The Vagus Nerve for Mums and Babies - How We Can Support Our Families’ Nervous Systems with Dr Carrie Rigoni
Dr Carrie Rigoni is a chiropracter, applied kinesiologist and vagus nerve educator with a special interest in treating the vagus nerve in children. She is a wealth of knowledge and I really enjoyed learning about the vagus nerve with her - I know you will too!
We chat about:
- What is the vagus nerve and how it supports our nervous systems
- Signs that our vagal tone or our children's needs some support
- Ways that we can help to strengthen our vagal tone - through body work and daily habits
- When to get more support
You can find Carrie here:
https://www.drcarrierigoni.com.au/vagus-nerve-checklist-babiesandkids
She has some amazing freebies on her website including checklists and masterclasses.
Or you can connect with her on instagram: @drcarrierigoni
As always, if you have enjoyed this episode please share with your pals - and if you really love me, please leave a rating and review. It all helps immensely!
Fiona x
TRANSCRIPT
Dr Carrie Rigoni - The Vagus Nerve
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Fiona Weaver: [00:00:00] Hello, love and welcome to the Mama Chatterers podcast. If you are keen to ditch all of the parenting shoulds and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place. I'm your host Fiona Weaver, founder of Mama Matters, and through honest chats with experts and each other, we'll help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parent.
Fiona Weaver: Wherever and whoever you are, you belong here now. Let's have a chat.
Fiona Weaver: Hello my loves. I hope you're well, and thank you for your patience on my rather sporadic. Potty episodes. I have been all in on my new membership coming home, which has just been everything I have dreamt of, and I am just so chuffed and excited to grow this beautiful community. If you have missed out this round, no fear, we will open doors again in late May or June, so you will get another chance [00:01:00] to join the coolest mum's club in town.
Fiona Weaver: So our chat today is with Dr. Carrie Ragone. She is a chiropractor, applied kinesiologist and vagus nerve educator with a special interest in treating the vagus nerve in. She is a wealth of knowledge and I really enjoyed learning about the vagus nerve with her, and I am keen to do some further learning myself now.
Fiona Weaver: So I think you're going to find this very interesting and also she shares lots of awesome practical strategies to apply to yourself and to your babies and kids as well. So I hope you enjoy. Good morning, Carrie, and welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you
Dr Carrie Rigoni: here. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Fiona Weaver: I am so excited today to talk to you about the vagus nerve, which is your passion, your specialty.
Fiona Weaver: And I want to kind of take it from the top, like what I wanna know all about, what the vagal nerve is, um, how we can, you know, notice things in our babies and in ourselves and what we can do [00:02:00] about it. And all of, everything that comes with the vagus nerve. But let's start with. Who you are, what you
Dr Carrie Rigoni: do mm-hmm.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And how you ended up here. Um, so I am a chiropractor by qualification. Um, though I do kind of describe myself as slightly out of the box chiropractor, and I got where I am because. I was looking for help with my own child. So I got into this field, particularly the vagus nerve and the nervous system because I, um, my baby wasn't very, sleeping very well, and I was exhausted and burnt out, and it wasn't until I started focusing on the nervous system.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: That things really started to shift for us, and it was a real light bulb moment for me because, you know, I was already a chiropractor. I had all this clinical knowledge and I was like, went into motherhood so confident that I'd be like, yeah, I'll, I'll sort it. Like, you [00:03:00] know, it'll all be good. But we all know that babies are, you know, little humans and they have their own, their own needs.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Separate to, um, what clinical textbooks might tell us. So, Once I started working on my nervous system, his nervous system, um, we just saw massive changes in, um, sleep, you know, happiness. Um, I felt less burnt out and I was like, I've gotta share this message because it's so powerful. Oh, that's
Fiona Weaver: amazing. So what did you notice in him, apart from his week?
Fiona Weaver: Well, what did his sleep look like? But what else was happening for him that made you think that his nervous system
Dr Carrie Rigoni: needed some. Um, he was this sort of baby who needed to be held all the time and like, I guess this is like one example, but it, I feel like it just like shows exactly what he was, like. I had him in the carrier, I don't remember how old he was, but.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: [00:04:00] He had just fallen asleep and it took me like 40 minutes of like bouncing on the football while he was in the carrier. And then I was so thirsty. I got up to get a drink of water and just the sound of the water hitting the cup, like ping eyes wide open, sleeped done. It was just like so wired and. Like, you know, work, work with like, the slightest noises was not very, um, I wouldn't say, I think he needed a lot of touch and a lot of comfort to sleep, which I didn't have a problem providing, but I just felt deep down that he shouldn't be so wired, you know, I should be able to make a noise without him, um, pinging back to life, so to speak.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah.
