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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast.
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I'm Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this is round two with my guest, Diane DeKalm,
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and another absolutely fascinating episode.
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We had a whole episode about the mind-body connection and the relation of emotions to
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physical health, especially through the lens of migraine sufferers, but so much relevant
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information for all of us.
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And Diane is back today talking about the emotions and how they impact the vagus nerve.
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I feel like the vagus nerve in general does not get enough talk time in the health community,
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and she makes this extremely practical and actionable, and I love her approach.
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She is so impressive in her own right.
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She's the founder and CEO of Nectar Health, which is a company that adds years to the
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lives of those suffering from migraine disease, but she also has an MBA from Harvard Business
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She's a Fulbright Scholar and an Edmund Hillary Fellow.
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She has a Master's in Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics from Europe and
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has studied traditional Chinese medicine, as well as speaking seven languages.
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And I very much love her approach and how she unites things that are certainly not talked
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about enough in general, and certainly not talked about enough in relation to each other.
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And I am excited to keep learning from Diane, so let's join her now.
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Diane, welcome back.
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Thank you for having me again, Kitty.
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And if you guys missed our first episode, I will link to it in the show notes and definitely
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encourage a listen because absolutely fascinating info on, certainly for migraine sufferers,
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but really for all of us on the physiological importance of letting go and how our emotions
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directly impact our body and how that cycle back and forth of resolving our emotions can
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change our biology and in reverse as well.
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And after that first conversation, I'm even more excited to learn from you on a topic
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and a word in particular that gets talked about a lot in the health world, but I don't
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feel like is completely understood or that we're maybe doing the most effective things
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to help, which is the vagus nerve.
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And so building on our last conversation, I would love to jump into talking about emotions
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and their impact on the vagus nerve, especially.
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So to start off broad, can you sort of define for one, what the vagus nerve is for anybody
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And for two, how it relates to our emotions?
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So in your body, you have about 100 billion nerve cells, and all of these nerve cells
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are orchestrated by the vagus nerve.
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So the vagus nerve, imagine it like a big tree that is going to plant its roots around
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your heart, around your liver, around your stomach, around your kidney, around your gut,
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around your large and small intestine, and it's going to all gather in a trunk, which
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is sort of along your spine and in your neck, and it's going to plug in like a Tesla in
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And so from a Western scientific point of view, from the moment it attaches itself to
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the brain, we've kind of lost the signal.
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And so that nerve has been discovered in Western science in 1872, and has been researched a
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lot more in the last 10 years.
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In traditional Chinese medicine, in Ayurveda, it's been part of medicine for about 2000
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And so a lot of the acupuncture and what you see as a result of acupuncture is namely playing
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along all of that vagus nerve.
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Now, vagus comes from the Latin vaga, which means to wander, so to go around in the body.
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And so that incredible nerve is going to do a ton of jobs of things that you don't even
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think about consciously.
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For example, it's going to help to regulate your heart rate, it's going to remind your
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heart to have a beat, it's going to slow down your heart during periods of relaxation, it's
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going to promote a calm and steady pulse when it needs to, it's going to also balance
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your blood pressure, it's going to promote your respiratory function, you don't need
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to think in order to breathe, you're doing that subconsciously, well, this is the vagus
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It's going to enhance your digestion, it's going to play a significant role in the digestive
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process, stimulating produce of stomach acid and digestive enzymes, it's going to help
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us reduce inflammation, we talk so much about inflammation, so important, support stress
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management and so many other things, but it's going to support your emotional regulation.
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So it's going to help reduce anxiety and reduce depressive symptoms when it's really operating
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What are some of the things that get in the way of the vagus nerve operating optimally?
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So imbalances, imbalances in different parts of the body will prevent the vagus nerve from
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operating optimally.
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So we start with the emotions.
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The emotions in the Western science are still only worth scratching the surface.
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This is a very new concept for us to accept that a certain emotion might lead to an imbalance
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and even there we like a one-to-one relationship where things are very black and white, but
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things have a lot more nuance.
