Live Healthier, For Longer
Live Healthier, For Longer
By Charlotte Dorn and Michelle Laven
Longevity: ‘to live a longer and healthier life’
Healthspan: ‘the duration of a person’s life in which they are generally in good health’
The quest for longevity and healthspan can be daunting. Some of us are fortunate enough to expedite our wellness journey with a generous budget and an abundance of free time to dedicate, but those of us with busy schedules and fewer resources, or just moving a little slower, shouldn’t be excluded from empowering ourselves towards a longer healthspan!
Healthy longevity includes the adoption of preventive health and disease measures like improved sleep quality and time, and reduced inflammation and stress. One of the key parts of our bodies that impacts all of these factors and processes affecting longevity is the vagus nerve.
The impact of the Vagus Nerve:
Stress Management and Nervous System Health
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body, stretching from the base of our skull and down to our gut. This nerve is responsible for our fight-flight-freeze response and many physiological symptoms of stress. Stress is a cause, and exacerbator of, the conditions that stand in the way of longevity and healthspan. Sensate uses infrasonic and low-frequency technology to improve the parasympathetic nervous system’s response to chronic stress by toning the vagus nerve. In short, Sensate was created out of a desire to teach our bodies how to more easily switch out of fight-flight-freeze and into the rest and digest nervous state.
Living for Longevity and Healthspan
Stress
Stress can cause and exacerbate conditions that impede the quest for longevity and healthspan. Thus, tackling the ever-present task of stress management (not elimination!) is essential to longevity. Obviously, stressors are going to come flying at us, no matter how prepared we are. So, what we are looking to achieve is to build resilience—the ability to bounce back after adverse or unexpected events and find a way to move through those moments with more grace and wisdom.
Cellular Stress
Stress penetrates deeper into our bodies than just the symptoms we feel right away; it can also affect the health span and longevity of our cells.
We are affected by stress on a cellular level. Our cells have an Integrated Stress Response (ISR) that is essential for our cells to survive when they experience stress. This means that when we have chronic inflammation, a poor diet, or a combination of stressors, it not only puts mental stress on us, but a deep physical stress that can have long-term effects. When the ISR is activated for a long period of time, cellular longevity can be reduced, especially when it cannot prevent stressors from triggering cell death pathways. While cell death (senescence) is a necessary process to keep our bodies healthy, when it occurs abnormally (too much or too little), it can lead to, or worsen, many diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, heart disease, and viral infections. This means that disproportionate senescence caused by cumulative stress affects us on a cellular level and impacts health span and longevity because it reduces the cellular regenerative capacity of our bodies.
This means that increasing nervous system health and vagal nerve tone from the use of Sensate (and/or other relaxation devices/methods) means stress reduction and relief from any stress-related symptom, but also stress resilience (which we see in heart rate variability measurements) which serves long-term healthspan and longevity.
However, stress is not a lone ranger; it is but one of the compounding factor that affects longevity and healthspan.
Sleep
Stress impedes sleep quality and sleep duration. Sleep is important for longevity because it helps to protect us against chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure), chronic fatigue, viral infection, immune system deficiency, obesity and appetite control, and neurodegeneration. Stress management is definitely key to promoting sleep, and, downstream of this gives us a stronger chance at a rich, healthy span of life. (The Effects of Sleep Deprivation, John Hopkins Medicine)
Prolonged stress can also lead to chronic fatigue, which has significant knock-on effects on quality of life and healthspan. Non-Sleep Deep Reset (NSDR, Dr. Andrew Huberman) is a good way to revitalize the body (and cells) and reduce inflammation, relieving pain, especially for people who struggle to sleep. NSDR can increase energy in the body, making physical activity, which can improve mental health in itself, more accessible to people who suffer from chronic pain and inflammation as a barrier to regular movement. This tells us that regular movement is affected by stress, induces fatigue, and is another compounding factor in healthspan and longevity. This means taking time for regular movement and rest is important for healthy longevity.
Inflammation
Stress results in increased heart rate and an increase in the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. Chronic or prolonged periods of stress take a toll on the body, causing inflammation in the circulatory system, particularly the coronary arteries, which ties stress to heart attacks, dramatically affecting longevity and healthspan.
Digestive Health
Stress can affect the gut-brain connection that the vagus nerve facilitates, causing and exacerbating digestive health issues. Stress can also be caused by changes in gut bacteria. Poorly managed stress can weaken the intestinal barrier, allowing gut bacteria to enter the body. While this doesn’t necessarily make us sick, it causes constant low levels of inflammation, which creates chronic symptoms. Conditions like IBD and IBS are especially affected by stress. Digestive issues like these are a barrier to a healthy diet and the body's ability to benefit from a healthy diet.
Consuming a healthy diet supports our body on a cellular level, promoting immunity and cellular regeneration and contributing to longevity. The Mediterranean diet, in particular, is associated with longevity, emphasizing fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, legumes, fish, and minimally processed meats. This diet also contributes to digestive health as it is high in antioxidants and fiber, positively impacting the digestive tract.
Immunity
When we perceive something as challenging or threatening, our brain activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA), which drives the stress response of the endocrine (hormone-secreting gland). This means the stress hormone cortisol is produced in greater volume. During times of stress, this response is useful because it increases the energy available to deal with a prolonged challenge. However, chronic stress can suppress innate and adaptive immune responses (like future immunity from a previous illness), which has been linked to the development of physical and mental health conditions such as chronic fatigue, immune disorders, depression, and metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes. This immunosuppressive effect can also increase our susceptibility to infection, delay the healing of wounds, and exacerbate inflammatory conditions.
When chronic stress promotes inflammation and consequently contributes to autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammatory disorders, longevity, and healthspan can be significantly reduced.
Other
Community and connection:
Regular socializing and community connectivity are shown to be a key part of the lifestyles that are associated with communities that live the longest around the world (blue zones). Loneliness can physically affect the body, causing increased pain sensitivity, immune system suppression, disrupted sleep, and diminished brain function, further isolating a lonely individual. Loneliness raises the odds of death for an older adult by 26% in any given year. As we increasingly recognize loneliness in worldwide populations, we can also see the importance of relationships and connection: ‘Relationships keep us happier and healthier throughout our lifespans.’ (Waldinger and Schultz, The Good Life)
Final Takeaway
The journey to longevity and healthspan is littered with new challenges around every corner – challenges like sleeping and eating well, supporting a healthy immune system, and reducing inflammation. What we have found when we look at all of these factors is that they all impact each other, and they are all connected because their compounding impact reinforces stress. This shows us that managing stress is essential for longevity and healthspan. Therefore, a stress management tool like Sensate, which targets the vagus nerve and only requires 10 minutes of our time, can make longevity and healthspan more achievable for everyone, especially for those who suffer from varying levels of stress and those who don’t have an abundance of spare time. Sensate supports preventative health goals, sleep improvement, and neuroprotectivity, among other things that contribute to longevity and healthspan.
Notes:
Our blog on Blue Zones:
https://www.getsensate.com/blogs/news/community-and-connection-survival-of-the-kindest
Our blog on NSDR:
https://www.getsensate.com/blogs/news/nsdr-non-sleep-deep-rest
Sources:
https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/body
https://www.hudson.org.au/news/how-cell-death-affects-your-health/
https://www.wehi.edu.au/research/areas-of-research/cell-death/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/apoptosis
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52538-5
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541120/
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-effects-of-sleep-deprivation
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/