Fiona Weaver: Like he's looking out for danger.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yes,
Fiona Weaver: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, I was listening to something else that you had done, um, a little while ago before we chatted today. And it, it. [00:05:00] Raise a lot of questions for me as somebody who speaks about kids who are, you know, more sensitive than other kids whose nervous systems are a little bit more sensitive, a little bit more fragile than others.
Fiona Weaver: And I do believe there's like a, there's always gonna be a spectrum, isn't there? Um, you know, everybody's nervous system is different, but this is something that makes me consider. You know, my own baby when he was little cuz what you have described was him as well, like just wired and on and ready for action and he, he just
Dr Carrie Rigoni: felt stressed.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Um, there absolutely is a spectrum and you know, even looking at my child now, who's now seven. He's still a little bit like that, even though I'm confident his nervous system is well regulated, you know, he's still really sensitive to his environment and more likely [00:06:00] to, I guess, get dysregulated from things that maybe say his si, um, sister would, doesn't, she's just like, yeah, whatever.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Whereas he's still really sensitive. So, um, you know, I kind of describe it like, um, We all have this battery inside of us. Mm-hmm. And everyone's in a battery. It's a different. So, you know, being a bit more sensitive just means his battery's going to be a little bit smaller, so it means that it to deplete his battery from, say, a hundred percent charged to zero, it's gonna happen faster for him and for sensitive kids.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um. Mm-hmm. And it's not really right, right or wrong or whatever, it's just like visually, I, I know that his capacity is smaller. Mm-hmm. If that makes sense. Yeah,
Fiona Weaver: that does make sense. So it's still, there are still more kids, uh, still kids who are more sensitive than others, but [00:07:00] concentrating on their nervous system is going to help
Dr Carrie Rigoni: them.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. And I find that like, you know, I suppose even identifying is highly sensitive myself, that I think it's more important for these kids and even, you know, if you're a mom listening and you feel like you're highly sensitive as. Because we feel everything so much bigger. We respond to our environment faster.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: We notice things that perhaps other people or other children don't notice. So we, it's so easy to deplete that in a battery. And yeah, so if we're not taking care of ourselves, we are the ones who are gonna get overwhelmed and burnt out, um, because we just have no capacity left. But we are just dealing with a smaller capacity to begin with.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense that, yeah. So let's take it from the top. Now, what the heck is the vagus
Dr Carrie Rigoni: nerve? The vagus nerve is, uh, the largest cranial [00:08:00] nerve in the body. Um, it extends from your brain stem, so up in your more primitive part of your brain, um, down through the front of your neck, underneath your collarbones, all through your chest, all through your abdomen, all the way to your pelvic.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And it has like these little projections that go to every single organ in our body. And its job is twofold. Number one, its job is to, um, control, I guess it controls the stress response in the automatic functions of our body. So it's slows down our heart rate. It, um, regulates our blood pressure, our breathing rate, um, you know, things that we don't really think about.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: What the vagus nerve does is if we go through a period of stress, Once that stressor is finished, the vagus nerve kicks in and calms everything back down again. So we can go back into a regulated state. [00:09:00] So that's function one, and that's like top down, like that comes from the brain through the vagus nerve, into all the organs that it needs to, to calm everything down.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: But then it's got this other really, really important function, which is, you know, between 80 to 90% of the function of the vagus nerve is actually from the body into the brain. And what it does is it sensors what's going on inside our body and lets our brain knows. So say for example, We get an infection in our gut.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: You know, that's something that the vagus nerve would start to pick up and say, Hey, we've got an infection here. Let's get started to clear it. It kind of senses inflammation. It senses if something's going, you know, a bit awry in any of the the organs, but what it also does, Is it sensors? What's going on in our external environment?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And it tells our nervous system, particularly the fight flight [00:10:00] or the, you know, sympathetic activation part of our nervous system that protects us from threats. It tells us whether we are safe or whether it's worth being activated. So it has a huge role to play in how much time we spend in fight or flight.
