Skeptic Check: The Body Electric
Big Picture Science
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The Evolution of the Vagus Nerve
This neural circuit controlling inflammation through the vagus nerve evolved over hundreds of millions of years. We've seen vagus nerve like control of inflammation in roundworms and see elegans, which are ancient animals. And so this is a highly conserved mechanism. The second thing that's extraordinarily important is when we activate the vagum nerve to turn off inflammation, it never turns it off to zero. It doesn't immunosuppress. There's a lot still to learn, but there's a lot of reason to be optimistic at this point based on what we already know.
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