Show notes
On this solo episode of The Wholesome Fertility Podcast, I dive into a powerful and often overlooked connection in reproductive health, the link between endometriosis and vagal tone. While many approaches to managing endometriosis focus on supplements, surgery, or hormonal therapies, few consider the role of the vagus nerve in regulating inflammation, digestion, and nervous system balance. In this episode, I break down how vagal tone directly influences endo symptoms, and why it could be the missing piece in your healing journey. I also share practical and accessible tools to stimulate vagal tone, from breathwork and cold exposure to acupuncture and mindfulness techniques. Whether you have endometriosis or are simply looking to support your fertility naturally, this episode offers actionable insights to help you regulate your body's stress response and boost overall well-being. Key Takeaways: Endometriosis is not just a hormonal issue—it's also tied to inflammation, gut health, and nervous system function. Research shows women with endometriosis often have lower vagal tone, which can worsen symptoms. Improving vagal tone can reduce inflammation and support digestion, egg quality, and hormonal balance. Simple practices like belly breathing, humming, and ear massage can stimulate the vagus nerve. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a useful tool for tracking nervous system health and vagal tone. For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com To learn more about ancient wisdom and fertility, you can get Michelle's book at: https://www.michelleoravitz.com/thewayoffertility The Wholesome Fertility facebook group is where you can find free resources and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2149554308396504/ Instagram: @thewholesomelotusfertility Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewholesomelotus/ Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health or fertility care. --- Transcript: Michelle Oravitz: [00:00:00] Episode number 337 of the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. Welcome back to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Orbitz, and today we're diving into a powerful and often overlooked connection when it comes to reproductive health and specifically with endometriosis. And this is the link between endometriosis and vagal tone. So that is definitely something that I haven't heard of originally when I first got into this work, and it's definitely something that you don't really see much out there. So endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory condition where tissues similar to the lining of the uterus called the endometrium grow outside of the uterus. The tissue can be found on ovaries, fallopian tubes, and outer surfaces of the uterus, and even at times. On the bladder or the intestines, if it's really, really severe each month, just like normal, you shed the [00:01:00] uterine lining and misplaced tissue responds to those hormonal changes. So this can cause a lot of pain and it can also lead to inflammation scarring and the formation of adhesions, which are bands of scar tissues that can cause organs to stick together. So some of the common symptoms include chronic pelvic pain, painful periods, so you can really feel severe pain where it's to the point where you can't really function when you're getting your period. It can also happen to increase pain during sex, and many times it is linked to a lot of digestive imbalances and microbiome imbalances as well. This can often cause issues. Also trying to conceive, in many cases people might need surgery. There are many different things that people can do. Of course there are supplements that people can take. And today I'm gonna talk more about the connection between the [00:02:00] vagal tone and endometriosis. So it's really fascinating. It's not something that you'll find often, but I'm very excited to share this. And if you wanna find out more, stay tuned. Welcome to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm Michelle, a fertility acupuncturist here to provide you with resources on how to create a wholesome approach to your fertility journey. / Michelle Oravitz: Episode number 337 of the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. Welcome back to the Wholesome Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Orbitz, and today we're diving into a powerful and often overlooked connection when it comes to reproductive health and specifically with endometriosis. And this is the link between endometriosis and vagal tone. So that is definitely something that I haven't heard of originally when I first got into this work, and it's definitely something that you don't really see much out there. So endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory condition where tissues similar to the lining of the uterus. Called the endometrium grow outside of the uterus. The tissue can be found on ovaries, fallopian tubes, and outer surfaces of the uterus, and even at times on the bladder or the intestines if it's really, really severe. Each month, just like normal, you shed the [00:01:00] uterine lining and misplaced tissue responds to those hormonal changes. So this can cause a lot of pain and it can also lead to inflammation scarring and the formation of adhesions, which are bands of scar tissues that can cause organs to stick together. So some of the common symptoms include chronic pelvic pain, painful periods, so you can really feel severe pain where it's to the point where you can't really function when you're getting your period. It can also happen to increase pain during sex, and many times it is linked to a lot of digestive imbalances and microbiome imbalances as well. This can often cause issues. Also trying to conceive, in many cases people might need surgery. There are many different things that people can do. Of course there are supplements that people can take. And today I'm gonna talk more about the connection between the [00:02:00] vagal tone and endometriosis. So. It's really fascinating. It's not something that you'll find often, but I'm very excited to share this and if you wanna find out more, stay tuned. So now that I mentioned what endometriosis is and really the condition and how it can impact your fertility health, I'm gonna also talk about vagal tone and really what the connection is between the vagal tone and endometriosis. If you heard some of my earlier episodes, you'll know that I talk a lot about the vagus nerve and about how the