Fiona Weaver: If we are feeling a level of stress that's sort of ongoing, is that an indicator that our vagus nerve or our vagal tone is a little off kilter?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, vagal tone is simply how well your vagus nerve works. Um, so someone who has low vagal tone may struggle to pull themselves out of the stress response easily.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So, you know, you think to a time maybe when you felt really burnt out as an adult, and maybe it takes. You know, something stresses you out and it takes you three or four days to recover and feel back to normal. Um, that's your vagus nerve really struggling to kick in and support you in coming back to regulation.[00:11:00]
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Whereas someone with a high vagal tone tends to be able to flip between stress. And regulation much faster. Um, and even with say, babies and children, you know, say you have a toddler who gets really upset over, you know what cup you give them. Totally normal toddler behavior, right? But, How long it takes for them to regulate after gives us an indicator of how well their vagus nerve is doing.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So a child who can regulate really quickly after, you know, quick by quickly. I mean like I would probably expect around 20 minutes. Which is still a long time, but you know, like we can get them to regulate quickly versus, you know, this, this one experience setting you guys up for a really bad day where you're walking on eggshells and you know that you know, or perhaps they're screaming for an hour and a half afterwards and you just can't seem to, no matter.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: What you do in terms of [00:12:00] co-regulation, and I'm sure all of your listeners know all of the things to, you know, support their child's, um, you know, expression of emotions and all of that. If you're doing everything and your child is still really dysregulated, then that could be a sign that their VA nerves just not kicking in and helping them regulate back into that, um, safety zone.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: What
Fiona Weaver: do you put down to individual tempera? And when something needs a little bit of help or do, is it just that, if that's their temperament, if they're that way inclined, then they might just need that extra little bit of help.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, I ha that's a hard question to answer because my clinic is very biased towards children who do have a lot of dysregulation, so.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Mm-hmm. Um, I guess my, my common, um, The way I describe it to the parents that I work with when I'm working with their child is that there's still gonna be [00:13:00] personality. Like I can get your child's nervous system working as well as it can for them, but they're still gonna be a part of their stress response or how they cope with stress.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: That is inherently their personality. So, um, yeah. Yeah, there's no black and white answer to that one. It's quite a gray area. No, that's okay.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. Yeah. There's no black and white answers to anything we can't do at all. Humans is there. Yeah, I'm OK with that. When you say that you are working on working with someone's nervous system and helping them along with their regulation, what are you doing?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Does that look like? Yeah, it depends on the person. Um, so a lot of babies and children, it's simply some body work that. Enables the vagus nerve to function. Um, so one thing that can inhibit vagal tone is, uh, just restrictions around the area where the vagus nerve actually travels. So whether that's [00:14:00] in the neck or the shoulder girdle, sometimes down in the belly, you know, it has to move through the diaphragm, um, and into the tummy.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So a lot of the work is, I guess, working on their body, um, which is why I still. Um, call myself a chiropractor because I'm still doing hands-on stuff with them to support their nervous system.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. What about what, uh, parents are able to take home with them, or what strategies can we use to help our babies and our kids regulate
Dr Carrie Rigoni: themselves?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah, so the biggest thing is regulating ourselves as adults. So, One thing we do know about the nervous system is that our children will mirror us. And so if you are listening to this thinking that you possibly have low vagal tone and you have for your whole lifetime, then it's safe to say that if that's your version of normal stress response, um, [00:15:00] Then you're probably going to mirror that.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Your child's gonna mirror that as well. So if you're finding that your child is really, um, I guess struggling with regulation or you feel like they are really wired, um, first step would always be ensuring you're doing what you can to support your nervous system and making sure, you know, going back to that inner battery, that your inner battery is as full as possible.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And even just reflecting on. How big you think your inner battery is. So when I talk about this analogy, lots of mums are always like, well, yeah, my inner battery is tiny. I know that already. And it's like, okay, well that's what we're working with though. So let's honor that and let's make sure we can keep your tiny little battery as charged as possible so that you're not getting to zero, and then your child's not mirroring you when you're in a completely dysregulated.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Hmm. I was
Fiona Weaver: talking about this with my husband this morning because [00:16:00] I, I'm pregnant at the moment and I have shared my journey, this pregnancy feeling like, um, My nervous system feels fickle. Like there's something that is awry, whether it's my hormones or something. I'm working with a naturopath, I'm working with a psychologist.
