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HEALTH & LIFESTYLE

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Longest Nerve in the Body

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Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to marshal bodily functions, including aspects of the mind such as mood, pleasure and fear

The vagus nerve sprawls from the brain through the body, innervating our organs and managing life support and emotion
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds; your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots, and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>

 

Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an external threat. Would you still feel afraid?

Experiences like this reveal the tight integration between brain and body in the creation of mind—the collage of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and personality unique to each of us. The capabilities of the brain alone are astonishing. The supreme organ gives most people a vivid sensory perception of the world. It can preserve memories, enable us to learn and speak, generate emotions and consciousness. But those who might attempt to preserve their mind by uploading its data into a computer miss a critical point: The body is essential to the mind.

How is this crucial brain-body connection orchestrated? The answer involves the very unusual vagus nerve. The longest nerve in the body, it wends its way from the brain throughout the head and trunk, issuing commands to our organs and receiving sensations from them. Much of the bewildering range of functions it regulates, such as mood, learning, sexual arousal and fear, are automatic and operate without conscious control. These complex responses engage a constellation of cerebral circuits that link brain and body. The vagus nerve is, in one way of thinking, the conduit of the mind.

Nerves are typically named for the specific functions they perform. Optic nerves carry signals from the eyes to the brain for vision. Auditory nerves conduct acoustic information for hearing. The best that early anatomists could do with this nerve, however, was to call it the “vagus,” from the Latin for “wandering.” The wandering nerve was apparent to the first anatomists, notably Galen, the Greek polymath who lived until around the year 216. But centuries of study were required to grasp its complex anatomy and function. This effort is ongoing: Research on the vagus nerve is at the forefront of neuroscience today.

The most vigorous current research involves stimulating this nerve with electricity to enhance cognition and memory, and for a smorgasbord of therapies for neurological and psychological disorders, including migraine, tinnitus, obesity, pain, drug addiction and more. But how could stimulating a single nerve potentially have such wide-ranging psychological and cognitive benefits? To understand this, we must understand the vagus nerve itself.

The vagus nerve originates from four clusters of neurons in the brain’s medulla, where the brainstem attaches to the spinal cord. Most nerves in our body branch directly from the spinal cord: They are threaded between the vertebrae in our backbone in a series of lateral bands to carry information into and out of the brain. But not the vagus. The vagus nerve is one of 13 nerves that leave the brain directly through special holes in the skull. From there it sprouts thickets of branches that reach almost everywhere in the head and trunk. The vagus also radiates from two major clusters of outpost neurons, called ganglia, stationed in critical spots in the body. For example, a large cluster of vagal neurons clings like a vine to the carotid artery in your neck. Its nerve fibers follow this network of blood vessels throughout your body to reach vital organs, from the heart and lungs to the gut.

The vagus nerve connects the brainstem to the body’s organs. Mark Belan for Quanta Magazine

As with the brain itself, with its mirrored left and right hemispheres, we have left and right vagus nerve branches, which connect to the two hemispheres. But the organs in our body are not bilaterally symmetrical: The heart is on the left side, and the liver is on the right, for example. The right vagal nerve, then, is longer than the left, and the two sides have distinct functions because of the different organs they entwine. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>

It feels particularly apt to compare the vagus nerve to a highway network, with paths diverging, branching off again and again, and sometimes coming back together. Just as roads are given different names, many vagus nerve branches are given distinct names for the destinations they reach. They might run in tandem with the main sections of the vagus for brief intervals before separating again.

All complex body systems require the equivalent of brakes and a gas pedal to maintain control, and the vagus nerve serves these roles for many of our innate responses, nearly all of which occur involuntarily. Signals between the brainstem and the body travel up and down the nerve to twist your gut for digestion, marshal your immune system to keep microbial threats at bay, pace your heart, and dial your blood pressure up and down. The vagus nerve squeezes your bronchial tubes to pipe air into your lungs, triggers your gag reflex and makes you cough.

Its influence goes beyond basic life support: The vagus nerve is critical to generating mind by integrating the brain and body. Choking is terrifying because death could be mere minutes away. That heightened mental state is dependent on signals coming from the body—the inability to breathe or swallow—and the vagus nerve both senses and controls the choking response. If your heart suddenly starts racing, you might experience a panic attack; controlling heart rate is a prime function of the vagus nerve. Many other mental states, sexual arousal for example, depend on the mind-body connection that involves information going to the brain (sensual touching, for example) and out of the brain (to arouse bodily responses). The vagus nerve is that connection. Its length and widespread nature throughout the brain as well as the body allow it to coordinate such diverse bodily functions in a way that independent nerves could not.