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For example, if you look for the correlation between stress and cancer, they're going to
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say, oh, there's no scientific evidence that stress provokes cancer.
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But in Western folklore, people can see that when calming stress for too long, it's really
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So what we're going to do for emotions, we're going to go down to traditional traditional
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medicine, because you see all of the knowledge that we have on the vagus nerve, and God knows
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like in the West, we're a very sort of male mindset, you know, gorilla proud of all of
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the stuff we know.
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And so all of these descriptions are from the neck below.
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There is no massive understanding of how do all of these cables and these wires plug
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in the brain and how can they move different parts.
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So in the West, when we analyze emotions, we might say, let's look at Katie's stress.
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Let's look at Katie doing maths.
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Let's look at Katie, you know, doing a memory game.
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Let's look at Katie's sad.
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And we're going to identify which part of the brain are active, but we're still completely
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unable to link those parts of the brain and understand what activated them in the first
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place from the nervous system perspective.
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We're not really there yet.
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So therefore we're going to accept that and accept how sophisticated also Western science
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is and incredible at proving these things, but I'm referring a bit to traditional Chinese
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medicine and Ayurveda to understand it.
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Now in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, the moment I'm going to have an emotion, I'm
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going to impact different parts of my vagus nerve.
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And so the emotion is going to go in my brain somewhere and it's going to impact the vagus
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So let's imagine I have a job where I do a lot of or I was thinking, okay, I think all
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the time, or there's a situation at work or in my life where I'm just constantly, my brain
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So it's going to be here.
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I'm pointing to my forehead.
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My forehead's constantly active, but that is going to be linked in my vagus nerve to
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my stomach spleen.
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And so my stomach spleen, my ability to produce digestive enzymes and to break down food is
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going to be altered.
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And so my stomach spleen system, which links my foreheads through those digestive enzymes,
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is compromised because I'm having that emotion of just I'm constantly thinking.
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So I'm going to struggle to fall asleep.
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I may have ADHD, but also I'm going to not digest really well.
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I might feel bloated.
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In an extreme case, I'm going to have a leaky gut.
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This is where now we're going from, I obsessively think about something to having a leaky gut.
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And it sounds like this is a much more well-known idea in Eastern medicine than Western medicine,
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but are there areas where Western medicine is aware of or scientifically recognizes that
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I start with who does their investigation on the vagus nerve is actually our children.
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I don't know if you've ever noticed, anyone of your chum chai, and I know you have, do
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this thing where they eat an ice cream super fast and they say, brain freeze.
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Have you ever seen this?
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They snap their forehead.
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They snap their forehead.
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So they eat the ice cream super fast and they find it really odd that because they eat something
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really cold and it lands on their stomach, that it goes on their head and says brain
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freeze, but then it dissipates because the body's going to obviously warm the ice cream
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It can't enter the rest of the body.
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And so they have found that connection, which the traditional Chinese medicine doctors have
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found a long time ago.
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I find in the Western science, it's really in the sleep science that you will find it
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So for example, we will notice in the sleep science that as we go into deep sleep, the
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basal temperature of the body is going to decrease and the liver system, the liver organ
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is going to detox at the same time as the brain.
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So we're going to start to see a relationship between the liver and the brain.
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Also if there's too much toxicity in the liver, people are going to wake up between one to
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3 a.m. constantly.
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And so in that part of the science, we see it now.
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If we go back to the Western folklore, I think anyone can agree that if you have a lot of
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alcohol and you're intoxicated in the liver, you're going to start to be very spunny in
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And then you have hangover.
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When you have the hangover, you don't snap your forehead like a child with a brain freeze.
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You go, oh my God, I have a hangover.
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Because of all systems, the liver system is the most linked to the brain and is also the
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one that does the hormones.
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So yes, so you can see it in parts of Western science, so sleep science and parts of Western
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That's so interesting.
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And it brings the question, so if these things can negatively affect our vagus nerve and
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lead to these problems, how do we best support the vagus nerve or how can we optimize it
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so that it's functioning optimally, especially when we take into account that perhaps this
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helps us to have a more joyful, emotional experience as well?
