Have you or your child experienced symptoms like digestive issues, anxiety, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations, or frequent illness—and wondered if there’s a common thread? One potential root cause lies within the nervous system, in a structure called the vagus nerve.

What Is the Vagus Nerve?

The vagus nerve (cranial nerve X) is the longest and most far-reaching nerve in the body. It starts at the brainstem and travels down the neck into the chest and abdomen, innervating the heart, lungs, diaphragm, digestive tract, and more. It’s a vital part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs your body’s “rest, digest, and repair” functions.

What Does the Vagus Nerve Control?

The vagus nerve plays a role in:

• Heart rate regulation
• Breathing rhythm
• Swallowing and vocal tone
• Digestive motility and enzyme production
• Immune system regulation
• Emotional resilience and mood stability

In infants and children, proper vagal function supports suckling, swallowing, vocalizing, gut development, immune function, and neurological regulation.

What Is Vagus Nerve Dysfunction?

Vagus nerve dysfunction occurs when the nerve’s signals are disrupted, diminished, or overstimulated. This dysregulation can lead to imbalances in autonomic nervous system function, often manifesting in either overactive stress responses (sympathetic dominance) or underactive parasympathetic tone (vagal insufficiency).

What is the Autonomic Nervous System?

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the part of your nervous system that works behind the scenes to keep your body running smoothly, automatically without you even thinking about it. It controls essential functions like breathing, heart rate, digestion, body temperature, and immune responses. The ANS has two main branches:

• The sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight”) helps your body respond to stress, increasing alertness, heart rate, and energy.
• The parasympathetic nervous system (“rest and digest”) helps your body relax, heal, digest food, and conserve energy.

A healthy autonomic nervous system maintains balance between these two states, allowing you to respond to challenges and return to a calm, healing state afterward. When this balance is off, due to stress, injury, or neurological dysfunction, it can lead to a wide range of health issues.

Common Symptoms of Vagus Nerve Dysfunction:

• Digestive issues: constipation, reflux, IBS, bloating
• Anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity
• Chronic inflammation or poor immune response
• Difficulty swallowing, hoarseness
• Heart rate irregularities or dizziness
• Breathing irregularities, shallow breathing
• Sleep disturbances
• Developmental delays in infants and children
• Poor suck/swallow/breathe coordination (in newborns)

What Can Cause Vagus Nerve Dysfunction?

1.Birth Trauma or Cranial Stress

In infants, tension at the cranial base (occiput), atlas (C1), or temporal bones—often due to difficult birth, vacuum/forceps delivery, or in utero constraint, can compress or traction the vagus nerve where it exits the skull (via the jugular foramen).

2. Spinal Subluxations

Chronic misalignments (subluxations) in the upper cervical spine (neck) or thoracic region (midback) can interfere with the vagus nerve’s function by affecting the ability of the nerve to transmit impulses, alter blood flow, or changes in dural tension.

3. Stress and Emotional Trauma

Chronic stress leads to sympathetic overdrive, which can alter vagal tone. Over time, this can alter everything from gut motility to emotional regulation.

4. Chronic Illness or Inflammation

Ongoing systemic inflammation can impair the vagus nerve’s anti-inflammatory pathways, creating a cycle of dysregulation.

How Chiropractic Can Help

Chiropractic care, especially from practitioners trained in cranial and pediatric adjusting, have the unique ability to evaluate for and correct vagus nerve imbalance. The chiropractic approach involves a detailed evaluation protocol to determine where and how the vagus nerve is being compromised, then specific adjusting protocols to remove or reduce irritation to the vagus nerve and surrounding structure.

Since the vagus nerve is a master regulator of many bodily systems. When it’s out of balance, it affects more than just one symptom, it disrupts the communication between brain and body. Chiropractic care that addresses structural, cranial, and neurological alignment can help reset that communication, often improving both physical and emotional well-being.

In infants and children, restoring vagal tone can lead to improvements in colic, reflux, nursing issues, sleep regulation, and overall neurological development.

A Final Thought

Whether you’re a parent noticing developmental challenges in your baby or an adult dealing with chronic digestive or stress-related symptoms, vagus nerve dysfunction may be the missing link. Chiropractic offers a safe, gentle, and neurologically-based approach to restoring vagal tone and improving overall health.

If you’d like to learn more about how chiropractic can help with vagus nerve regulation, or to find a practitioner trained in cranial and pediatric adjusting techniques, visit www.drmartinrosen.com or contact us at the Peak Potential Institute.