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For a busy cook, caramelized onions pose a conundrum. We love the rich, deeply savory flavor they add to everything from creamy pastas to burgers, but caramelizing onions — truly caramelizing them — requires more time than many of us have for your average weeknight recipe. Luckily, I have a solution: Get out your slow cooker and make a huge batch (you can freeze most of it to have on hand for future meals!).
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Butter, in all its delicious glory, generally gets a bad rap. That’s largely due to the fact that butter is high in saturated fat — a single tablespoon has 7 grams of saturated fat, or 35 percent of the USDA’s daily recommended amount — and saturated fat has been linked to high cholesterol and increased risk of cardiovascular problems.
Since the 1960s, health experts, nutritionists, and scientists have been alerting the general public of the dangers of consuming too much butter. And many diners (the French excluded) have been running as far away from it as they can, using oils, spreads, and alterna-butters instead.
But new findings may change how we perceive this ingredient.
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The first time I saw a palmetto bug, chilling on the wall of a New York City apartment, it scared the crap out of me. Not just because it was a bug that was bigger than my thumb (ew!), but because the freakin’ thing could fly! I didn’t think roaches could have wings. It turns out I was wrong.
After chatting with Michael Bentley, an entomologist with the National Pest Management Association, I learned a few more things about these all-too-common critters. Here’s what I found out.
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Michelle Obama’s platform as First Lady was to get America to eat better. Her childhood obesity campaign entailed an array of projects from school nutrition reform to a cultivating a garden at the White House. Much has been speculated about the fate of the latter — the 2,800-square-foot vegetable garden located on the South Lawn — under a Trump presidency.
“Hopefully, there will be other administrations who come in and they take up this project and continue to make this a part of the White House tradition,” Michelle said last April, prior to the election, CBS reported.
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In recent years, I’ve regularly vouched for the gut as our long-abused secondary brain. Given what most of us grew up learning in school, it can feel like a mammoth shift. Science and philosophy have long revered the brain as seat of consciousness, even the seat of humanity itself. But when it comes down to it, everything is interconnected. Our consciousness extends well beyond the brain. How we feel and who we are encompasses a much more expansive and intricate system than any of us learned in high school biology. At the center of this paradigm revision is something called the vagus nerve.
Vagus…as a word it sounds a little off-putting. If someone called me a vagus, I’d probably be mildly offended. But the literary origins of this word are actually kind of mystical: “vagus” in Latin translates to “wandering.” And I’d struggle to find a more apt definition.
The vagus nerve runs from the base of the brain, through the neck, and into the chest and stomach, reaching all the way to the gut. It’s regularly likened to a highway, whereby vast multitudes of nerves are constantly “driving” to almost every organ in the body, delivering vital messages and returning to the brain with their own little snippets of info. Around 80% of these nerve fibers are directed outwards from the brain, while the remaining 20% or so work in reverse to send commands back to the brain from the various corners of the body.
Unsurprisingly, the role of this wandering nerve highway is far-reaching. Regulation of breathing. Control of digestion and satiety. Taste response. Hearing. Vocalization. Relaxation response. Even blood circulation. It’s the quiet overachiever of your parasympathetic nervous system.
And it’s stirring some rather fascinating conversations within the medical community (conventional and otherwise).
Feeling hungry or full? It’s that mysterious vagus nerve at work. During a meal, the volume of food in the stomach stimulates the vagus nerve to message your call center operator (brain), which then flips the switch that says “full.” Seems pretty straightforward.
Further down, in the depths of your gastrointestinal tract, the vagus is also operating. As I discussed in this post, the gut contains a range of receptors that recognize whether you’ve received enough of certain nutrients. These include serotonin, ghrelin, and gustducin (aka glucose) receptors. The food you eat may or may not fire up these receptors, depending on whether it contains those nutrients. And the means by which your brain receives the nutrient satiety all-clear? Why, none other than the vagus. This is the quality to your stomach’s bulk-food quantity sensors.
So, the vagus and your stomach: an unlikely romance. But where things can turn sour are with regards to a compromised vagus nerve. When the vagus is underperforming, those all-important satiety signals from both the stomach and the intestines don’t always make their way back to the brain. You choose the metaphor: nerve traffic jams, road work, giant nerve-eating potholes…that kind of thing.