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So let's imagine some women who suffer from migraines, for example, most of them will
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stop having alcohol because they're like, oh my God, when I have alcohol, you know,
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it's not 100% of the time, but oh my God, this gives me a trigger.
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And the pain that I'm experiencing in my brain is so immense that it, you know, removes the
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So what they're going to do is going to go into a bit of an elimination diet.
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They're going to start to say, okay, no more wine, no more cheese, no more chocolate.
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They're going to start to stay away from these foods.
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And so a lot of what we do in Western science or Western world, we start to like start to
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stay away from foods that would be really tough.
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So really tough and toxic to digest for the body.
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And so we do that.
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Now what we also do really well is, you know, a lot of us are going to go gluten free and
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that's when the stomach, the gastric juices are no longer able to do a really good job.
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One of the first thing that is going to be hard to digest is going to be gluten.
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So we remove them.
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So by removing them, we allow for more focus, more concentration, more steady, more steady
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But what we are mixed to do, in my opinion, is we don't look at deficiencies and most
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women are more deficient that they're in excess.
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And so depression or anxiety or inability to focus can also come from being depleted
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of nutrients, right?
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And yes, we can take supplements and we do that a lot, but it will still take time before
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we're completely able to understand how the body absorbs these nutrients and how they
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get acted on the body.
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So by having a really healthy diet and seeing it all and plan B, et cetera, like we can
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really help the body and support the body's functions and therefore have a mode which
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is a lot more homogeneous.
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And are there ways to physically stimulate or benefit the vagus nerve as well?
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So for instance, I've heard anecdotally the recommendation that even things like singing
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can help stimulate the vagus nerve because the vibration of the vocal cords.
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And I noticed for me, ironically, when I started taking voice lessons and singing, it seemed
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to help process emotions.
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But also that was around the time when my thyroid issues started resolving and I always
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wondered if there was a connection because I was stimulating my vagus nerve more.
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So one thing to share with the moms is like a good, just singing to your children before
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I have a short list of songs that they really love and I sing to them.
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And that is a complete way to stimulate your vagus nerve and get the kids in bed happily
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and peacefully because it's going to impact theirs as well and their stress level is going
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Singing, definitely.
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A lot of yoga posture, right?
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When you think of the sun salutation, is a massive massage to the vagus nerve.
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Then when you look at Pilates as well, it's going to help.
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And so there have been scientific studies that show that the brain architecture of someone
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who doesn't have yoga is going to be slightly different.
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And the suspicion is really along that vagus nerve, different things are going on.
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And so all of those can be done.
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A really good, you know, a really good massage as well with someone who really does what
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they do, a traditional Chinese medicine massage would also really help.
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And based on what you said, it sounds like some of the Eastern modalities might also
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be just naturally more helpful for the vagus nerve as well.
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Things like acupuncture or traditional Chinese medicine, do those have an impact on the vagus
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And so taking things end to end, so if you think acupuncture is going to, you know, take
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one point and alongside all of these nerves, it's going to help to restore the balance
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that the nerve just performs where it needs to perform.
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And so it's quite interesting in traditional Chinese medicine, you're going to see each
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time you have pain, pain is a blockage.
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So if you've ever experienced a massage with a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner,
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they're going to go towards the pain, you're like, wow, this hurts, like stop doing that.
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Let's just go for it.
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So you're like, why is this person insisting it's hurting?
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And they're trying to undo the problem at hand and trying to really funnel where is your
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Where are their blockages along your vagus nerve and can we undo them?
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And you mentioned deficiencies as well.
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And I think this is also probably very common in modern society.
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And I've often thought, you know, we've heard that we're getting overfed and undernourished
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or that we're consuming plenty of calories, but not enough micronutrients.
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And I think if maybe we just shifted our mindset to focus on amount of nutrients per food instead
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of calories per food, we might get a little closer to the goal there.
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Are there common deficiencies that you see show up, especially for women and especially
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related to the things we're talking about?
