nobody in those conversations is saying: the single most important thing you can do for your Vagus Nerve isn't a breathing exercise. It isn't an ice bath. It isn't humming or gargling or any of the other things you'll find on YouTube at 2am.

It's making sure your spine is working correctly.

And that's what we're talking about today.

[SECTION 1 — What IS the Vagus Nerve?]

Okay, let's start from the beginning because I want to make sure we're all on the same page.

The word "Vagus" comes from Latin. It means wanderer. And that name is absolutely perfect because this nerve does not stay in one place. It is the longest cranial nerve in your entire body, and it literally wanders from your brainstem — the base of your skull — all the way down through your neck, into your chest, and then into your abdomen. It touches your heart, your lungs, your liver, your stomach, your intestines.

Think of it like the internet cable connecting your brain to every major organ you have. It is the main line of communication between your central nervous system and the rest of your body.

Now here's what makes the Vagus Nerve so special. Your nervous system has two main operating modes. You've probably heard of these. There's "Fight or Flight" — that's your sympathetic nervous system, your stress response, the gas pedal. And there's "Rest and Digest" — that's your parasympathetic nervous system, the brake pedal, the healing mode.

The Vagus Nerve is the primary driver of your parasympathetic state. About 80% of all parasympathetic nerve fibers run through it. So when people talk about "activating your Vagus Nerve," what they really mean is: how do we push the body out of chronic stress and into recovery mode?

But here's where it gets really interesting — and this is where chiropractic enters the conversation in a big way.

[SECTION 2 — Proprioception: The Hidden Input Your Brain is Starving For]

I need to introduce you to a concept called proprioception — and this word is going to change how you understand your spine forever.

Proprioception is your body's ability to sense its own position in space. It's the reason you can close your eyes and still touch your nose with your finger. It's the reason you don't fall over when you walk in the dark. Your body has millions of tiny sensors — we call them mechanoreceptors — embedded in your muscles, your joints, and especially your spinal ligaments, that are constantly sending information up to your brain.

Now, Dr. Manohar Panjabi — one of the most important spinal biomechanics researchers who ever lived — showed us that the spine is, without question, the densest concentration of these proprioceptive mechanoreceptors in the entire body. More than your feet. More than your hands. More than anywhere else.

Why does this matter for the Vagus Nerve? Because the brain is not just sending signals down the spine. The spine is sending an enormous amount of information up to the brain. We're talking about a constant, high-speed stream of positional data that the brain uses to regulate everything — your muscle tone, your hormonal balance, your immune function, and yes — your autonomic nervous system. The system that controls your Vagus Nerve.

When a vertebra in your spine shifts out of its ideal position — what we in principled chiropractic call a Vertebral Subluxation — it doesn't just cause pressure on a nerve. It corrupts this proprioceptive signal. It sends bad data upward. Imagine trying to run your body's operating system on a corrupted file. Dr. Heidi Haavik, a neuroscientist at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic, has published landmark research showing that Vertebral Subluxation actually changes the way the brain processes sensory information — and that a specific chiropractic adjustment reverses that change. Her team measured this with EEG — that's brainwave technology — and the results were clear: the adjustment literally updated the brain's software.

[SECTION 3 — HRV: The Report Card for Your Nervous System]

Now let's talk about something you can actually measure. Because I know some of you are the type of people — I'm one of these people — who want data. You want to see the numbers. And this is where Heart Rate Variability, or HRV, becomes so powerful.

HRV is not your heart rate. Your heart rate is just how many times your heart beats per minute. HRV is the variation between each individual beat. And that might sound like a small distinction, but it is everything.

Here's why: a healthy, well-regulated nervous system does not produce a perfectly metronomic heartbeat. It produces a variable one — the gaps between beats are constantly shifting, ever so slightly, in response to your breathing, your movement, your environment. That variability is a sign that your Vagus Nerve is online, engaged, and doing its job. It means your nervous system is responsive and adaptable.