Fiona Weaver: I generally feel okay, but there are, there are days and you know, a few days at a time where I feel so fragile and emotional and like I could snap and. This morning I was feeling great. We had a great morning, and then suddenly my body started feeling really anxious and stressed, and I didn't know what it was, but that's just the feeling that I had in my body.
Fiona Weaver: I felt tense and my husband. Came in from the gym and he's like, wow, there is a real energy this morning. And I was like, I don't know what it is. I'm, it's just my body. I, I'm feeling fine, but my body is feeling tense and anxious. And he said, um, cuz he has really bad anxiety and he, it's chronic for him.
Fiona Weaver: It's good at the moment. He manages it through diet and [00:17:00] exercise mainly. He's like, it made me actually think like how hard it is for you guys when I'm anxious cuz you can really feel it. And I was like, yes, I feel it. I sense that energy as soon as you walk in the house. It's hard to be around and it's obviously hard for him to be around when I'm feeling like that too.
Fiona Weaver: But we mentioned that our kids, especially the sensitive one, he is absolutely a mirror of whatever is happening for us
Dr Carrie Rigoni: at any time. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you can, and that's your vagus nerve by the way. So when you walk into a room and you can feel it, you know, you don't even have to say anything.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: You are like, whoa, this feels really off. You know, the vibe is off. That's your vagus nerve sensing. So, you know, it senses your internal environment and your external environment. And it uses things like non-verbal communication, um, so you know what's happening, people's body language, et cetera. To work out what's going on.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And so if you walk into a room and you know the vibes off, [00:18:00] that's your vagus nerve saying, Hey, this feels a bit threatening. I'm gonna, I'm just going to like arc up a little bit. And
Fiona Weaver: I always arc up when he walk, when he is got that energy about him. What's the matter? Talk to. What's happening? I need it to stop. It's making me feel
Dr Carrie Rigoni: stressed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Fiona Weaver: exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. So as mothers particularly, because this podcast is for mothers, um, there are obviously times of stress that we have in our days, weeks, months, years.
Fiona Weaver: And how do we, how do we. Kind of regulate our own nervous systems or notice when we need a little bit of extra support to regulate our nervous systems. Yes. What's, what's the stress of daily life in motherhood and what is needing a bit
Dr Carrie Rigoni: more? Yeah, that's really individual as well. [00:19:00] And I think it's really important, um, firstly to reflect on what kind of nervous system you had pre-kids and if.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: If that's brought you into where you are with your children, you know, like particularly highly sensitive moms, or if you came in feeling already really burnt out and um, you know, maybe things like noise and light have always bothered you and now your kids are making the noise and you're like, you know, constantly on edge.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: But knowing what your baseline was already provides so much information. How you're responding now and what, um, I guess what ability or what conditioning you've had up till now that you know, makes you respond in that way? So the vagus nerve is subconscious. It does this without us even thinking. So if it's not in our awareness, it won't shift.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, we'll just automatically behave the way we always have. [00:20:00] So in that sense, I would always. Work out what someone's baseline is or was. Um mm-hmm. That can be shift. It's shifted. It's like a thermostat, but that's always step one. Step two is to remember that the stress is not the problem. It's whether you can pull yourself out of it or not.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, and that's where it's gonna look different for everyone. Say for me, like we were talking about before we started recording, a non-negotiable for me is getting up early. And going down to the beach. Sometimes I just dip in the ocean. Sometimes I add in a walk or try running. Um, you know, but I do, I need that to start my day.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And that's a non-negotiable in our family, but that's not gonna work for everyone. Like some people might be like the, that sounds awful. I don't want to do that. Well, you don't have to. But working out what your non-negotiables are to keep that inner battery. Um, is going [00:21:00] to help you as much as possible.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah.