For this reason, when the vagus is performing at less than 100 percent, you’re more likely to overeat or get insatiable cravings for the wrong kinds of foods. A classic example of this is those glucose taste receptors in your gut I talked about earlier. Vagus dysfunction can prevent those receptors from signaling to the brain that sufficient sugars and carbs have been consumed, essentially leading to a glucose overdose and impaired insulin secretion.
We all know where this is going: obesity. But vagus nerve dysfunction is by no means limited to battles with excessive weight gain.
As a key component of your parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus is a nerve associated with times of plenty rather than hardship or trauma. In other words, it’s more of a “rest and digest” kind of guy rather than a mechanism of “fight or flight.”
For this reason, stimulating the vagus nerve is associated with an anti-inflammatory response in the brain. By activating, the vagus is telling the brain that all is well with the world, and to ease off on stress response and the production of inflammatory cytokines. The science behind it is somewhat mind-exploding, but here’s my layman’s summary.
Some sort of external catalyst triggers an immune response in the body. Example: gluten. In this scenario, your gut issues a plea for help via the vagus. Vagus communicates SOS to immune cells via the brain, which then release “pro-inflammatory cytokines” to give the invader in your gut (gluten) a good walloping. Walloping complete, the efferent (aka outgoing) part of the vagus regulates this immune activation and suppresses the inflammatory cytokines. Inflammation over and out.
As you can guess, the health of the vagus nerve may have a lot to tell us about autoimmune function/dysfunction—as well as a host of other physical conditions.
Researchers have caught on to that notion in recent years. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) first appeared on medical shelves in 1997, designed to provide a viable alternative to anti-seizure drugs. A small device is surgically implanted into a patient’s chest in order to emit electrical pulses into the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes. Of those epileptics who receive VNS, apparently half of them see a 50 percent drop in seizures. Kind of a Matrix-esque therapy that undoubtedly feels like a miracle to those who live with frequent seizures.
From there, medical curiosity regarding the vagus nerve intensified considerably. Those patients receiving VNS for their epilepsy started to report improved mood and less propensity for depression. That would likely be the serotonin receptors in their gut finally getting through to the brain via an electrically-boosted vagus. The logical next step was to begin using VNS for treatment of chronic depression, which was approved by our friends at the FDA in 2005. The results of this treatment have been mixed, with certain patients responding well and others showing no improvements. Unfortunately, 55 percent of patients also appear to exhibit “voice alteration and hoarseness” as a side effect.
But the vagus correlations didn’t stop there. Depressed patients also reported a notable reduction in appetite while undergoing the VNS treatment. And so VNS for obesity treatment was born, with a significant degree of success.
You see where this is going: scientists continue to discover more about the vagus nerve and how it controls a wide array of vital functions in the body. Mark S. George, director of the brain stimulation lab at the Medical University of South Carolina, notes that “[VNS] affects our brain circuitry in a profoundly powerful way…Not only can you select which fibers you want to target with VNS, you can also control which way you want the information to go and your effect.”
In the next several years, it will be interesting to follow the application of VNS and its progress in the fields of Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, tinnitus, and even stroke recovery. Results are looking promising.
Of course, most of this is just conventional, symptom-centric medical stabs in the dark. The research on the vagus nerve is still relatively new, but we’re learning.
That leads us to the question of the day: what does it have to do with me, with you, with the general population? What does the “wandering” nerve have to offer us?
For starters, it’s apparent from early research that the vagus nerve can be damaged by a poor diet. Lab tests, while small, have drawn links between diabetes and vagal degeneration, the cause of which we know to be a chronic glucose and fructose overload. Diabetic damage to the vagus nerve can lead to a condition called gastroparesis, in which the muscles of the stomach and intestines are unable to effectively move food through the GI tract. Other research suggests that alcohol abuse can also lead to vagal damage, due to the toxic influence alcohol has on the autonomic nervous system, of which the vagus is a part.
All right, so you need to avoid sugar, eat a balanced diet, and minimize alcohol consumption. Check, check and check. Even a casual Primal type shouldn’t have too much difficulty on those fronts. But beyond simply avoiding vagal damage, how can you supercharge your vagus? Surely, improving the health of the vagal nerve must have benefits?
