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Vagus Nerve Stimulation

08/12/2014 GMT

Vagus Nerve

BBC World Service - Discovery, Vagus NerveSearch BBC

Can stimulating the vagus nerve, which connects the brain with the organs improve health?

Stimulating the vagus nerve can help control epilepsy. Now some researchers think a similar technique can work with some inflammatory diseases. Gaia Vince reports.

Many people are living with chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel conditions in which the body attacks itself. Although drug treatments have improved over recent years they do not work for everyone and can have serious side effects. 

Now researchers such as neurologist Dr Kevin Tracey of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, and rheumatologist professor Paul-Peter Tak of Amsterdam University, are trying a new approach to improving the lives of these patients. They are firing electrical pulses along the vagus nerve, a major nerve that connects the brain with all the organs. The technology to do this has been around for some decades as stimulating the vagus nerve has been used to help people who have epilepsy that is not controlled with drugs since the 1990s. 
Gaia Vince talks to these pioineers of this new field of research. And, she hears how there may be ways of improving the tone of the vagal nerve using meditation.

(Image: Vagus Nerve Stimulation. Credit: Getty Images)

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