Fiona Weaver: What about some quicker strategies that we can use, like in a rough day of parenting? What can we do that is going to help to bring us back to balance quickly? Yeah.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. My two, um, favorite things to do are so quick and easy. So we are all guilty in this day and age. Trying to escape by picking up our phone and scrolling, right?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Like, I don't know any mother. Like, no, I never do that. Like we all do it in, you know, varying degrees. Um, and what that does is makes our eyes converge. So our eyes kind of have to turn in a little bit to be able to focus on something up close. What convergence does is it activates our fight flight even more.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So even though we are escaping our current reality, we're actually still activating our [00:22:00] nervous system and that's, that's gonna be detrimental. Like the moment we put our phone down, we're actually not our nervous system. Like mentally, our mental load may have changed and we may feel. You know, a few funny tos have made us laugh, so we feel different, but under the surface, our nervous system is still going to be in that hypervigilant state.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: The opposite of that is, say, looking really far into the distance. Um, Which starts to activate our parasympathetic activity. It's like this primitive part of our brain that says, if we look, if I can see really far away, I know I'm safe because I can see so much of my environment and I know nothing's coming to, you know, threaten my safety.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So instead of picking up your phone just. Going, you know, looking out the window, looking as far as you can into the distance. Um, this is why I think sometimes, you know, having a bad day with your kids, getting them to the park and stuff can be really helpful. Cause they also get Yeah, I was just about to [00:23:00] say, you know, push so
Fiona Weaver: damn regulating.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, and it's so like, it's so easy to do. You just have to remember, like, and again, that's the subconscious part is like, it's like activated straight into what I know that I already do. But we need to consciously start shifting our behavior of like, oh, I'm about to pick up my phone. Hang on a sec.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: I'm gonna look into the distance for a little while first. And it doesn't have. This versus that, you can still look at your phone. Um, but adding that in is just going to bring that thermostat down a few so that you're not so hypervigilant and that sympathetic nervous system isn't quite as activated. Um, yeah.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So that's my
Fiona Weaver: number one. Intuitively, that's, that's what I do as well. Yeah, like last night we had this stressor happen. It was like, A mortgage bank thing that just came outta nowhere, that something hadn't been sorted. Um, [00:24:00] and anyway, it doesn't matter what it was, but it felt, it is a trigger for me. I am never gonna sell this house and buy a new house because I cannot deal with financial paperwork and deadlines and things not going right, and it was this thing that should have been sorted like three years ago.
Fiona Weaver: Oh, I'm getting stressed thinking about it, but I was saying to my husband, like when we were trying to sort that out and we. Just so stressed with our kids as well. And now we're making noise because they're kids. And it was nighttime and we were like, we are feeling really stressed. We are gonna snap. We need some calm.
Fiona Weaver: And then I felt as though everything was just amplified and noisier and more chaotic. And I was like, I feel like I'm gonna snap. I just need to go outside. And I always just go outside and look up to the sky, put my feet in the grass. And that instant. Makes me feel better. Everything feels better outside.
Fiona Weaver: I reckon it's so, and then I could come back to the chaos.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yes. Yeah. [00:25:00] And it's still gonna be there, but it's how we respond to the chaos. Hey, like, but that, that is very much guided by the state of our nervous system in that moment.
Fiona Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's hard when we're both dysregulated because it was stressful for both of us.
Fiona Weaver: So there was no one saying, I can see that you're struggling. Let me take over, go outside for a bit. Yes. Like, gonna snap Yeah.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Off each other's dysregulation.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. It's, it's such a snowball effect, isn't it? Okay. So what's your
Dr Carrie Rigoni: other favorite one? The other thing is so simple. I use this when I am, um, Like, say for example, cooking dinner and the kids are winging cause they're really hungry and I'm like, mate, I'm going as fast as I can.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, but they're just like at me and I feel like I'm about to snap. This is when I use this tool. So the easiest thing to do is start focusing your attention into the era of your heart. And what you'll [00:26:00] notice is when you start focusing that attention in there, your breathing automatically slows. Um, The reason that we focus on the heart is because a large proportion of vagal fibers actually go from our heart straight into the fear center of our brain.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So it's a really strong neurological pathway to shift how much threat you're feeling in your body. So the vagus nerve detects it, but just by focusing on that area, we know that the nervous system starts focusing. It's like, you know, if you. Bang your toe and you focus all your attention to your toe cuz it's hurting like it's a similar principle.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: We can focus on our heart that starts to regulate our heartbeat. And then our breathing. And then these messages go from our heart into our threat center saying, Hey, you are actually really safe right now. You don't need to snap, even though the children are like, you know, really ticking you off. And it just again, [00:27:00] brings you down a few notches.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So the trick with this one is to focus for as long. Until you feel yourself, like some people just feel a melting, like, you know, a relaxation. I guess other people might actually sigh or yawn. It might be like a, oh yes, okay, that's better. And then once you've hit that point, you know that your vagus is kicked back in, created some safety signals, decrease the threat response, and you can respond to your child without, you know, going straight into that like rage.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I find that when I, like say for my daughter, cuz she's just turned four, she has some big feelings if she's feeling dysregulated and I am in turn feeling dysregulated, just picking her up and. Having a really big cuddle with her and taking some really deep breaths, intentional deep breaths, and then noticing that she does the same thing and we're just kind of [00:28:00] regulating each other.