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This is a grand question.
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What I do observe is a lot of women can lack what is called in traditional Chinese medicine
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So they will either donate their blood or they have a cup of IUD for a couple of years.
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They bleed a lot or they have just a lot of blood loss or they don't make the blood that
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they lose fast enough.
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So in her fertility years, a woman is going to lose, the average woman is going to lose
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23 to 28 liters of menstruation.
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So you take that guy next to her, it's the nothingness happening for him or her, she's
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going to have to re-reproduce 23 to 28 liters of menstruation.
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And that's even the average woman, you know, the woman who bleeds more might lose double
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And so what I see is a lot of women just lacking blood.
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Let's imagine that for a minute.
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So we can have two types of women.
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One who has a genetic predisposition for migraines and so she's going to have her brain complete.
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Her brain is like mayday, mayday, we don't have enough oxygen, we don't have enough blood.
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Can you send us more?
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Take a tryptophan, it's going to contact your blood vessel, it's going to force the blood
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into your brain and you might feel sort of okay.
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If you don't have migraines, you will feel extremely weak.
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You will feel you have like a really dry skin that you can put, you know, oil and butter
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and it's always dry.
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You will feel you have a lot of sugar cravings before your menstruation, sugar cravings when
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you're stressed, sugar cravings when you're tired, and you might also lose your hair.
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And all of these are signs that the body is just trying to optimize where do we put the
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blood because we don't have enough.
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You're going to be either able to think or to digest or to exercise.
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So your body is going to be a little bit like a computer that doesn't have enough internet.
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It's going to start to close a number of tabs.
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They're going to keep one open, load it, and then once it's done, close it, open a second
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And so this is your body now.
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Now, if you eat sugar, the sweet flavor is going to send the blood to your limbs.
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And so for a moment, you're going to have an impression of energy.
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So you're able to get the laundry done and the lunch boxes and, you know, cleaning up
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You have that moment of energy because the blood is concentrated in your limbs.
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So you decided to reprioritize for your body, but afterwards you crash and all of that blood
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goes back into the liver for a digestive purpose and you feel really tired again.
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So now we have again an excess of that junk food that we ate and we have still that deficiency
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That is going to have a massive impact on the vagus nerve and can give symptoms to women
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that are completely gaslighted and unseen in Western science.
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I think in Western science, we might say that a woman has anemia and it's kind of a proxy
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for it, but it's not.
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You know, you look at a pan of iron, it has little in common with, you know, like a liter
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Like you can't make one from the other overnight.
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We need other material to fabricate that blood.
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Does that make sense?
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That does make sense.
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And I would guess many people listening and myself in the past included have had sort
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of that medical gaslighting and been told that things were quote unquote normal in labs
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or that nothing was wrong when your body is telling you something completely different
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and kind of having to become our own health detective to figure out what actually was
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going on and what our body actually was asking for separate of our lab results.
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Yeah, completely, completely.
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And so what's going to happen is that the woman's going to have issues and she might
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And the more she's going to take medication, the more she's going to intoxicate her liver,
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the more her emotion will be anger emotions.
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And the more, the less the liver system is going to have enough for in order to produce
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the blood that it's in charge of producing.
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And so she's going to be more and more tired.
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She's going to eat more and more sugar.
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She might need to medicate more.
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And now she has anger feelings where she feels really, really terrible.
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And she also feels stale and lethargic.
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Also her mood hormones, which also are produced by the liver system in traditional trial medicine,
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are going to be all over the place.
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And so she's going to start to have a really little impression of herself, you know, diminished
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And when her kids become teenagers, feel it really, really all over the place.
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And back to the emotional side as well.
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And to tie all this in, I would love to kind of get an idea from you of what would optimal,
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like our optimal way to exist, to protect our vagus nerve function and to stimulate
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it optimally and to deal with our emotions, our negative emotions, to have the better
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vagus nerve function and or even daily habits.
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What would that look like if we were going to sort of live in an optimal way for supporting
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vagus nerve function?