nervous system is so impactful when it comes to reproductive health. It's gotten to the point where that has become my [00:03:00] obsession as a fertility practitioner. It is so important and it really explains the yin and the yang process and really how the body's able to get into a homeostasis and regulate itself. And it's so pivotal when it comes to fertility health. So the vagus nerve is a cranial nerve, and it's the largest cranial nerve in the body, but it plays an incredibly important role. And I've mentioned this before, but I'm gonna mention it again in case you haven't seen it before. What it does is it actually communicates with the enteric nervous system which is your digestive nervous system, and it's , hundreds of millions of neurons that go throughout your whole digestive process. And it can be one of the causes for people having issues with digestion when there's a low vagal tone. Because it is so impactful when it comes to digestion, and one of the things that Vagus nerve does is that it impacts the parasympathetic or rest and digest [00:04:00] aspect of the body. So when your body is in parasympathetic, that is the optimal time to digest food, and it can also cause a more. Calm state of mind where your body is not in fight or flight, but it's more regenerative. So when it is in fight or flight, it's a little bit more of a sympathetic response. Now, there's nothing wrong with being in the sympathetic response. It's not like the bad state to be in. It's actually part of our nervous system and part of the autonomic nervous system, which composes of both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. But when it becomes too chronic, then it can cause a lot of different problems, and the body gets into a more survival state. So vagal tone basically refers to the vagus nerve's ability to function. So the stronger it is, the stronger it functions, the stronger the vagal tone. One of the ways that you can actually measure vagal tone is through something called heart rate variability, HRV, [00:05:00] and you can see many different apps, many different devices that actually measure that. And HeartMath Institute also discusses a lot about that, and they talk about the heart brain coherence, and they look at. Heart rate variability and vagal tone. And there was actually certain types of exercises, , that you can do to actually increase vagal tone and increase heart rate variability and also increase. Just by doing so, heart, brain coherence. So the higher the heart brain coherence and the higher the heart rate variability, the more calm we feel, the better state that we have. And apparently in conditions of endometriosis, the vagal tone. Is actually lower. So one of the things that I would definitely suggest if you do have endometriosis is to improve that vagal tone. And I'm gonna be discussing many, many different ways to do that. So as we know with endometriosis, one of the things that it's linked to is [00:06:00] digestive issues. And the higher the vagal tone and the better the biggest nerve is functioning, the better it can talk to and basically communicate with the enteric nervous system, which is really your. Digestive nervous system. And so we know that when we stimulate the vagus nerve, it can actually improve your digestive system. And when that happens, you're not only improving your ability to take in nutrients, but you're also decreasing the inflammation in the body, which is really pivotal when it comes to not just endometriosis, but egg quality and overall. Fertility health. So this is something that anybody who's going through the fertility journey, male or female, can benefit from regardless if you have endometriosis or not. So just to kind of go back on the endometriosis topic, one of the ways really the only true way that you can know if you have endometriosis is by getting [00:07:00] a laparoscopy. It is a surgery, so I'm not saying to go and do that. However, if you suspect that you might have endometriosis based on inflammation, gut imbalance, really strong menstrual pain, pain with periods and kind of lower back pain around that time, then you could still do this because you're gonna benefit from it anyway. So I would go and talk to your doctor if you do suspect that you have endometriosis to get your options. So besides looking at heart rate variability, you may kind of realize if your heart rate variability is high or your vagal tone is high based on how well you get back from really stressful situations. So if you are the type of person that. Gets anxious pretty easily. Startles really easily has like an off nervous system, gets really nervous around people. That's okay to a certain extent, if it's not [00:08:00]chronic, if it's not something that's really impacting your life. But if it is impacting your life and it's something that happens and when you get out of those environments that trigger that. You continue feeling like that, that may mean that you have a lower vagal tone, which means that you're not able to adapt from one state of stress to a more calm state of your nervous system. So while that doesn't confirm heart rate variability, and ultimately the best thing to do is really to measure it, and you can measure it with many devices like even, or ring, you know, there's many devices that actually track your body and your heart rate variability. And that would be the ultimate way to confirm it, but there are definitely symptoms that you can feel as well. So studies do confirm that women have a lower vagal tone if they have endometriosis, and that a lower vagal tone is also linked with higher inflammatory conditions. , some of the things in life that can impact [00:09:00] vagal tone really do have to do with high stress. So if you're constantly exposed to high stress in your life, that can impact your vagal tone. And also, I've mentioned this before, it's really important to know that if you do have high stress. It's not the end of the world if you have some stress, but high stress chronically can really impact your overall health and it can also throw off your nervous system balance. So even if you have IBS or any kind of gut conditions or inflammation or bloating, I'll be covering things that will also benefit you as well. So what's pretty amazing is that there have been studies, actually animal studies that have shown that increasing that vagus nerve stimulation, which will improve the vagus nerve function has been shown to decrease lesions in animals of endometriosis. This is thought to be because