A low HRV? That means your nervous system is rigid. It's stuck. It's locked in sympathetic overdrive — Fight or Flight — and it cannot shift gears. Dr. Julian Thayer at Ohio State University published a foundational paper showing that low HRV is directly associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, anxiety disorders, impaired immune function, and even early mortality. We are talking about HRV as one of the most powerful predictors of overall health that we have.

So what does chiropractic have to do with HRV? A lot. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine by Welch and Boone measured patients' autonomic nervous system markers before and after a specific chiropractic adjustment. They found a statistically significant shift toward parasympathetic dominance post-adjustment — meaning the body moved out of stress mode and into healing mode. Their HRV went up. The Vagus Nerve woke up.

This is not placebo. This is measurable neurology.

[SECTION 4 — Where the Spine and the Vagus Nerve Physically Meet]

I want to paint you a picture because the anatomy here is stunning.

The Vagus Nerve exits your brainstem and immediately travels through an opening in your skull called the jugular foramen — right at the base of the occiput, which is the back of your skull, right where it meets the top of your cervical spine. The upper cervical region — specifically the atlas, which is C1, and the axis, which is C2 — is in direct anatomical proximity to the origin point of the Vagus Nerve.

This is not a coincidence. This is architecture.

A subluxation at C1 or C2 — which is incredibly common, by the way, especially after birth trauma, car accidents, or years of forward head posture — creates mechanical tension and irritation in exactly the region where your Vagus Nerve is most vulnerable. Dr. Brian Budgell published research in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics showing clear reflex connections between specific spinal segments and autonomic nervous system function. When you have dysfunction in the upper cervical spine, you are not just setting up neck pain. You are potentially interfering with the single most important parasympathetic pathway in your body.

And then there's the thoracic spine — the mid-back. The thoracic vertebrae are directly connected via nerve roots to your heart and lungs, the same organs that the Vagus Nerve is monitoring and regulating. Hypomobility in the thoracic spine — that stiffness, that loss of movement — creates what researchers call "aberrant afferent input." Basically, bad data going up to the brain. And bad data means a nervous system that cannot find its parasympathetic balance.

[SECTION 5 — The Vitalistic Connection: Intelligence Wants to Express Itself]

Now I want to take a step back and talk about something that lives at the heart of principled chiropractic. Because everything I've told you so far is hard science — neurology, biomechanics, HRV data. But there's a philosophy underneath all of it that I think is the most important part.

B.J. Palmer — one of the founding figures of chiropractic — talked about something he called Innate Intelligence. The idea that your body is not a machine that needs to be managed from the outside. It is a self-organizing, self-healing system that contains its own wisdom. The nervous system is the medium through which that intelligence expresses itself.

When we talk about the Vagus Nerve, HRV, and proprioception — what we are really talking about is the body's extraordinary capacity to regulate itself, if the communication lines are clear. A chiropractic adjustment doesn't heal you. Let me be very clear about that. You heal you. What the adjustment does is remove the interference — the static in the signal — so that your Innate Intelligence can do what it was always designed to do.

That's vitalism. And the beautiful thing is that in 2025, the neuroscience is finally catching up to what chiropractors have been saying for over a hundred years.

So let's land the plane here. The Vagus Nerve is one of the most important structures in your body. It is your parasympathetic lifeline — the thing that pulls you out of stress and into healing. Proprioception, the sensory information streaming up from your spine, is one of the biggest inputs your brain uses to regulate that system. HRV is how we measure whether your Vagus Nerve is actually online. And Vertebral Subluxation is one of the most common, most overlooked reasons why it isn't.

The breathwork is great. The cold plunge is great. But if your C1 is subluxated and your thoracic spine is locked up, you are trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in it.

Come get the hole fixed. Then do your breathing exercises.

If you are in Barcelona, come see us at illumINNATE. The link is in the show notes. Share this episode with someone who is chasing wellness but hasn't thought about their spine yet. And I'll see you in the next one.

Take care of your nervous system. It's taking care of everything else.