Fiona Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I feel like that's really nice. And another thing that works for me as well is cold water. Either splashing cold water on my face, washing my face with cold water. Mm-hmm. Um, even having a cold shower, going for a dip in the ocean, that is always a reset for me as well. Yeah, that's, that's stimulates the vagus nerve, doesn't it?
Fiona Weaver: Like a cold shower?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. So cold shower and cold face are slightly different. The, the cold water on the face is, um, actually, Like directly activating that vagal tone. So it changes the way the vagus nerves functioning like from a sensory stimulation point of view. Whereas the cold shower starts to get your body to activate your vagus, particularly after, because it needs to.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Calm your heart rate back down. Like, you know, say the cold water is a shock and it temporarily increases the stress response, but then your vagus nerve starts to kick [00:29:00] in and it activates your parasympathetic activity after. So different mechanism and, um, I mean, that's why I'm so addicted to ocean dips because even when it's freezing afterwards, I'm just like, ah, like I needed that, you know?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Yep. It's
Fiona Weaver: the ultimate reset and ocean dip, isn't
Dr Carrie Rigoni: it? Yep. I think so. I don't, I, I can't, I
Fiona Weaver: don't, I don't feel like it compares to anything. I don't do it enough. But my husband, he does all the things. He does the ice baths, he puts those face in icy water, does the ocean dips, loves all that stuff.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: It's so good.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: And you know, for the most part it's free. Like we don't mm-hmm. Uh, you know, like the more, I guess the more the nervous system is becoming Popularized. Popularized, did I just make up a word? Um, no, I feel like that's a word. Okay. As it was rolling off my tongue, I'm like, is that actually a word? Um, You know, there's heaps of [00:30:00] devices around now that activate your vagus nerve or bring you back into calm and honestly like the ocean or cold exposure, you know, we don't, we don't need to pay money to access this stuff.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: We can do it at home or in our backyard or, um, you know, we can, we don't need to Yeah. Spend the money on this. We've got it in ourselves. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um,
Fiona Weaver: okay. Can we go back to the, the kids if we're wanting to help them to regulate on the whole, how does screen time, diet, exercise and things play into all of that?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Yep. Um, screen time. There's two problems with screen time, and again, I'm not, um, like my kids get tv. I'm not a purist, um, with any of this stuff. Mm-hmm. So, um, with screen time, we've got the I convergence. [00:31:00] So if they're, say, using an iPad or a tablet and they're converging their eyes, then um, that is going to increase their fight, flight response.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, and it's just gonna brew under the surface. You know, it's not gonna necessarily, they're not gonna be in a full rage, but they're just going to be like, it's just activating their nervous system under the surface. And the other thing that we really need to be mindful of is the blue light, particularly in the later hours of the day, um, that can really dysregulate their nervous system just from a melatonin point of view.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: We know that more exposure to the blue light decreases our melatonin production, and then we try and get our kids to sleep and they're, they're still wired, so. Mm-hmm. Um, I just, you know, Recommend, like when it comes to screen time, that um, you kind of say, my kids only get screen time on the weekend, um, because I want them to go to bed early on school nights.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So, you know, working out rules that work for you. [00:32:00] Um, yeah, but understanding that it does amplify their stress response. So if they're having a bad day, I know it's really easy to give them the iPad just for like a moment of peace. But the, I guess the risk of that. Just understanding that that's actually probably going to amplify their nervous system response.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: What's
Fiona Weaver: the gut and vagus nerve
Dr Carrie Rigoni: interaction? Yeah, so that's um, what we would call bidirectional in that the vagus nerve influences the gut, and the gut also influences the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve controls. Quickly food like it controls peristalsis, so how our gut contracts and moves waste out. So if you have a child who's maybe constipated or who has, you know, explosive diarrhea all the time, but you know, allergies and stuff have been ruled out, then you know that [00:33:00] potentially the vagus nerves playing a role in how the gut is contracting.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Um, okay. But then gut inflammation such as food reactions or. Um, you know, like parasites or little bugs that shouldn't be in the gut. If they're inflaming the gut, then that will inflame the vagus nerve and make it function at a lower function. The vagus nerve really doesn't like inflammation, but it's also our body, one of our body's biggest anti-inflammatory nerves.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So it, it actually dampens inflammation. Um, but the moment it gets inflamed, It stops functioning at its optimum. So it's kind of like, it can be hard. Like there's no, again, there's no like, I guess rule because sometimes the food could be the problem that's impacting the vagus nerve. Or other times it could be you've tried every diet under the sun and you're still having these problems with your gut.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Then perhaps it's the vagus nerve that is the driver [00:34:00] behind it. Um, so yeah, sometimes it can be difficult to discern which one's causing what. Mm-hmm. Okay. And
