The Pulsetto, a device that’s meant to stimulate the vagus nerve – a trend that has been taking off in wellness circles.Supplied
For the past three weeks I’ve been using a shock collar.
The device looks like a pair of futuristic headphones. A plastic horseshoe finishing in mean metal prongs.
I start my day with an electric four-minute session. There’s another 20-minute segment to end the day. During use, the device’s power button strobes green and purple – its glow nearly as powerful as a phone flashlight – and a low electric signal continually zaps the side of my neck. The sensation feels weird. An electric buzz without static sharpness. Minorly painful but not entirely unpleasant.
Using the contraption makes me look and feel a bit like Frankenstein’s Monster, but the self-experiment promises a huge upside: improvements in everything from my stress, sleep, heart rate, digestion and even brain function.
The device I’m using is called Pulsetto. It’s meant to stimulate the vagus nerve – a trend that has been taking off in wellness circles. Pulsetto boasts users such as longevity guy Bryan Johnson – the 47-year-old spending an ungodly amount of money to look like a 37-year-old – and the hashtag #vagusnerve has more than 17k posts on TikTok.
While vagus nerve stimulation has shown potential for treating epilepsy, chronic headaches and rheumatoid arthritis, and for alleviating symptoms of treatment-resistant depression, the aforementioned benefits for general health can supposedly change your entire life.
But to understand whether any type of vagus nerve stimulation is something you want to try – wearable or otherwise – it’s important to look at the studies and facts beyond the hype.
What is the vagus nerve?
The vagus nerves are the body’s longest cranial nerves. Each side of your body has one vagus nerve that carries signals between your heart, digestive system and your brain. They’re a key part of your parasympathetic nervous system – which relaxes the body after periods of stress or danger – and controls specific body functions, such as heart rate and digestion, as well as the immune system. Often, you will see medical drawings of the vagus nerve on the walls of a chiropractor’s or physiotherapist’s office.
“Crucially it both sends and receives information, so is able to inform the brain about things such as heart rate and nutritional status, which the brain can then turn into signals to influence the activity of these organ systems,” said Dr. Simon C. Cork, physiology lead for the School of Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. As part of Cork’s research, he looks at the gut-brain axis, which includes the vagus nerves.
Stimulation of the vagus nerve can increase its activity. For some, that results in an improved resting heart rate and an increase in heart-rate variability. It can also make you feel calmer, reduce inflammation and help with sleep. While anecdotally vagus nerve stimulation has had huge benefits for some people, more research needs to be done on who responds best to the treatment and why.
“The difficulty in targeting the vagus nerve is in its complexity. It is a nerve with lots of different functions across different organ systems, so a blunt approach that stimulates or inhibits the entire nerve may not work for everyone,” said Cork. “The results are variable.”
How are people trying to stimulate the vagus nerve?
The vagus nerve can be stimulated in a variety of different ways, some of which you’ve probably already tried. Breath work, stretching, massage, meditation and even humming can work. One technique that’s become increasingly popular is cold exposure.
“Initially when you get into the cold, it’s a shock to your nervous system and for your vagus nerve in particular,” said Tiz McNamara, a cold exposure instructor at Alter Wellness in Toronto. A 2018 study showed that cold exposure could have beneficial effects on vagal activation when applied to the neck.
“Navigating through that in a way that feels challenging but ultimately safe builds that resilience,” McNamara said. “Controlling our breathing in that experience has a settling effect on our vagus nerve and our whole nervous system in general.”
If you’re hesitant to get cold or looking for a more technological solution, several wearables have recently hit the market.
Devices like Pulsetto claim to work by sending mild pulsations through the wearable’s electrodes. The pulsations target the vagus nerve in the neck area. Users apply an electrode gel to amplify the impact and everything is controlled through an app on your phone.
Is a wearable worth it?
The PulsettoSensus/Supplied
Wearable tech doesn’t come cheap. The Pulsetto can cost between $390 and $600. Competitors like Nurosym will run you $1,078 while a gammaCore starter kit costs around $650, though all the devices occasionally go on sale.
Reviews for Pulsetto have been mixed. On Reddit, there are complaints that the design is too big for smaller neck sizes and reviews lamenting minimal results for a big investment. Some feedback claims that all of the settings feel the same. On YouTube, there are videos claiming the device helped people’s stress and sleep.
Personally, starting and ending my day with the Pulsetto has been a nice ritual, giving me some focused time for self-care. Still, that’s something I could have achieved with a meditation app or even a focused walk around the block.
After three weeks of use, my resting heart rate is the same. I guess I felt a bit more relaxed, and I may have been falling asleep a bit more easily – but this could just as much be an effect of doing lighter workouts and cutting down on caffeine.
That speaks to some of the bigger challenges I have with any wearable – and a lot of the hyperbolic conversations online around any trending wellness topic: It’s that there is no one silver bullet to improving overall health. Vagus nerve stimulation can be helpful for some, but like most wellness conversations it works best as part of a well-rounded routine tailored to your needs and lifestyle.