The primary function of the vagus nerve is to dampen the body’s responses. After a fear episode, for example, the body’s powerful, life-saving threat response must be terminated to restore resting heartbeat, respiration, blood flow and the rest. So powerful is its influence, the vagus nerve can literally stop the beating heart. Conversely, the vagus nerve can also stimulate bodily responses by releasing the brakes to accelerate.

The calming action of the vagus nerve is the biological basis for new therapies that aim to stimulate the nerve to quell seizures, relieve anxiety disorders, cool the body’s inflammatory response and stanch a migraine attack, among a long list of potential treatments. Unlike deep-brain stimulation, which is used to treat some of the same conditions, vagal nerve stimulation can be accomplished without neurosurgery. It is possible to stimulate the nerve fibers with a mild electrical pulse by surgically inserting electrodes into the chest or, more simply, clipping them to an earlobe. The technique has been used to treat epilepsy and depression for decades, and in 2021 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat mobility issues caused by stroke.

However, some people have taken the vagus nerve’s expansive bodily influence as an invitation to engage in pseudoscience. In some corners of the internet, so-called polyvagal therapy—physical or breathing exercises that some claim reset the vagus nerve—is proposed to address just about any disorder of the mind or body. There’s little to no evidence that these popular remedies are anything but placebos.

The vagus nerve doesn’t need to be a panacea to be remarkable—it’s worth appreciating all on its own. Without the expansive domain and potent impact of the body’s longest nerve, the crucial, highly coordinated link between brain and body would be broken, and many of our core emotions and experiences—fear, pleasure, rapid response to threats, the calming aftermath—would fail.

 

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HEALTH & LIFESTYLE

How Long Does It Take For a Healthy Person to Show HIV Symptoms.

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In most situations, the first HIV symptoms show up 2–4 weeks after a person is exposed to the virus, but in certain circumstances, they might take months or even years to manifest.

HIV is the name of the virus that causes the illness of the same name. AIDS, a lethal disease brought on by a person’s immune system being significantly weakened, is its last stage.

Blood, breast milk, and sexual fluids are all ways that HIV can transmit. According to research, 94% of HIV infections in 2015 were caused by sexual contact…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>

 

initial signs of HIV

HIV infection does not always result in immediate symptoms. It takes between two and four weeks for HIV symptoms to manifest.

Sometimes symptoms won’t show up for months or even years.

Timeline

HIV is categorized by doctors into three stages.

Acute HIV infection in Stage 1

A person with HIV exhibits specific symptoms when they are first infected. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>

Fatigue, muscle aches, rashes, headaches, sore throats, enlarged lymph nodes, joint discomfort, night sweats, and diarrhea are some of the symptoms.

A credible source claims that some of these symptoms are more likely to materialize than others. The likelihood of each of the symptoms is mentioned above in decreasing order.

HIV infection in stage 2 is ongoing.

The following are signs of a chronic HIV infection, according to certain studies, says a dependable source: yeast infection in the vagina and oral hairy leukoplakia, which results in white, scaly areas on the tongue. Possible diagnoses include shingles, neuropathy, cervical dysplasia, and the blood clotting condition idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.

The person’s immune system will suffer considerably if this stage continues. Their body will have a harder time fighting off infections and other illnesses as a result.

3.AIDS in Stage

AIDS manifests when a person’s CD4 cell count is significantly decreased as a result of HIV infection.

White blood cells called T cells, sometimes referred to as CD4 cells, are one type. They serve as the body’s defense against harmful microorganisms. These cells become dysfunctional as a result of HIV infection.

 

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HEALTH & LIFESTYLE

Blood Group With The Strongest Immunity

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The concept of blood groups and immunity is fascinating, as there is ongoing research into the role that different blood types play in an individual’s susceptibility or resistance to various diseases. Blood types are determined by the presence or absence of specific antigens on the surface of red blood cells. The four main blood groups are A, B, AB, and O, classified based on the presence of antigens A and B. Blood type O is unique in that it lacks both A and B antigens, while blood types A, B, and AB have either one or both of these antigens…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>

 

Research into the relationship between blood types and immunity has suggested that certain blood groups might offer some level of protection against specific infections. For instance, individuals with blood type O are thought to have a stronger immune response to certain diseases, including malaria, due to their genetic makeup. Studies have shown that people with blood type O are less susceptible to severe malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for the deadliest form of malaria. The absence of A and B antigens on the surface of red blood cells in blood type O may prevent the malaria parasite from attaching to and infecting the cells.