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I love your question.
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So you'd wake up and I know that sounds really irrealistic, but you might do a few sun salutations,
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just waking up, stretching your spine with your arms left and right, and then going in
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a downward dog and then in a cobra position.
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And just do that three times and you might feel really stiff, but it's okay.
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Just letting that vagus nerve be a role.
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You might have a routine that involves a bit of yoga or Pilates, and then you will
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eat foods that are in season that are really, really varied, like different colors, but
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you will also have optimal gastric juices.
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Meaning you've learned to master how to have really strong gastric juices and you're able
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to fragment the foods to actually access it.
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We say that we are what we eat.
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It's actually we are what we eat, comma, and absorb.
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And then we'll have emotions that make us human.
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Sometimes we'll feel a bit angry.
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Sometimes we'll feel a bit sad.
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Sometimes we'll feel a bit joyful, but we're never going to have that.
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We're never going to let ourselves stay in that emotion for a prolonged period of time.
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And so we're able to just cruise along.
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There's this incredible metaphor that I've heard recently, which is called be water.
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And so it's the idea that water is very powerful.
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If it goes in a cup, it's a cup.
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If it goes in a bowl, it's a bowl.
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And when the water goes as a river and it meets an obstacle, it's not going to go and
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make a boiling or just go upwards or go crazy.
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It's going to circumvent it.
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And if there's a hole, it's going to fill the hole all the way it needs to fill it and
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then pass over it.
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And if there's a small mountain or a large mountain, preventing it to reach the sea, it's
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going to go around it.
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And so it's the idea of life can be really, really tough and you can feel in those moments
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of the obstacle thinking, why me?
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We can just be like water and go on with it and just, you know, slow.
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I think that's sometimes where you're in those situations just thinking, let's be water.
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It just really, really brings your senses to a level of calm and brings your vigor back
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to being grounded and to figure out, therefore, to liberate the energy for your brain to figure
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out what to do next.
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That's such a good metaphor.
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And I know we talked in our first episode about, I love that you said emotions in themselves
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It's that when we get stuck in any of them for too long, that it's a negative experience.
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Is that also true for what we would traditionally call positive emotions?
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In other words, is it somehow bad to get stuck in joy or to get stuck in gratitude or happiness?
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Being stuck in joy in traditional Chinese medicine can be very much associated with
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And so being stuck in joy is very dangerous.
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Joy is part of the heart system and you should have some level of joy, but not a constant
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If you also, you know, let's imagine you have dangerous mechanism, there's real things in
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Then you're very patient or very still, well, you'll be eaten, right?
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Take the metaphor of, you know, being in the jungle or take the metaphor of having your
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kids being threatened by all sorts of social media things.
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If you're very still and you don't take action and you're very contemplating and positive,
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still your child's going to get really hurt.
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So there's really a need for intervention, a need for getting angry at the situation,
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a need to be slightly stressed or slightly worried, and that's what's going to get you
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to take the right course of action.
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It's staying stuck again, like we talked in the last podcast, staying stuck in the emotion
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is going to be very negative and it's going to plunge the vagus nerve into a massive level
[22:28]
And it's imagine if we compare it back to the tree where you can compare the vagus nerves
[22:31]
to an orchestra, right?
[22:34]
And if the controller of the orchestra only focuses on the drum, then that's all you hear
[22:38]
and the music doesn't play well.
[22:40]
And so that's what not allowing to stay stuck in that emotion at ease.
[22:45]
And so, yeah, that relationship is really important.
[22:48]
Well, I think even that acknowledgement of emotions not being bad themselves and then
[22:54]
that they're universally positive also can help avoid that trap of feeling guilty if
[22:59]
we have a negative emotion or that fear-guilt-shame cycle related to emotions that we're having
[23:04]
and also helps us view them as more transient in realizing it's not the emotion that's bad,
[23:09]
it's being stuck in it.