Fiona Weaver: exercise and things.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. So, um, the, the best thing we can do in terms of, well, I guess in terms of the stress response rather than vagal tone itself, the best thing we can do is, um, Like low grade aerobic exercise, particularly when we're really burnt out.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: So if we're feeling, you know, like mum's listening, you're feeling burnt out or really depleted, like you really don't have much to give. These are the kind of moments where you want to do just some low, like low heart rate, even just like walking slow jogs, et cetera. What this does is it increases these proteins in our brain.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: That, um, decrease our [00:35:00] stress response basically. So we can use exercise as a way to manage our burnout, but we can't push it too far. If we're in a chronic stress state and we are struggling to get out of that, then adding more stress to your system, such as like, you know, F 45 or, you know, all of these like really hardcore exercise things that are available to us.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: That's only going to add to our stress. Our nervous system is already really learn. It's in an activated state. So by pushing it into further activation, you're not, like, you may feel good temporarily, but from a nervous system point of view, um, that's gonna make you feel worse longer
Fiona Weaver: term. Oh, that's interesting.
Fiona Weaver: I wouldn't have thought.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah, so I see, um, a lot of moms who maybe did that sort of stuff before pregnancy or before motherhood and really loved it. And you know, if, if you were [00:36:00] an exercise addict in the past and you really like. Needed it to feel good, then that can be another sign that your system is in that activated state and you're using exercise to, as a way to shed that excess energy that your body's creating from being in fight flight.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Mm-hmm. And that's what makes it feel really good. So you, you're really activated. You do hardcore exercise and then afterwards you feel good. Like you've just like shed all this nervous energy out of your body. Um mm-hmm. But then these same mums go, oh, well that's what my body really. Before I became a mom, I really wanna go back to that, but it feels really different and maybe you feel exhausted after you do it, or, um, you just can't push yourself as hard and this is a sign that your nervous system is just far more depleted and you need to be more gentle with yourself.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's really interesting. So if somebody is listening to this
Fiona Weaver: and they're noticing either in themselves that their vagus nerve isn't [00:37:00] functioning as best as it could be, or whether they're noticing some of these symptoms in their baby. Their baby is wired, they're not sleeping well, they're sleeping lightly, they don't like to be put down a lot, things like that.
Fiona Weaver: Mm-hmm. What, what can they do to start, do, do they need to see somebody or is there stuff that they can do themselves?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: There's definitely stuff you can do yourself. Um, I would probably just recommend jumping onto my Instagram. I share heaps of free content on there, and. When it comes to the nervous system, because it's so individualized, there's not one thing that works for everyone, right?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: But I try and share heaps of information for everyone to try so that they can then go, oh, that one worked really well for me. Or, like, that tip really resonated with me personally and working out what you need to do specifically for yourself and for your baby. Um, Again, I know that's like quite gray, but we're all just so individual, [00:38:00] um, and our nervous systems respond differently to the same environment, you know?
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Mm-hmm.
Fiona Weaver: Yeah. And if they would like some further support, what can they do there and where can people find
Dr Carrie Rigoni: you? Yes. So, um, the best way to contact me is just via my Instagram or via my website. Um, I do see people in person in Perth and um, I do have some online offerings as well, which are all listed on my website.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Yeah. Awesome.
Well,
Fiona Weaver: thank you so much. Today has been enlightening and now I'm off to buy some books about the vagus nerve, um, because I wanna learn more about it. So thank you so much for your time today. I know that it will be really helpful for so many people. So thank you.
Dr Carrie Rigoni: Thank you for having me.
Fiona Weaver: Thank you so much for listening to Mama Chatters.
Fiona Weaver: If you enjoyed this episode, let's continue the conversation on instagram@mamamatters.au. Be sure to share this app with your family and friends and don't forget if you [00:39:00] liked it, please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again, and I will see you next time.
