Stimulating This Nerve May Reduce Chronic Stress in the Body
A flurry of new research has been pointing to one nerve that just may be the key to true health and wellbeing.
The vagus nerve, which comes from the Latin word for “wandering”, is the longest and most complex nerve in the human body, traveling from the brain stem all the way down to the colon.
Dr. Donese Worden is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor who has been closely following the research. “The vagus nerve is like an information superhighway, and it goes back and forth from the brain to the organs, and now we know it communicates with the microbiome,” she said.
“It specifically really works on talking to the heart, the lungs, the gut, and the brain. And the feedback goes both ways. So when we’re upset about something, if you feel hungry, you’re short of breath, your heart is beating fast, it’s because of that information traveling back up to the brain from the nervous system saying ‘something is up and we need to take care of it.'”
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Scientists Finally Finished Mapping the Human Genome
Scientists announce they have finally completed the map of the entire human genome. Will the information contained within unlock our true potential for health and wellbeing, or is there another more expansive perspective on the role genes play in our lives?
After decades of research, scientists have recently announced the completion of the human genome, what some call “the genetic instruction book.” Widely used for guiding biomedical research, many experts herald this as a crowning achievement in the field.
Dr. Bruce Lipton is a cellular biologist and a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, which takes a comprehensive, cutting-edge approach to the understanding of our relationship to our genes.
“Most people are really excited about the fact that the human genome has been deciphered; they’ve identified how many genes are in the human genome,” Lipton said. “The original reason for the human genome was, it was thought the genes control all the characteristics of our life and therefore if I had a compendium of all the genes I could fix anybody who has a characteristic they want to change. Francis Crick, one of the cofounders of the story, came up with something called “the central dogma,” the belief that genes are the source of biological information.
“They’re translated into another form of nucleic acid called RNA. So, DNA goes into RNA which is like a xeroxed copy of the DNA, and then the RNA is used as a template to make the proteins of the body,” he said. “According to the central dogma, information only flows in one way — it flows from the DNA to the RNA to the protein. This led to an understanding called ‘genetic determinism.’ Genetic determinism is the belief that the genetic blueprint of your life is carried by the DNA that you inherited at the moment of conception.”