Yes, indeed. A Swiss study a couple of years back found that healthy vagus communication between your gut and brain helps you to slow down and unwind after a stressful situation. Lab tests showed that the vagus nerve releases neurotransmitters following a traumatic event to lower heart rate, lower blood pressure, and enable your organs to take it easy after genuinely distressing or simply trying events. The take-away here is that supporting a healthy vagus increases your ability to live resiliently, deal with stress, and recover faster. That’s a very valuable thing indeed.
And rest assured there’s likely no need for a lab assistant to zap you either. A study from early last year used a new non-invasive vagus nerve stimulator to reduce symptoms of major depressive disorder. Other studies have shown significant stress reduction and increased feelings of happiness by temporarily stimulating the vagus nerve. There’s ample reason to believe that these benefits can also be achieved by practicing mindfulness meditation (or your version thereof).
Finally, supporting a healthy vagus can help you to improve performance under pressure. Endurance athlete and coach Christopher Bergland, who has written at length on the vagus, offers some perspective on supporting and improving the vagal functioning: “healthy vagal tone is indicated by a slight increase of heart rate when you inhale, and a decrease of heart rate when you exhale. Deep diaphragmatic breathing—with a long, slow exhale—is key to stimulating the vagus nerve and slowing heart rate and blood pressure, especially in times of performance anxiety. A higher vagal tone index is linked to physical and psychological well-being. A low vagal tone index is linked to inflammation, negative moods, loneliness, and heart attacks.”
So how do you get your hands on some of this healthy vagal tone action when the going gets tough? Bergland has a few mostly anecdotal answers:
Admittedly, there’s plenty for research to fill in in the coming years. That being said, a few other studies on the vagus nerve appear to confirm the application of Primal living for vagal tone. This study, for instance, found that rats fed a high-fat diet experienced a significant lowering of inflammatory response by way of the vagus nerve. A more recent study showed that a certain probiotic strain of Lactobacillus activated the vagus nerve and halted the release of cortisol during a stressful situation. And of course there’s always slow, controlled breathing.
Not too hard or revolutionary for the Primal mind. Incidentally, actions that support neuroplasticity may by extension support vagal health as well.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Have you read/heard much about the vagus nerve? How do you think of this addition to the brain-gut axis picture? Take care.
The post What Is the Vagus Nerve? (and How Does It Impact Health, Mood and Performance?) appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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I’m of the mind that chocolate, like pizza, falls firmly into the category of things that are good, even when they’re not good. Face it — you’ve probably never bitten into a piece of chocolate and exclaimed, “I do not like this!”
Yet there admittedly is a difference between a fancy, decadent baking chocolate versus a generic, store-brand kind. “The differences are usually in cocoa content and then the amount of added sugar in the chocolate,” says Gesine Bullock-Prado, a pastry chef and founder of Sugar Glider Kitchen. “More expensive chocolate tends to contain far less sugar.”
So how do you know when to splurge? There are three specific times you should go with the more expensive stuff.
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Going dark takes guts — especially in a kitchen, where all-white schemes have been so popular for so long — but Halle and Jeff really pull it off in their New York City apartment. Take a closer look at this dark and handsome stunner.
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Dirty rice is a traditional Cajun or Creole dish named for the color it takes on, thanks to key ingredients like chicken giblets and liver. It’s earthy, heavily spiced, and hearty. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you don’t normally have liver and giblets around (I sure don’t), but that doesn’t mean you can’t still throw a version of this dish together on a weeknight.
To make dirty rice more weeknight-friendly, I sub in spicy chicken andouille sausage for the giblets and liver and cook the rice right in the pot with everything else, making this a one-dish meal that tastes like you’ve been cooking for hours.
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Truth: There are plenty of situations you’ll encounter in your (civilized) adult life when a good flask would come in handy. Whether it’s a tailgate party with dubious drink choices, a floor picnic in your living room, or anything in between, it’s always good to literally have a flask in your back pocket.
Check out our picks for awesome, grown-up flasks that’ll turn every occasion into a party.
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Ultra-comforting slow-cooker chili mac is the love child of macaroni and cheese and chili — perfect for the person who just can’t choose. It’s the best of both worlds, with lots of gooey, melted cheese and tender pasta mixed with a hearty blend of spices, meat, and beans. This is your chance to get it all in the same bowl.
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