Why is everyone talking about the vagus nerve – and how it’s really affecting your health

The idea that inflammation can be regulated by the nervous system is leading to an explosion in what is being dubbed “bioelectric medicine”. But plenty of murky claims are being made by unverified ‘experts’ flogging unproven devices, says Helen Coffey LifestyleLet’s unpack thatWhy is everyone talking about the vagus nerve – and how it’s really affecting your healthThe idea that inflammation can be regulated by the nervous system is leading to an explosion in what is being dubbed “bioelectric medicine”. But plenty of murky claims are being made by unverified ‘experts’ flogging unproven devices, says Helen Coffey Wednesday 25 February 2026 12:12 ESTBookmarkCommentsGo to commentsBookmark popoverRemoved from bookmarksClose popoveropen image in galleryThe vagus nerve connects the brain to the body’s internal organs (Getty Images)Your support helps us to tell the storyRead moreSupport NowFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreHow long have you got?” is Professor Owen Epstein’s response when I ask what the vagus nerve does. A pioneering consultant gastroenterologist, his areas of special interest include the role of the vagus nerve in gastrointestinal health and disease.Like everything else in life, parts of our physiology tend to become “fashionable” in line with genuine medical breakthroughs that advance our understanding of their importance and function. Take the gut microbiome – seemingly overnight, it went from something almost no one had heard of to a mainstream buzzword bandied about by professionals and civilians alike. Now, it’s the turn of the vagus nerve to undergo the trendy treatment. Never heard of it before? Just you wait – now that you’ve seen it once, you’ll see it everywhere, as dictated by the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, aka the frequency illusion. It’s only in the last 10 to 15 years that the uniqueness of this remarkable internal communication superhighway has really been appreciated, and only in the last five that chatter has gone from niche to nearing critical mass. Though there’s still much we don’t understand about it, the vagus nerve is, in essence, the body’s intranet: an incredibly complex information-sharing system that connects our brain to nearly every one of our internal organs. Just as our external environment is constantly being monitored by the radar of our eyes, nose, ears and other senses to check for approaching danger to ensure we can react appropriately, so the vagus nerve is the internal surveillance mechanism for inside the body. “It has now been reasonably recognised that it is the key to providing our consciousness with information about our internal organs,” says Professor Epstein. “By providing that information in a very precise and very beautiful way to the subcortical area of the brain, the vagus nerve actually orchestrates communication between the organs to try and maintain stability and wellbeing.” The vagus nerve is constantly modulating the tuning of the organs, he says, “a bit like the conductor of an orchestra” – telling you, if we take the specific example of the gastrointestinal tract, whether you’re hungry, whether you’re not hungry, whether you need the loo, whether you feel bloated. And the same thing is constantly happening across all the organs.open image in galleryThe vagus nerve is the body’s internal information superhighway (Getty Images)It’s one of 12 cranial nerves – although even the term vagus “nerve”, singular, is somewhat misleading. We’ve actually got two, one on the right side and one on the left, each comprising a bundle of some 100,000 nerves. “So you don’t technically have a vagus nerve – you have 200,000 vagus nerves,” explains Dr Kevin Tracey, a neurosurgeon and scientist whose upcoming book, The Great Nerve, outlines how a whole new area of medicine is being unlocked by an increased understanding of how to harness this powerful system. “Each and every one of those 200,000 fibres has a specific origin in the brain or the body, a specific destination in the brain or the body, and it does a specific thing in the brain or the body – and that specific thing, that path of that fibre to do that job, was moulded and honed and refined by millions and millions of years of evolution.”Tracey first became fascinated by the vagus nerve’s incredible influence by complete accident. It was the 1990s, and he was interested in how inflammation works and how i