In addition to malaria, some studies have suggested that blood type O might offer better protection against certain viral infections, including norovirus, a common cause of gastroenteritis. The absence of specific antigens in blood type O could make it harder for certain pathogens to invade cells, providing a form of defense. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>

On the other hand, blood type AB, which has both A and B antigens, might be more susceptible to certain types of infections, as these antigens could serve as entry points for various pathogens. However, the research in this area is still ongoing, and no definitive conclusion has been reached about which blood type has the “strongest” immunity.

In conclusion, while blood type O is often considered to have some immunological advantages, especially regarding malaria and certain viral infections, there is no clear evidence that one blood group provides universally stronger immunity. Immune strength is influenced by various genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, and the relationship between blood types and immunity is a complex field of study that requires further exploration.

 

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HEALTH & LIFESTYLE

High blood pressure is a silent killer, here are 4 foods you must stop consuming

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The following is a list of four categories of food that you should never consume as a way to reduce your risk of developing hypertension, a condition that is known as a “silent killer.”

The most likely cause of the extinction of humans was hypertension, which is also the most likely explanation. [More citation is required] [More citation is required] As long as the harm is permanent and the individual affected either fails badly or falls down and dies, it avoids an excessive number of critical components of the human body from decaying without the care of the individual, which is why it is frequently referred to as a calm executioner. As a result of this, it is frequently referred to as a cold-blooded killer…Click Here To Continue Reading>> …Click Here To Continue Reading>>

 

Even though there are probably an excessive number of factors that can contribute to increased circulatory pressure, our eating routines are one item that we frequently overlook as a potential contributor. This is despite the fact that there are probably an excessive number of other factors that can contribute to increased circulatory pressure. This is despite the fact that there are most likely an excessive number of other factors that can contribute to increased circulatory pressure. This is also despite the fact that. Because our eating habits and the way we organize them can either help us win or embalm our fight against the calm and skilled assassin known as hypertension, we need to be mindful of the twenty most common foods that ought to be avoided while we are engaged in this conflict. These different kinds of food include:

Twenty of these various sources of nourishment are categorized as belonging to one of the following categories:

1. Salt and sodium: This is especially important for people who manage hypertension because having too much sodium in the body causes water to be drawn into the veins, which in turn causes the person who has hypertension to have a faster heartbeat. 2. Potassium and magnesium: Having too much potassium in the body causes water to be drawn into the veins, which in turn causes the person who has hypertension to

Put an end to the consumption of meals such as pizza, bread and roll, hamburgers, and other sources of food that are nutritionally equivalent.

2. The portion of dietary fat that is taken up by the body Because these foods contribute to elevated blood cholesterol levels, which can lead to a failure of the cardiovascular system, consumption of foods that are high in absorbed fats, such as cheddar, burgers, spreads, and oily cheeseburgers, should be limited or completely avoided. This is because these foods should be avoided because they can cause a failure of the cardiovascular system. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>

3. Additional sugar and carbohydrates: After an action-packed and limitless day, the desire to consume any of these beverages may become stronger; however, you should fight the desire and not give in to it. Additional sugar and carbohydrates: The significant quantity of sugar that is found in these sweets, in along with the consistent action of item squeezing, both contribute to and promote an increased rate of heartbeat.

4. Refreshments other than coffee and tea alternatives It is of the utmost importance that you refrain from consuming coffee refreshments; this is especially the case if you have a pattern of staying up late or of frequently moving around the city. If you do not abstain from consuming coffee refreshments, it is possible that you could suffer from a variety of health problems. Because of this, there is an increase in the level of tension that is present throughout the circulatory system. This is because of the fact that. Put an end to the milk tea, frozen yogurt, and various other delectable items, etc.

The following are some examples of sources that can be found in diet that have been reported to generate a heartbeat that is slower than normal:

1. Banana

2. Vegetable

3. fish

4. Vegetables

 

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