[23:10]
So we're already in a mindset of emotions being transient and being able to move through
[23:16]
But I also know from having done some of this work in my own life that even being aware
[23:20]
of it, sometimes it's a little hard to learn to rewrite our stories internally or to ask
[23:24]
ourselves better questions or to give ourselves better mental statements.
[23:28]
Do you have any tips for people on learning the inner work of the emotions?
[23:33]
Can you deep dive on your question a bit more?
[23:37]
So for instance, I became aware how I would have emotions related to when I was having
[23:41]
thyroid issues and I would feel very negatively about that or I would be asking what I would
[23:45]
view as negative questions like, why is this so hard or why can't I get better or why is
[23:49]
it so hard to lose weight?
[23:51]
And I slowly learned to rewrite those stories in my head to say in a more positive sense
[23:56]
like how can I get better?
[23:57]
How can I make it easy and fun to heal or whatever the question may be?
[24:01]
But I know it wasn't an overnight process either, that I was at least a slow learner
[24:05]
in learning how to consciously shift my emotional states.
[24:09]
So do you have any tips for people who are wanting to begin to learn to rewrite that
[24:13]
process and have a healthier relationship with their emotions?
[24:17]
I think sometimes just fixing yourself on something else.
[24:22]
It's really hard if I tell you, think of a banana and don't think of a banana.
[24:26]
In both cases, I've said the word banana.
[24:29]
And so it may be that thing pops up in your brain, but if I say, think of a banana, instead
[24:36]
of saying, don't think of a banana, I go cherries, cherries, cherries.
[24:39]
It just sounds very simple, but it rewires what you think about.
[24:44]
I think a lot of people are talking about manifesting in the universe and I think manifesting
[24:49]
something else really helps to transition in that emotion faster.
[24:55]
Another one I find is, you know how you can do gratitudes at the end of the day and you're
[25:00]
supposed to maybe have a book and write them down, like realistically as a mom, you don't
[25:03]
have your gratitude journal necessarily next to your bed if you do, amazing.
[25:07]
But most likely if you're at least on holidays, you won't have them.
[25:10]
One trick is to take a beautiful moment and put it on an organ so you can say, I had that
[25:17]
wonderful walk with my son on the beach and we had this profound conversation I was just
[25:23]
And I'm going to put that incredible memory on my thyroid and just a moment to associate
[25:29]
maybe that organ with another sensation and another memory and sort of rewire it like
[25:37]
That's a great idea.
[25:38]
And I'm going to play with that in visualization and see how that goes.
[25:41]
I love everything we've gotten to talk about today and I know that you have so much more
[25:45]
beyond what we've been able to cover in these podcast episodes.
[25:48]
Where can people find you online and keep learning from you and work with you directly
[25:53]
if they're experiencing migraines or truly anything that they're working on resolving?
[25:57]
So my nectarhealth.com is the website or at my nectar health is the handle.
[26:03]
We also have a podcast that was inspired by the work called Migraine Heroes.
[26:08]
And so you can take the test online and from the test you can really put all of these symptoms
[26:11]
that you have and these you have in your life that are not making sense.
[26:16]
And that's in sort of a 97 questionnaire, which is quite incredible.
[26:20]
And then we debrief on, okay, explaining to you and understanding again, what are these
[26:25]
imbalances and what do they mean and how to tackle them, how to restore that balance so
[26:31]
that all of these symptoms that appear from all of these emotions and facts of life can
[26:38]
I'll make sure all of that is linked in the show notes because you have been a voice of
[26:41]
explanation to something that I've observed in my own life and that I think so many people
[26:46]
can benefit from and of course already have through your work.
[26:48]
And I'm so grateful for the work that you do and especially for all that you've shared
[26:53]
So thank you for being here.
[26:55]
Thank you so much for having me, Judy.
[26:57]
And thank you as always for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy
[27:02]
and your attention with us today.
[27:04]
We're both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the
[27:07]
next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
[27:11]
If you're enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating
[27:14]
or review on iTunes for me?
[27:17]
Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families can
[27:21]
benefit from the information.
[27:23]
I really appreciate your time and thanks as always for listening.