vagus [00:10:00] nerve stimulation can regulate and decrease inflammatory markers in the body. So I'm gonna cover a few ways that you can stimulate your vagus nerve overall. I. So breath work is amazing and it works with the diaphragm, especially belly breath. So as a child, you probably knew how to breathe. You'll see babies breathe from their bellies because that belly breath is actually the way we're supposed to breathe. But as we get older, we actually learn habits that are not really great for breathing. So belly breath is really good. So you could put your hand right underneath your. Ribs, which is where your diaphragm is, and start to use that, really the diaphragm as a muscle and breathe in and out and do this a couple of times a day to retrain yourself. To breathe from the belly. I remember not doing that. And then years ago, learning and retraining myself to the point where it became unconscious and I was just a [00:11:00] belly breather. And it really impacted how I felt in general because I used to have generalized social anxiety. And I remember going in for body work. A massage and the woman said, oh, you're a belly breather. So it, it is something that I was like, oh, I'm so happy. I'm so proud of myself that I actually trained myself. I wasn't even focusing on trying, and she noticed it. So it is something that you can train yourself. It's a habit that we have. It becomes unconscious. So just like a good habit can become unconscious, a bad habit can become unconscious, but you can also change that bad habit to a good unconscious habit. So I've talked about slow, deep breathing, but you can also do something called box breathing, which is inhale to four, hold to four, exhale to four, and then hold out to four. And then you can slowly increase that with time. I remember when I used to teach Kundalini yoga, we had something called, it was like the meditation [00:12:00] aspect of the yoga training, and it was something called the 16 seconds. breath. We would breathe in so it's not quite the box. It would breathe in to 20, hold for 20, breathe out to 20 and that's 60 seconds. And doing so really calms the mind. And of course you'd have to work yourself up to doing that and not do that right off the bat. 'cause it is very hard and it is a practice you have to build up to. So another thing that can help stimulate the biggest nerve is cold exposure. Now with Chinese medicine, you may have heard me say that it's not really great to have chronic cold exposure. So I often tell people, keep your feet warm or put socks on and don't put your feet on cold tile. Now this is. A chronic thing, this is doing something day in and day out. And also we do have our first kidney point on the bottom of our feet. The kidneys are in charge of our reproductive health, so you don't want that coldness from the tile to come up from the feet [00:13:00] into the channels. So this is why I say that for a day in and day out. But once in a while, you can give yourself a little cold exposure. Doing so, like maybe doing a quick cold shower once in a while is okay. Now, if you are, of course this isn't for everybody. If you are somebody who tends to be cold all the time, this may not be for you. But what they do find is that that quick stress effect of the cold exposure, like even a cold plunge. Can actually stimulate the vagus nerve. So it's a quick stress response. And then the body goes from stress, which is the sympathetic to parasympathetic. It starts to stimulate that nervous system regulation. Another thing that can really be beneficial is gargling or humming. And I personally love to ohm. If I feel really stressed, even if I'm driving, I just om or hum what humming does. Is, it actually slows down your breath. And you may have heard me say this before in [00:14:00] previous episodes, is that when you breathe slow and deep, you actually calm your nervous system. So, and especially your exhale. So the longer your exhale, the calmer your nervous system, and the more it's gonna go into parasympathetic mode. So when you're inhaling and you're exhaling with a hum, it slows it down. It actually stops it from being cleared fast. Of course, meditation and mindfulness. Now, what meditation does is it really gets us to a state of receptivity and a state of listening. When we're in meditation, we're paying attention to ourselves, even ourselves, when we're anxious or we're feeling uncomfortable. When you're feeling that sensation, it's almost like a somatic acknowledgement of your body sensation, so you're aware, you become more aware. Of what happens when you are feeling uncomfortable, and then having those times during the day is really beneficial for that mindfulness to increase. Because the more [00:15:00] you give yourself opportunities to pay attention to yourself, your mind, your body, how it feels, the more mindful you become, the more you can get really tuned in with your nervous system. And that awareness has been shown to really improve your overall physiology, which in turn. Can help your nervous system regulation and your vagal tone. And of course, one of my favorites is acupuncture. Acupuncture can help tremendously, and we actually have a bunch of points that I use often to stimulate the vagus nerve, and part of it is an ears. So another thing that I would suggest if you can't get to acupuncture is just massage your ears or even massage your feet. Anything that really stimulates that calming effect. The ears are one of the ways that we can access the vagus nerve. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, and feel free to share this with anybody that you think can benefit from this information. [00:16:00] It is information that you may not often hear. I haven't heard about it before until I stumbled upon it and I was like, Hmm, that's very interesting. And then the more I learn about the nervous system, the more impacts I see that it has over reproductive health. So I hope this was beneficial for you and. If you ever have any questions, ideas, or thoughts for future episodes, you can always reach out to me and DM me on Instagram where I am very active and my handle is at the wholesome lotus fertility. So thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you have a beautiful day. So that concludes today's episode. You can find all of the links mentioned on the episode notes. If you're enjoying these episodes, please take a moment to share and leave a review. Reviews mean everything to podcasters and I really enjoy hearing from my listeners.